Peter Beinart is in the news this week because he completed an extensive interview with the Jerusalem Post. He calls himself a friend of Israel. He supports a two-state solution. He advocates a boycott of product from Judea-Samaria. He worries that Israel’s democracy might not survive if we reject the two-state plan.
J Street claims on its website that it is a ‘Pro-Israel, Pro-peace’ advocate for Americans’. It, too, supports two-states. It suggests that if you don’t agree with them, you harm Israel.
For these and other American friends of Israel, Israel must make concessions-- now. We must mid-wife a new Muslim state. Otherwise, they argue, Israel may not survive. We must give the Muslim what he wants. Then we will survive.
Really? We have seen such advocacy before. Throughout Israel’s history, Jews have promoted anti-Israel ideas as pro-Israel. Virtually all require some form of retreat which, in a neighbourhood of bullies, never works.
Perhaps you’ve noticed: Jews like helping other Jews. It’s a family thing. But families are not always warm and cuddly. Sometimes, families are nasty. We know this because Jews wrote the books on dysfunctional families—from Freud to Alfred Adler to Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique). Sometimes, unwise family members recommend behaviour that is not healthy.
Today’s version of the dysfunctional Jewish family is writ large. It’s no longer about mom-and-pop. Now, it’s national; and because of electronics, everything gets aired in public. We do this with panache-- a splashy website, an attention-grabbing book, a letter to Israel’s Prime Minister from no less than forty prominent American Jewish leaders: it’s all public-- and critical of Israel.
Today, some think about these American friends and their potential impact on Israel in a startling way: the friend of my enemy, they suggest, becomes my enemy.
Think about it: our enemy, Arabs, promote, glorify and celebrate the killing of Jews. Their leading religious figure, the Waqf of Jerusalem, says repeatedly (most recently in January, 2012) that killing Jews is an Islamic religious goal. The World Bank and the IMF declare (April 2011) that the survival of a ‘Palestinian’ state depends upon cooperation with Israel, but the Palestinian Authority (PA) refuses categorically to cooperate with Jews. Their school textbooks demonize Jews and claim that all of Israel is ‘Palestine’-- not just Judea-Samaria, but Haifa, Tel Aviv and Ashdod as well. Their TV showcases children singing that they cannot wait to martyr themselves by killing Jews. The PA takes UN money for the purpose of educating children to stop smoking and uses that money to create puppet shows that call for their children to put down cigarettes-- and pick up guns to kill Jews.
Nice people.
Our enemy calls us apes and pigs who must be slaughtered in a religious Jihad so that his ‘Palestine’ can be cleansed. The Jews, he tells his TV audience, have been ingathered in order to give the Arab the honour of slaughtering them for his god. Our enemy repeats these themes with gusto. Our enemy paints a national dream for his people that feeds on Jew-slaughter in the name of religion. Our enemy lusts to see Jews die—and he is not shy or secretive about it.
Our Jewish-American friends, however, cannot understand how we can reject a ‘marriage’ with these people. These Jews are highly-educated; but they nonetheless promote concessions to--and appeasement of--Nazi-style Jew-hate. Isn’t such behaviour dysfunctional? Clearly, these friends refuse to listen to the Arab reality. They believe that we cannot survive if we remain ‘single’. But we know from that same reality that we will not survive if we ‘marry’ with them.
Do Jews who promote anti-Israel ideas as ‘hope’ reveal a dysfunctional disconnect from reality?
Why would we want their peace? We choose life. We know all about Jews being murdered by ‘peace’. We also know about family problems. We wrote the books, remember? We’ve suffered enough from dysfunctional ‘peace’ efforts. Gaza worked out really well, right?
We know what our enemy wants. We see it almost every day. So when our Jewish-American friends ignore those almost-daily calls to kill Jews, we marvel at their dysfunction.
Those who befriend our enemy by advocating their empowerment do not watch Arab TV. Israel does. It’s a harsh world, Arab TV, especially if you’re a Jew. Arab TV is graphic. But it educates. It teaches in detail what our enemy will do once he gets his chance. The pictures, stories and songs on Arab TV are so graphic they make us think twice about our powerful American friends. Mostly though, Arab TV teaches us to be careful: the friend of our enemy might indeed be our enemy.
American Jews should consider which side they empower when they step into the war to eradicate Israel.
Powerful or influential American Jews may not like to hear that Judea-Samaria is ancestral Jewish homeland. They may not want to hear that land lost by Jordan in an attack initiated by Jordan (1967) is legally ours. They may be so comfortable with lies about Israel that the truth sounds false. The truth may make them angry. Perhaps that's why they penned a letter to Mr. Netanyahu imploring him not to act on the findings of the Levy Report which demonstrated our rightful claim to Judea and Samaria.
That's too bad. The truth gets mauled in war, as Arabs and their ennablers have shown us again and again.
If these powerful and influential American Jews are smart, they'll consider carefully which side they empower when they push into the war to eradicate Israel.
Do they really want to go on record as a friend of our enemy?
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