Understanding Annapolis

What you don't know could cost you

What is the Israeli government doing?
. Merriam Webster defines “aphorism” as: “a terse formulation of a truth.” We like them. Entire collections of aphorisms are published and enjoyed, and they are passed down generation after generation. When we see something that applies we whip them out and ‘fit’ the phenomenon to its aphoristic ‘frame’: a satisfying round hole for an equally round peg.

A famous aphorism, coined by philosopher Jorge Santayana, goes like this: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Terse and true. Here’s another famous one, apparently from Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Terse and true. The two aphorisms are not identical, but they do have a certain flavor in common.

Can we find phenomena in the Arab-Israeli conflict that we can fit these aphorisms to?

The following is from an article by Hillel Fendel, writing in Israel National News, a news service editorially opposed to the ongoing extension of the Oslo Process, which process will soon give Judea and Samaria (and perhaps part of Jerusalem), cleansed of its Jews, to PLO/Fatah. It is worth reading carefully.

[Israel National News quote begins here:]

“[Israeli] Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, speaking before Foreign Ministers of the European Union and others, says that Israel is so anxious for peace that it is willing to enter into negotiations at an inopportune time and with a partner who can’t deliver.

‘We have proven in the past,’ Livni told the participants at a conference in Lisbon, including the foreign ministers of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Libya, ‘that we extend our hand in peace. We have proven this in negotiations, and in the [Gaza] Disengagement -- which we did not have to do -- as well as in the negotiations today. The Palestinian Authority is divided, Gaza is ruled by terrorism, and we could have waited until the first stage of the Road Map [i.e., an end to terrorism - ed.] is implemented.’

Livni also boasted that ‘we have removed settlements. I myself made a decision [as part of the Sharon government - ed.] to uproot thousands of people from their homes [in Gush Katif and northern Shomron]. Not one Israeli soldier is stationed today in Gaza, yet Israel is attacked daily.’

‘People are justifiably presenting major question marks,’ Livni said, listing the questions without answering them: ‘Is this the right time for talks, when our nursery children are under fire from Gaza? Is it the right time to talk when the other side is so weak and ineffectual?’

After having admitted that the talks would take place despite the lack of fulfillment of the PA pledge to stop terrorism, she said, ‘This dialogue is taking place with the understanding that implementation of any agreement will be contingent on our security needs… The way to the establishment of a Palestinian state is dependent upon our ability to transmit the key of self-rule to a responsible element that will be able to control things and promise that there will not be a terrorist state alongside us.’ ”[1]

[Israel National News quote ends here]

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni explains that the Israeli government made the decision to give land to the Arab enemies of Israel, in exchange, supposedly, for the reward of ‘peace,’ even though these enemies at the time were sponsoring ongoing terrorist violence against the Israeli Jews. She also explains the consequences of having done that, citing -- among many possible examples -- the dramatic case of the Gaza Disengagement: “Not one Israeli soldier is stationed today in Gaza, yet Israel is attacked daily.” She explains that this was her own policy: “I myself made a decision to uproot thousands of people [Jews] from their homes.” And she recognizes that those who question the wisdom of her policies have a point: “People are justifiably presenting major question marks.” Then she adds her own question mark: “Is this the right time for talks, when our nursery children are under fire from Gaza?” Her answer, clearly, is yes. Livni is pushing to remove many more Jews, living on land that is much more symbolic to Jewish heritage, and a great deal more militarily strategic than Gaza. Why? Because “this dialogue,” she explains, “is taking place with the understanding that implementation of any agreement will be contingent on our security needs.” But that, of course, was also the supposed understanding in previous agreements, and the result was more anti-Jewish terror, as she herself concedes.

Livni herself reviews relevant past events: she remembers the past. So if she is about to repeat history the problem is not amnesia. The first aphorism does not apply.

How about the second aphorism? Is Livni insane? I have noticed how tempting this hypothesis has become for many Jewish patriots. And I confess that it has a certain appeal. But I am skeptical that people in power will be less able to reason than the average person. After all, they are in power, and the average person isn’t. So before jumping to adopt the insanity/stupidity hypothesis, let us be explicit about what it requires: that Livni is doing the same thing again -- giving strategic land to the enemies of the Jews -- because, this time, she expects to get a different result: peace.

Now suppose for the sake of argument that Livni is not insane. What would this require? That Livni is doing the same thing again because she expects to get the same result again, not a different one. This would be the alternative hypothesis.

Is the alternative hypothesis reasonable?

