Surge Has Lessons for Israel

38th Year of Publication November 2008—Issue #216 PUBLISHED BY AMERICANS FOR A SAFE ISRAEL sion to destroy Gaza’s Jewish communities (or Ol- Surge Has Lessons For Israel mert’s recent effort to turn the Golan over to Syria), Herbert Zweibon there was no hope of mobilizing countervailing pressures favorable to Israel’s survival. President Bush’s record in fighting what he Above all, Israel suffers from a lack of leader- styled “the war on terror” has been mixed at best. As ship, an absence of leaders who understand that by Caroline Glick has observed, in the Middle East he showing boldness and backbone they can prevail has wound up with a distinction between “good” terror- against their enemies. Contrast the defeatism of an ists to be negotiated with and supported (Palestinian Ehud Olmert (“We are tired of fighting. We are tired of terror groups) and “bad” terrorists (like Bin Laden). In winning”) with the achievements of the team of Ronald caving in to the appeasers and conventional thinkers Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in bringing about the on the Arab-Israel conflict, the President has de- collapse of the seemingly unshakable Soviet empire. stroyed the coherence and entire moral underpinning In a recent speech at Hillsdale College, former of the war on terror. National Review editor and early “Thatcherite” John Nonetheless in one crucial area—Iraq— Presi- O’Sullivan spoke of that partnership and the important dent Bush has stayed the course. With failure loom- if lesser known leadership role of Margaret Thatcher. ing, the President changed strategy and to implement Indeed, Thatcher claimed a little credit in her tribute to the new counter-insurgency approach put in new mili- Reagan: “Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without tary leadership and committed more troops. Initially firing a shot. Not without a little help from his friends.” few gave “the surge” any chance of success. Yet Included in that “help:” Thatcher matched Reagan’s back in March 2007, in a Frontpage symposium, Out- military buildup; fought a war to evict Argentine forces post editor Rael Jean Isaac noted: “A leader worthy of from the Falkland Islands; rallied the Europeans to the name must have the ability to withstand pres- ensure the installation of U.S. missiles in Western sures…At this moment President Bush is under enor- Europe to match the Soviet planting of SS-20s in So- mous pressure, from public opinion, from the Democ- viet satellite countries. ratically controlled Congress, even from members of While Reagan and Thatcher were themselves his own party, to back down in Iraq: he nonetheless astonished by the speed with which the Soviet system presses forward to try to stabilize that country. It is imploded, the key to their success was that they did only by standing up to pressure that a leader has the not accept growing Soviet ascendancy as inevitable. If chance to develop countervailing pressures. If the a genuine leader were ever to arise in Israel, a leader ‘surge’ shows signs of success, Bush may energize who refused to succumb to defeatism in the face of countervailing pressures favorable to his policies.” “demography,” the oil weapon, the State Department And indeed this is precisely what happened and its European clones, a leader who believed in Is- when, against all the conventional wisdom, the surge rael’s strength and was prepared to exercise it, Israel worked. Who would have believed in March 2007 that might be surprised by the “surge” in international sup- Iraq would take a back seat in the Presidential cam- port and the weakness of her enemies. • paign and that the anti-war Democratic candidate would be forced into an admission that the surge “has Table of Contents been more successful than anyone could have imag- ined”? Isaac’s point was that Israel’s only hope of Durban II—U.N.’s Racist Jamboree by Rael J. Isaac ...3 changing the situation in her favor was by adopting The Acre Story by William Mehlman ...5 new policies based on affirmation of the state’s legiti- A Moslem Demographic Implosion? by Y. Ettinger ...8 mate rights. As long as her leaders collapsed in the The Eurabia Code by Fjordman …..9 face of each demand, even folding presumptively be- Remembering A Hero by Ruth King ...10 fore such demands were made, as in Sharon’s deci- From the Editor 9/11 hijackers.” Le Carré’s Moral Inversions By Their Prizes… John le Carré continues down the moral slope We periodically run a feature in From the Edi- with his most recent novel A Most Wanted Man. In the tor, “By Their Prizes Ye Shall Know Them,” normally early novels on the British secret service that made referring to prizes Israeli institutions grotesquely be- him famous, le Carré’s trademark was moral equiva- stow upon haters of