This guy is more eloquent than I am; read him and see if you can understand the point he's making:
MIDDLE ISRAEL: To Lionel Jospin
By Amotz Asa-El
(March 7) Mr. Prime Minister,
The other day you were quoted lamenting the failure of your colleague Ariel Sharon's tactics.
It isn't every day that a French statesman insinuates that he basically shares Israel's - not to mention Sharon's - strategic goals. If anything, a generation of French statesmen, politicians and intellectuals tirelessly told us Israelis that we were pursuing the wrong aims, and advised us we could win our place under the Middle East's sun - if only: if only Israel would realize that the Palestinians will make do with a two-state solution, and if only we'd believe that the Palestine Liberation Organization is dedicated to freedom, democracy, human rights and secularism.
Most of us rejected the French thinking, but many of us, myself included - listened. We listened because we indeed hated living by our swords, resented imposing ourselves on an alien population, and deeply believed in the feasibility, and promise, of regional harmony, the way it was accomplished in West Europe and North America.
After all, having survived what they survived, our parents did not build the Jewish state in order for it to become yet another ghetto surrounded by fences, walls, barbed wires and mine fields, and feeling threatened by all that lurks beyond them.
In 1980 your country's relentless efforts to reshape the Middle East bore their first fruit, when Brussels adopted the Venice Declaration, which called on Israel to recognize the PLO. That is how Yasser Arafat became legitimate, after having previously enjoyed recognition mainly by humanist luminaries such as Erich Hoenecker, Fidel Castro and Pol Pot.
Still, it took years for Israelis like this one to convince other Israelis that the two-state solution is both viable and imperative.
In 1982, horrified by our leaders' lunacy as we had witnessed it while serving in Lebanon, we took to the streets. We managed to unseat defense minister Sharon, but failed to alter the Palestinian situation. In 1987 we saw our hero at the time, Shimon Peres, fail to make Yitzhak Shamir adopt his London Agreement with King Hussein. Until today we believe that that land-for-peace deal could have averted much of today's violence.
That is how we ended up with the first intifada and ultimately arrived at Oslo, where your vision's victory seemed complete.
SINCE 1993, previously reluctant Israelis not only embraced the French vision, but even fought for it. This column, for instance, called on people to vote for Ehud Barak, chose Yossi Beilin Man of the Year, and advocated compromises even in Old Jerusalem in return for real peace.
And then came Camp David.
Israelis like this one were astonished to see Ehud Barak's radical peace offer not only rejected, but not even met with a counter proposal; and not only was it met by no counter offer, it was responded to by a war, waged by Arafat himself, in spite of his signed commitment to settle all disputes around the negotiating table.
In all truth, our doubts had begun much earlier.
First, in '95, we saw Arafat torpedo Western efforts to create industrial parks where his utterly unemployed people would have found dignified livelihoods. Then, in '96, we heard him glorify suicide bomber Yihya Ayash. And throughout it all we saw him preside over an elaborate network of schools, summer camps, universities, newspapers, broadcast stations and Websites that not only failed to recognize our existence on the maps they displayed, but also preached the basest anti-Semitic vitriol which, as a postwar Frenchman, you surely detest.
Still, it took Camp David for us to piece it all together, and conclude we had been fooled.
NOW THE average Israeli is convinced that Arafat is a fascist. Hitler was also initially offered all his ostensible territorial demands, only to ultimately prove there was no limit to his appetite, because war was not just his threat, but his desire.
That's what fascism is, the belief - so aptly put by Benitto Mussolini himself - that only people who fight together add up to a nation; which also explains why attacking our state is evidently much more important to Arafat than building his own.
It follows, Mr. Jospin, that your country's age-old thesis - that the PLO is a worthy peace partner - has collapsed, and the way we pro-compromise Israelis see it, Paris never delivered the goods.
Your country, more forcefully than any other, promised they would recognize us - but they don't. You promised they would be a democracy - but they're a dictatorship. You promised they would be secular - but they join the most fanatic theocrats. You promised they would abide by their agreements - but they violated them left and right. You promised they would abandon violence - but they deliberately kill, en-masse, defenseless civilians, even a crowd of women with babies in their arms.
It follows, Mr. Jospin, that you are in no position to discuss Sharon's tactics, and we Middle Israelis - who in the past confronted Sharon and today routinely brave bullets, bombs and suicidal maniacs - deserve a French apology for having helped maneuver us to where we have arrived. If you're the brave man they say you are, admit this failure of yours, as we concede ours.
This sorry region's problems stem not from Israel's deeds, but from Arab dictators', generalissimos', and kinglings' routine abuse of their own subjects' human rights, embezzlement of national resources, trampling of women's rights, and failure to deliver prosperity.
The bad news here is that when an unreconstructed French diplomacy now barges into our unfolding tragedy, our first thoughts revert to traumas like Vichy, Dreyfus, or the burning of the Talmud in 1242 not far from where your office stands today.
The good news is that unlike our forbears, who used to lament their treatment by your forebears, we aren't disappointed by your failure to concede your country's role in our current crisis.
Our expectations from you are lower, and our determination to control our own fate is higher.
Perhaps that is what makes us Israeli.
jpost.com |