Well, let us consider a few things. Last time around Livni gave strategic land of the Jewish State to people who say out loud they wish to murder Jews, and the Israeli people did not stop her. Why? Because:

1) incredibly, a good many Israelis were “so anxious for peace,” as Livni says, that they twisted and bent their minds until they agreed that giving strategic land to the enemy was the way to protect Israel; and so,

2) an insufficient number of Israelis were opposed; and further,

3) of those opposed, an insufficient number took to the streets; which then,

4) made it possible for Livni and her clique effectively to use the repressive powers of the Israeli State against those who did protest.

The alternative hypothesis says that Livni is thinking she can get away with this again. She thinks that, once again, she can give strategic land (and much more of it) to the enemy because, once again, the Israeli Jews will not stop her. She is expecting the same behavior to produce the same result that it produced before. The Israeli government has indeed given power to the enemies of the Jews inside the Jewish state many times before, and the Israeli Jews, at every single juncture, have indeed not managed to stop this. If Livni thinks she can do again what has been done many times by Israeli leaders before, this is the opposite of insanity: it is the definition of rational behavior.

So we have two hypotheses. The first, where Livni’s behavior is interpreted as insanity/stupidity, is tempting because many find it difficult to imagine that the foreign minister of Israel wishes to harm the security of Israel. But this possibility -- it is called ‘treason,’ by the way -- should be put on the table, because one must consider that perhaps Livni, who after all is in power, is neither stupid nor insane. This is the alternative hypothesis.

How to decide between the two hypotheses? Is it possible?

I think it is. Suppose there was information so explosive that, if wielded by the Israeli government in a massive state-sponsored campaign to inform every Israeli, Diaspora Jew, and Westerner, this information would immediately put an end to the Oslo Process that now threatens to destroy Israel. Suppose that this information would make it politically easy -- incredibly easy -- not only to cease giving any more land to PLO/Fatah, but also to expel the entire PLO/Fatah organization from Israel and the disputed territories. And suppose this information would guarantee widespread support from the Western citizenries for such efforts. Suppose, finally, that Livni had been hiding this information from Israelis and Westerners. What would we have to conclude, in these circumstances? That Livni is stupid and/or insane? No. When people who are supposed to defend you deliberately hide certain facts which they know and which you need to defend yourself, they are being neither stupid nor insane. They are being cunning.

Now, information with all of the above properties does indeed exist. The PLO/Palestinian Authority is essentially Al Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas’s organization, and Al Fatah was created by Hajj Amin al Husseini.

What makes this so explosive? The following.

Hajj Amin al Husseini was Mufti of Jerusalem before WWII, and from that position organized several massive terrorist attacks against the Jews of British Mandate Palestine and against any Arabs who disagreed with his racist policy. The last one, from 1936 to 1939, was organized with weapons supplied by Adolf Hitler. After going to Iraq and organizing a pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad, Husseini moved to Berlin and met with Hitler on 28 November 1941. According to the postwar testimony of top Nazi Dieter Wisliceny, presented at Nuremberg and then also at Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Husseini convinced the Nazis that no European Jew should be allowed to live (until the fall of 1941, according to the widespread agreement of WWII historians, the Nazis were thinking of expelling most of the European Jews to Palestine). Wisliceny also testified that Husseini subsequently became the top co-architect of the implementation of the Final Solution, together with Adolf Eichmann, with whom he became close friends. Wisliceny was in a position to know, because he was one of Eichmann’s top lieutenants. And the Wannsee conference -- at which historians agree that the Nazis decided to exterminate the entire European Jewish population -- did indeed happen less than two months after Husseini met with Hitler. After Wansee, Jews began dying in massive numbers, at accelerating speed, in concentration camps. The war at an end, Husseini escaped justice and took refuge in Cairo, where Nazi colleagues of his led by Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s great expert in operations inside enemy territory, also arrived in the 1950s to train Gamal Abdel Nasser’s security and intelligence services. Under Husseini’s watchful eye, these Nazis trained Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen), and other adolescent protégés of Husseini who together became Al Fatah.[2]

If you have never heard the above that is because the Israeli government has never held a press conference to explain that Mahmoud Abbas was trained by history’s greatest butcher of Jews, Hajj Amin al Husseini, to continue the extermination that Husseini had so ecstatically directed for the German Nazis. And yet, if the Israeli government were to use the considerable resources of the Israeli State to inform Israelis and Westerners of this, the Oslo Process that threatens Israel could be brought to a sudden halt, with widespread support from Westerners. If they had done this in the late 1980s, it would never have gotten off the ground. Why? Because almost everybody understands that it is politically ungrammatical to give a strategic piece of the Jewish State to a direct trainee of the man who masterminded the German Nazi Final Solution.

