[Peace-discuss] Halevi: declare all-out war against Iran and Iraq

[David Green]

In case there is any doubt on where our speaker
tomorrow stands on the war in Iraq, it will be removed
below.

This article is from Feb. 2002.

opinion pieces 
What is Israel Doing for Peace?
LEONARD FEIN


When, as happens from time to time, I think back on my
days as editor of Moment magazine, one of my more
pleasant memories is our "discovery" of a young writer
then named Yossi Klein - now, Yossi Klein Halevi.
Yossi has since gone on to bigger things, serving
these days as the Israel correspondent for The New
Republic and as a senior writer for the Jerusalem
Report, and he's written several memorable books as
well. I try to see him whenever I am in Israel; in
addition to being a dear friend, I am always
interested in what he's thinking, since it's almost
always original, offbeat, challenging.

Almost always. But not in his most recent effort, an
OpEd piece in the Los Angeles Times of January 23.
There, Klein Halevi asserts that "there is no cycle of
violence" in the Middle East, and he goes on to offer
12 comparisons of the one side to the other: "One side
teaches its children songs of peace. The other side
teaches its children songs of blood and fire." "One
side tries to prevent civilian deaths during battle.
The other side defines the battle as a war against
civilians." And so forth.

Some of the comparisons are more apt than others, but
the real question is whether the tiresome effort to
show how nice we are and how not nice the other side
is serves any useful purpose. If we accept, for the
sake of argument, that Yossi is right, that Israel is
virtuous and the Palestinians are not, that the
Israelis are vegetarians and the Palestinians are
carnivores, what follows? What follows, for that
matter, from Prime Minister Sharon's recent statement
that "The simple fact is, the Arabs don't recognize
our right to exist in our homeland?"

That is surely what most Jews in Israel, and likely
even more outside it, believe, just as they believe in
Israel's superior morality. For Mr. Sharon, what
follows from the "fact" of Palestinian obduracy, which
is hardly as "simple" a fact as

he suggests, is a policy so punitive that sooner or
later,

he evidently believes, the Palestinians will simply
throw up their hands in despair and call off their
violence. That is what we may infer from Sharon's
behavior. And if Arafat cannot or will not do that,
then Israel will seek a new generation of Palestinian
leaders.

When I last dined with Yossi in Jerusalem, he
explained why he believes that Israel should declare
all-out war against Iran and Iraq, and once I realized
that he was serious about that, I sought to explain to
him why I thought the idea not merely wrong, but
downright insane. I did not persuade him, but,
fortunately, Yossi is only a journalist. Yet his idea
is no more insane than Sharon's, and Sharon is not a
journalist. What, in the name of heaven, does the man
imagine he is doing? What, specifically, is he doing
to reduce the violence, to find a more productive
path?

That is not a rhetorical question. The answer is:
nothing. The prime minister is taking full advantage
of the American administration's permissiveness. He is
going after the terrorists on the other side one at a
time. And he is complicit, fully complicit, in
precisely that which my friend Yossi Klein Halevi
denies, the cycle of violence.

Is this a subversive thing to say? Then Yossi Beilin
is a subversive. Then the OpEd and editorial writers
of Ha'aretz are subversives. All familiar suspects?
Then how about Ami Ayalon, former head of the Mossad?
Or the editorial writers, these last few weeks, in
Yediot and Ma'ariv? Or ask Avrum Burg, speaker of the
Israeli Knesset, recently invited to address the
Palestinian parliament (as was Israel's president,
Moshe Katzav), and told by Sharon that accepting the
invitation would "cause political damage to Israel."
Or ask my friend Y., who has lived in Israel since
making aliyah in 1953, and tells me of his friends who
breathe a sigh of relief these days when their
children inform them they're leaving the country.

By now, Israeli television no longer interrupts its
normal broadcasts to report on the latest mad gunman
or suicide bomber. The outrageous has become routine.
And Israel, far from asking how it might seek to
change Palestinian perceptions, uninterested in
exploring peaceful possibilities (because - talk of
self-fulfilling hypotheses! -convinced there are
none), basks in being on the right side of the
terrorist divide. Basks, and buries it latest dead.

A friend in Congress tells me that his non-Jewish
colleagues, fearful as always of being perceived as
"against" Israel, are muttering more than they ever
have. His Jewish colleagues? No less fearful, they
mutter a bit more loudly - but are careful to keep
their grumbling out of public earshot. And the
administration? While organized American Jewry
celebrates an administration that has effectively
unleashed Israel, surely we ought not imagine that
Bush, et al feel warmly towards Mr. Sharon, or take it
for granted that they really care what happens to
Israel. (A dark side musing: This is all the
diabolical revenge of James Baker and George Bush pére
-who have come to understand that Israel unleashed
will damage itself far more profoundly than the
"Arabists" in the State Department ever did.)
Celebrate the evisceration of Arafat and the
emboldening of Sharon? Cheer Israel's victory in
Washington even as Israel at home moves deeper into
the tunnel? And where, pray tell, is the light at its
end?
Pyrrhus, after his victory over the Romans in 279 BCE,
said to those who congratulated him, "One more such
victory and Pyrrhus is undone." Ladies and gentlemen,
this way to the abyss.




	
		
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