In many ways, it was a different world. A disconnected world where information still traveled slowly. A world of snail-mail, where you still needed to pop a dime into a payphone during a road trip. Prior to the age of the personal home computer, long before the endless possibilities of internet and social media could even be fathomed. The notion of a “smartphone” would have been something out of science fiction. Yet some things haven’t changed in forty years, and they never will. They are as old as time. Jew hatred is embedded in humanity’s DNA. The timeless truth: Esau hates Jacob. So does Ishmael.
The Arab willingness to murder Jews has neither waxed nor waned since the 1970’s. In that regard, the world of 2015 is very much as it was back then. And on the rare occasions when Israel responds to Arab terror, (usually in restrained fashion), another feature of the past proves timeless. You don’t need a Kurt Waldheim to demonize Israel after the “Raid on Entebbe.” The United Nations remains the primary international forum for the dictators and despots of the earth, all of them Jew-haters. And there are no dearth of modern-day “Waldheims” to accuse us of drinking gentile blood.
On June 27, 1976, an offshoot of George Habash’s terrorist organization led by Wadie Haddad hijacked an Air France plane carrying several hundred passengers, including 105 Jews. The plane was rerouted to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, where the serial butcher Idi Amin ruled with an iron fist. Non-Jews and the French airline crew were subsequently released. The Arab terrorists issued the following ultimatum to Israel: 48 hours to release 53 convicted Arabs terrorists, or they would murder the Jewish hostages. The clock ticked.
In 1976, Israel responded differently to Arab terror. Prior to the shrewd Sadat’s ruse with Camp David, long before the treason of Oslo, Israel’s attitude towards terrorists still had some backbone. Once upon a time, Israel’s leaders refused to capitulate to Arab terror. Once upon a time, even the left lacked the lunacy to cross the red line of appeasement by releasing Arab murderers. Tragically, and perhaps inevitably, the truths of yesterday were poisoned by forty years of incessant leftist indoctrination by the Israeli media, academics, artists, and Bolshevik minded politicians. All remnants of the purported “right” of yesteryear are a dream. Principled men and women are few. The truly principled are fewer still. The Likud of today has less backbone than the Labor party of the 1970’s. The left has become insane.
To understand what has happened is to understand the doctrine of “Post-Zionism” which has permeated Israeli society. Today, many young Israelis are taught that we are equal partners with the Arabs (or perhaps a bit more guilty) in both causing and enduring suffering. Many leftists play this screwy game where they juggle the sense that we are both wrong and both right. The “extremists” are in bed with the European NGO’s and Arab propaganda. Their position is not so convoluted. The judenrats of “Peace Now” and “Yesh Gvul” parrot the worst of the charges. They believe we are blood-suckers.
But it was a different time and place in 1976. The Holocaust still resonated in the Jewish conscious. The PLO hadn’t fully articulated their “phased plan of Israel’s destruction” to the world. Arafat hadn’t won his Nobel Peace Prize yet. Even the duplicitous Anwar Sadat had yet to be sanitized for the Israeli public. The Israeli-Jew hadn’t yet been duped or beaten into submission. Once upon a time, even a misfit like Yehoshafat Harkabi could write the truth about Arabs.
A Celebration of Survival