Is Livni unaware of the above information?

Well, consider the following. It took me two weeks to document this with publicly available materials, and I do not have the resources of a famed intelligence service that supposedly spends millions of shekels a year investigating the terrorist enemies of Israel. So it is reasonable to suppose that the Israeli government knew the above facts about PLO/Fatah long before I did. But even if one wishes to suppose that it didn’t, I published my first article about this on Israel National News in May 2003.[3] The Israeli government watches Israel National News very closely -- so closely, in fact, that when its radio component became popular for its opposition to the Oslo process in its early stages, the Israeli government shut it down.[3a] Moreover, my article in Israel National News created a bit of a stir, because a pro-Oslo political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, Ian Lustick, got me fired from that university for having published that very article in Israel National News. This produced 1) a bit of a revolt among Penn students, 2) an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, 3) an interview with FOX-NEWS, and 4) coverage in Israel National News.[4] The Israeli government definitely knows that PLO/Fatah is an extension of the German Nazi Final Solution.

Why do ordinary Israelis -- and Diaspora Jews, for that matter -- tolerate their ‘leaders’? Because Jorge Santayana’s aphorism does apply to them. Most Israelis and Diaspora Jews cannot remember their history, and they will soon be condemned to repeat it. True, the expression “Never Again!” pours easily from their lips, but in fact most Jews are quite ignorant on many important matters relating to the Shoah (‘Holocaust’), and thus ill-equipped to guarantee that the cry “Never Again!” will be honored as a historical outcome. They may grow up hearing a lot about Shoah, a subject they will certainly be exposed to in school, but whitewashed from their educational experience is the important matter of what Jewish leaders of that time -- who naturally had an obligation to defend their persecuted brethren in Europe -- did in the prelude to, and during, WWII. I have found that very few Jews know the work of the handful of Jewish historians who, in the 1990s, began documenting in great detail what Jewish leaders did in the context of the Nazi onslaught. Neither do many Jews know about the German Nazi roots of the PLO and its commitment to see through the Final Solution. So the same trick is about to be played on them, yet again.

Unless, of course, Israelis, Diaspora Jews, and well-meaning Westerners can be quickly educated so they may raise their voices in time.

Below is the address to a website that has been created to educate the public about the Nazi roots of Israel’s enemies, and to explain why and how they are simultaneously enemies of the Western world, thus making it in the interest of every Westerner to defend Israel. The same website gives Israeli citizens an opportunity to express that they have no confidence in the present government, and that no action this government undertakes will be acceptable, other than its resignation. In addition, there is a companion document that citizens of any country can sign to show their solidarity with Israeli patriots, who are on the frontline of the defense of the West. This effort is open-ended and will not cease until the Israeli government does resign:
www.strongisrael.org

To see a comparison of the behavior of Jewish leaders in the first half of the 20th c. up to and during the Nazi attack, with the behavior of Israeli leaders since the World War and in the present crisis, consult the articles in the following series:

-- The Crisis of 1933. Jewish leaders sabotaged a worldwide anti-nazi boycott that exploded when Hitler came to power.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders0.htm

-- How the mainstream Jewish leadership failed the Jews in WWII.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders1.htm

-- How mainstream Diaspora Jewish leaders are failing the Jewish people today.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders2.htm

-- What is the problem with the currnet Israeli ruling elite? Is it stupidity? Or is it something else?
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders3.htm

-- The responsibility of the mainstream (Labor Zionist) Israeli leaders during the Shoah ('Holocaust')
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders4.htm

This generation has a rare opportunity. It is this: to show that the WWII Nazi attack against the Jews in the mid-twentieth century taught us something: that when we defend the Jews we are defending the political health of the entire West, and therefore the liberties and lives of all Westerners. For ordinary Westerners, the defense of the Jews is self defense; antisemitism is suicide. It should be obvious, because WWII gave an eloquent demonstration in millions upon millions of non-Jewish lives lost -- and all because we didn’t oppose antisemitism. Can we no longer remember this?

I will end with an aphorism of my own coinage that translates Santayana’s into a positive expression: We are always creating history. Only those who become aware of this have a chance, actively and consciously, to shape the future
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