Israel. But this month the prize lence. The British secret agent Smiley becomes the “by which ye shall know them” is the brand new EU- moral equivalent of his Soviet antagonist Karla. And sponsored European Research Council award be- while it is legitimate for a novelist to point out there are stowed upon Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. similarities between people who fill similar roles, by The award not only carries high prestige but an awful never exploring the systems Smiley and Karla repre- lot of money—three million Euros, in fact. And it can sent, le Carré conveys the impression that there is no be “no accident,” as the saying goes, that the EU has difference between the governments for which they chosen to honor a man who uses archaeology to shat- work or the societies they serve. ter the Bible’s credibility and with it, Israel’s historical With his 1983 novel The Little Drummer Girl, claims. Indeed, according to Finkelstein, the core nar- which focuses on the Arab-Israel conflict, le Carré rative of the origin of the Hebrew nation in the Exodus moved further down the slope. On the surface it is false. Israelites were not a people who came out of seems to follow the pattern of the Smiley novels, as le the desert to conquer Canaan: rather they were the Carré applies his familiar mirror-imaging technique to indigenous Canaanites. There were no kingdoms of his Israeli agent (Joseph) and the chief Palestinian David and Solomon—the two men existed (if at all) as terrorist (Khalil). “The house was beside a lake… small tribal leaders. Khalil drove past it twice before he turned into the Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archae- drive, and his eyes as he scanned the roadside were ology Review, ranks Finkelstein among the small Joseph’s eyes, dark and purposeful and all-seeing.” group of “Biblical minimalists” [i.e. scholars who assert But in fact le Carré sets Israel up as the villain. the Bible is a fictional account that created a glorious, He employs meretricious techniques to make Israel but false national history at a much later time and is appear guilty of the vicious practices the PLO made worthless as a source of history for the period it de- famous. Thus when the female protagonist Charlie scribes]. Most harbor an anti-Israel political agenda. goes for training in PLO camps in Lebanon, a village Shanks writes: “One of their number has written a headman tells her: “the Zionists also dropped booby book entitled, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Si- traps disguised as children’s toys.” The bitterest at- lencing of Palestinian History. That about says it all.” tacks on Israel are from the mouths of Israelis (there As Shanks notes, all this “connects with a certain cur- are no mirror-imaging attacks on the Palestinian cause rent faddish lack of pride in Israel’s history, both mod- by Palestinian Arabs). Joseph himself launches into a ern and ancient, as well as a certain embarrassment lengthy disquisition on the evils of Zionism that shades in placing any great value, for whatever purposes, in into anti-Semitism: he ends by offering a toast: “To tiny the Bible.” Shanks observes: “Just as it is unjustified gallant Israel. To her amazing survival, thanks to an to conclude that the Bible is literally true in every de- American subsidy of seven million dollars a day, and tail, so it is unjustified to throw it out as historically the entire might of the Pentagon dancing to her tune.” worthless, especially when that view is so vigorously In The Little Drummer Girl le Carré tran- pursued by a few scholars with a political agenda.” scended the fashion that sees no moral difference be- There can be little mystery concerning the tween East and West; he joined the still more fashion- political motivations behind the EU’s decision to honor able ranks of those ranged against Western values Finkelstein, whose interpretation of the archaeological (continued on page 12) and civilization. And it’s against Western civilization that he continues to take his stand twenty-five years Outpost later, this time portraying Islamic radicals as victims Editor: Rael Jean Isaac (Islamic terrorism is portrayed as a vastly overblown Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King threat) while the Western intelligence agents seeking to thwart terror plots are the villains. As The Wall Outpost is distributed free to Street Journal observes wryly “We’re only three Members of Americans For a Safe Israel pages into A Most Wanted Man when Mr. le Carré Annual membership: $50. issues this proclamation: ‘Since 9/11, Hamburg’s mosques had become dangerous places. Go to the Americans For a Safe Israel wrong one, or the right one and get the wrong imam, 1751 Second Ave.

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