The Time for Talk is Over
by DANIEL GREENFIELD
May 12, 2010
The hard and fast rule is that if the terrorists can't manage to kill you with their bombs, they'll kill you at the negotiating table. If they can't even win the dirtiest war that their most perverse leaders can conceive of, they can still talk you out of a country by promising to make peace once you meet all their demands. And once they realize that they can get more by changing out of their khakis and into a nice Armani suit, and shifting the regularly scheduled bombings to days when the negotiations aren't in session – then the real killing begins.
And so now, right on schedule, the Obama administration is feverishly looking for ways to get the Israelis and the Fatah terrorists back to the negotiating table to create a Palestinian state. This is the sort of thing that was breaking news back in 1991. Today it's a sad and sick farce being perpetuated not in the name of peace, but in the name of appeasement. The Israeli left has staked its political fortunes on destroying the country. The European left has rediscovered the joys of openly hating Jews. The American left has discovered that sticking the knife into one of America's closest allies just got a lot easier.
Peace is, of course, a good thing – which is why you usually don't have to negotiate it. Most people naturally live at peace with each other. But when you have to spend the better part of a century negotiating peace, clearly one side isn't all that enthusiastic about peace. For the better part of the 20th century and the early crumbs of the 21st , Israel's various representatives, pre- and post-state, have been doing their best to negotiate peace. Yet oddly enough, each time war resulted. Today, Israel holds a fraction of the land remaining from the Palestine Mandate, but its friendly neighborhood Muslims chorus that it's still too much. If only they had a few more miles here and there. And Jerusalem and the strategic high ground of the Golan Heights, then maybe there would be peace. Maybe. Double maybe.
Israel's critics insist that a Jewish state in the Arab Muslim Middle East is a mistake. Which it is, of course, from the Muslim point of view, which insists that there can be no infidel states in the region. But isn't that a working definition of Apartheid? The critics wail over the fate of Hamas blockaded Gaza, but not over that of Islamic blockaded Israel – not even when the combined Arab Muslim powers of the Middle East did their best to try and push the Jewish refugees from Islam and the Holocaust into the sea.
But since they didn't succeed, as a result the conflict was prolonged. This is a fancy way of saying, "Those Damned Jews Are Still Around." In 1948, quite a lot were hoping that the matter would be settled once and for all. They were hoping that again in 1967. They were crossing their fingers for it in 1973. Their frustration has reached a boiling point in 2010, and it's not hard to see why. They've armed terrorists and placed them inside Israel's borders. They've encouraged the terrorists to run wild, to kill and bomb. And, they made sure to restrain Israel from responding. They've orchestrated phony negotiations in which Israel has turned over land and gotten bodies back in return. And yet, still, Israel lives.
You can see the hysteria, the undistilled rabid hatred at anti-war rallies in major cities across the world where signs that would have made Goebbels blush with shame are proudly held high. The Europeans are funding radical left wing groups inside Israel that urge soldiers to desert, that assault Jewish farmers and destroy their crops. The Russians are rushing nuclear technology to Ahmadinejad, hoping that he can finish the job that their proxies tackled in 1967 and 1973 to no avail. The Palestinian myth was a Moscow project after all, and the current regime of KGB thugs and their business partners have a certain desire to get the whole thing over with already. And the Obama administration assails those damned Jews for having houses in Jerusalem. How dare they?
And with that atmosphere, the crazed howls of the bomb smashing Israeli products, the Iranians tinkering with their Russian nukes, the European diplomats slipping a few thousand shekels here and there to the bored sons of the rich to go and organize their domestic campaigns of treason, and the White House sniffing in outrage at that most insulting Israeli house – the call is on to get back to the negotiating table.
What is there to negotiate? An end to terrorism? Don't be silly, not even the leftest of the left believe anymore that anything Israel does will stop the violence. At least, not when they're stone cold sober. No, the negotiations will discuss the terms on which Israel will meet the demands of the Palestinian Arab terrorist group currently being backed by the "World Community." Not whether Israel will do it. Not if Israel will do it. But on what terms Israel will do it.
How much land will Israel hand over in exchange for more bombs and killings? How much of its own capital will Israel give away, in exchange for more murders of its best and brightest? How much will Israel be permitted to empower its worst enemies, who will go on preaching Jihad against it in their schools, and handing out bomb belts like candy after a suicide bombing?
Israel's goal in the negotiations will be to try to be as reasonable as possible. Which, as usual, is the wrong approach. Fatah's leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has already announced that he has no interest in negotiating anything with Israel, and would just like the U.S. to impose a solution. This is akin to opening an auction by announcing that you know the auctioneer personally and want the item for free.
Israel's only ongoing demand in this endless sham has been for an end to the terrorism. And not once in nearly two wretched decades has Israel gotten even a taste of that. But when the bugler on the hill blows and cries, "Back to the Negotiating Table," it's back to the negotiating table. Back to the same humiliating face, the same murderous extravaganza of deceit and malignancy disguised as diplomacy. But perhaps it's time for a new way.
In the 19990s, the Israeli left argued that it was time to try something new. Peace. Now nearly a generation later, perhaps it's time to try something new again. War. The time for talk is over. If the terrorists are so determined to have war, why not finally give it to them? No, not more blockades or occasional raids. But actual war. A war to destroy the terrorist groups down to the last man. Down to the last bearded madman teaching 6-year-olds the virtues of blowing themselves up while he marries an 8-year-old. Down to the last pimple-faced thug taking a break from molesting his sister to launch rockets at Israeli schools. Down to the last terrorist. Period.
The terrorists themselves have made the argument for why the time for talk is over. Perhaps it's time Israel finally started listening to them.
Oh for Jerusalem’s trumpet now,
To blow a blast of shattering power,
To wake the sleepers high and low,
And rouse them to the urgent hour!
No hand for vengeance – but to save,
A million naked swords should wave.
Even they who shrunk, even they who slept,
Shall leap to bless it, and to save.
Strike! for the brave revere the brave!
Emma Lazarus
Daniel Greenfield is a blogger, columnist and freelance photographer born in Israel, who maintains his own blog, Sultan Knish.
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