Israel represents the synthesis of Pat Buchanan’s paranoid delusions rampant interventionism neoconservatives (his euphemism for Jews) in charge of Bush’s foreign policy American empire and a war on terrorism that can’t be won. Thus in his new book – Where The Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency -all roads lead to Jerusalem.
In Buchanan’s fantasy world were it not for America’s outrageously pro-Israel foreign policy Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar would be sending us anonymous love letters the World Trade Center would still be standing and the Muslim world would be singing Yankee Doodle Dandy in unison while Saddam Hussein (doing a passable imitation of Jimmy Cagney) tap-danced in the background.
Israel a la Pat is a homicidal imperialist state – practicing apartheid deliberately slaughtering civilians occupying Palestinian land and subjugating its peaceful inhabitants.
On page 240 of his book Buchanan approvingly quotes Avraham Burg whom he identifies as a former speaker of the Knesset concluding that Israel is a thunderously failed reality that rests on a scaffolding of corruption and on foundations of oppression and injustice. According to Burg the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep.
Pat somehow neglects to mention that Burg the epitome of the self-loathing Jew represents the far left of Israeli politics. An architect of the 1993 Oslo Accords Burg is bitter because his handiwork (now seen as paving the way for the present jihad) has been overwhelmingly rejected by Israeli society. In other words Burg is as representative of Israel as Michael Moore is of America.
When it comes to terrorism Pat practices a moral equivalency worthy of the most slavish Soviet apologists at the height of the Cold War. Consider the following: Sharon promised peace and security. Since his provocation on the Temple Mount in September of 2000 he has delivered war and hatred. Over 900 Israelis are dead. Some 3 300 Palestinians have died including hundreds of children.
His provocation on the Temple Mount – For an Israeli prime minister to visit Judaism’s holiest spot (where the First and Second Temples stood) in Israel’s sovereign territory is a provocation? Besides Sharon’s visit — which was approved in advance by the so-called Palestinian Authority — was a pretext for the violence which was planned months in advance as Palestinian leaders have since admitted.
Regarding those dead Palestinians and Israelis Buchanan overlooks some significant details. Most of the dead Palestinians were fighters killed in confrontations with the Israeli Defense Force. Their civilian dead were overwhelmingly people caught in the crossfire because brave Palestinian fighters usually choose to challenge the Israelis from civilian enclaves.
Most of the dead Jews were women children and the aged — elderly Holocaust survivors attending Passover seders babes sleeping in their mothers’ arms toddlers eating ice cream cones families with small children taking a break at a pizzeria shoppers boarding buses 13-year-old boys dragged off to caves and stoned to death etc.
There was the April murder of Gaza resident Tali Hatuel who was riding with her four children (ages 2 to 11) when Arab snipers forced her car off the road. Pat’s precious Palestinians then walked up to the vehicle and shot each passenger at point-blank range. The mother who was eight-months pregnant was also shot in the stomach to ensure that her unborn child didn’t survive. As a pro-lifer Pat can certainly appreciate that touch.
For crowd control the IDF uses rubber bullets. The Palestinians go in for bombs packed with flesh-shredding nails laced with rat poison. As a result between September 2000 (the start of the latest Intifada) and February 18 2003 only 38 percent of Palestinian fatalities were noncombatants compared to 77 percent of Israel’s dead.
Still Pat gripes: Sharon declared Arafat a terrorist i.e. a man with whom no Israeli can negotiate though Arafat had negotiated with four of Sharon’s predecessors and shared a Nobel Peace Prize with two of them Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
Shared a Nobel Peace Prize? Oh you mean like North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho who shared his with Henry Kissinger for negotiating the Paris Peace Accords – which led directly to the demise of South Vietnam a string of tropical gulags and a million Vietnamese Boat People. If Pat has his way Israel will follow South Vietnam in suicide through negotiations.
I liked Buchanan better when he didn’t sound so – French.
FYI Sharon isn’t the only one who thinks Arafat is a terrorist – so do Bush Cheney Powell Condoleezza Rice and everyone else except the gutless peace-at-any-price Europeans and Pat Buchanan.
When it comes to Israel Pat manages to pack more myths and misconceptions into a paragraph than anyone else I know. To wit: Under the Sharon Plan Israel will annex all five major settlements on the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian right of return is forfeit. Israel’ssecurity wall will snake in and out of the West Bank. Jerusalem will not be shared with a Palestinian state.
1) Occupied West Bank – Was this land (biblical Israel) ever part of an independent Palestinian state? Who was the last Palestinian king or prime minister Pat?
2) Right of Return – Even after the Palestinians get their state (and Israel gets indefensible borders) Buchanan still wants to see Israel flooded with 6 million refugees – those who left in 1948 and their descendants. If he had any intellectual honesty he’d admit that this is a prescription for the end of Israel.
3) Security Wall – How inconsiderate of the Israelis to make it harder for suicide bombers to reach their targets! Buchanan has long advocated stationing U.S. troops along our southern border to prevent the infiltration of illegal aliens. If we have a right to keep out those seeking jobs (and we do) why doesn’t Israel have a right to block the entry of those seeking to blow things up? Ever hear of a Mexican suicide bomber?
4) Jerusalem will not be shared – Why stop at Jerusalem Pat? Why not also give the Nobel laureate and his peace marchers a slice of Tel Aviv and Haifa while you’re at it? Or in fairness why not give the Sephardic Jews driven from the Arab world in 1948 and their progeny parts of Cairo Baghdad and Tehran?
Still Buchanan raves: The Sharon Plan is not a peace plan. It is a unilateral solution to be imposed by Israel that no Arab nation will accept. A Palestinian leader who signs on to this surrender of land and rights would be signing his death warrant.
To surrender something you have to be entitled to it in the first place no?
Guess what Pat? Even if Israel gave the Palestinians everything you believe to be theirs by right it still wouldn’t buy peace – any more than surrender of the Sudentenland bought peace with Nazi Germany. More than a decade after Oslo the PLO charter still calls for the annihilation of Israel as it did when Arafat was accepting his Nobel Peace Prize.
Even when he was pretending to be Israel’s partner in peace Arafat was telling Arab audiences: We’ll take whatever the Jews are dumb enough to give us and use it for a base to liberate the rest of Palestine. He even has a name of it – the Plan of Phases.
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