Ok, so let us see if we have this straight. Ariel Sharon wants us all to
believe he is NOT just another Bibi Netanyahu. (Israeli newspapers this
week are commemorating the great “Oslo breakthrough of 1993” with the usual
conscripted nostalgia. But what is interesting is their revelations of HOW
EARLY Netanyahu was actually aboard the Oslo bandwagon, years before he was
elected PM.)
As part of this, Sharon announces that, unlike previous governments,
he plans to hold His Ugliness and his stormtroopers accountable, and in
particular will hold no parleys until the PLO Reichlet complies with Oslo
and ends the violence for an extended period. How long need the extended
period be? Well, Arik Sharon spoke about a week, and then two days. But
like his predecessors, the actual period of tranquility he requires is zero.
His people are already saying “relative tranquility” might be enough,
although they did not spell out how many dead Jewish children would
constitute relative tranquility. And the expression “ceasefire atrocities”
is already being bandied about by the media.
Then Arafat announces a ceasefire, and no one seriously believes
Arafat’s stormtroopers will cease the fire. But Sharon, like Barak and
Peres, needs to maintain the façade of a peace process in operation, and so
he agrees with great celebration to join the “ceasefire”. Peres is packing
his bags to save Arafat’s bacon yet again, in a meeting in which the two
“statesmen” would meet, when along come some Fat’h “activists” and murder a
Jewish mother
(http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/09/20/LatestNews/LatestNews.35028.html),
and so alas Uncle Shimon has to put off his grand peace conference a bit
longer.
But one thing is clear. The Sharon government is still contaminated with
the Oslo virus, is still attempting to resuscitate “Oslo Lite” of the sort
Bibi Netanyahu imposed.
Of the countless acts of folly committed by Israel’s mindless politicians
over the past decade, folly without precedent in human history, one of the
absolutely stupidest things done was the distribution of gas masks and
equipment designed to protect people from chemical-biological warfare to the
Palestinians and to Israeli Arabs. It is obvious that the most effective
way to prevent any such attack on Israel of nonconventional weapons is to
maintain a situation where all potential aggressors know that such an attack
would only kill Arabs. Such a situation indeed indirectly serves to
protect both Jews and Arabs, as it deters all such attacks, and Arabs in
Israel should welcome such a situation if they were not so busy calling on
Saddam Hussein to exterminate the Jews.
Now thanks to a decade of mega-folly, thanks to Israel’s agreeing to sit on
its haunches when Saddam sent SCUDS crashing into Tel Aviv in 1991, and
thanks to George Bush Sr. playing possum at the end of Desert Storm and
leaving Saddam on his throne, Israel is now in acute danger. It is not
clear whom will be attacked by the US, but it is quite plausible that it
will include Iraq, what with the evidence of Iraqi involvement in the
attacks on New York and Washington mounting by the minute. And if Iraq
responds by firing missiles into Israel, there are many people whom we can
thank. (And the Likud of Yitzhak Shamir is at the top of the list, along
with the members of the Labor Party Lemmingrat.)
Israel was far more interested in trying to build an image of niceness
over the past two decades than in surviving, which is why all the
Palestinians have nice free gas masks provided by Israel, helping to
increase the chances that Israel will now be attacked with missiles by Iraq
(and others?).
It is hard to know what to say about the announcement by the man with the
pubic hair on his face that he and the PLO would be joining the US-led
crusade against terrorism.
I guess the only way to make sense of this is to create a list of other
great leaders of great causes:
a. Bill Clinton will lead the crusade against adultery.
b. Dr. Kevorkian will lead the campaign against euthenasia.
c. Rabbi Arthur Woodstock will lead the campaign against Jews using drugs.
d. Noam Chomsky will lead the campaign against anti-Americanism.
e. The Rev Al Sharpton will lead the march against racism.
f. Ofir Pines will lead the crusade to defend free speech.
g. The Egyptian government will lead this year’s Gay Pride parade.
h. Avigdor Feldman will lead the efforts to put terrorists behind bars.
i. Michael Lerner will campaign against political correctness.
j. Avram Burg will lead the lobbying for primary campaign reform and
cleanliness.
k. The American Campus Left will lead the march for peace and human rights.
l. Sudan will lead the world jihad to eliminate slavery.
m. Saddam Hussein will lead efforts to ban violence from TV and movie
screens.
n. Shimon Peres will lead the struggle for Israeli survival.
o. Edward Said will host the ceremony granting awards to Middle East
scholars.
p. Ehud Barak will lead the struggle against appeasement.
q. Tommy Lapid will lead the brigades to get people to keep kosher.
r. Amira Hass and Gideon Levy will lead the struggle to report all
Palestinian atrocities against Jews.
s. The newspaper Haaretz will fight to defend Zionism.