Tag Archives: peace

Prof. Paul Eidelberg, President
Israel-America Renaissance Institute

Part III. Netanyahu’s Self-Entrapment

Netanyahu’s September 23, 2011 speech to the UN revealed a prime minister trapped in the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of September 13, 1993. Step by step that agreement led him to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria on June 14, 2009 Bar-Ilan University, and without any expression of outrage from that religious institution or by the public at large. How did Netanyahu trap himself in this ignominious as well as anti-Jewish cul-de-sac?

In March 1993, Israel’s government was headed by Labor Party chairman Yizhak Rabin. In that month, the Central committee of the Likud party convened and appointed Benjamin Netanyahu as its leader. An eminent Likud member proposed a resolution to the effect that a future Likud Government would not be bound by any Labor-government agreement that compromised the security of Israel. This resolution was intended to short circuit Labor’s desire to recognize the PLO, the first step toward establishing a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu rejected the resolution on the grounds that a democracy must honor its agreements. This was an utterly fallacious opinion since no government is bound to an agreement that may eventually lead to its destruction. Nevertheless, the present writer was asked by a prominent Likud figure whether the United States had ever violated a treaty with a foreign power. I consulted my constitutional law books and unsurprisingly found that the U.S. government had in fact reneged on a nineteenth-century agreement with China, and that the government’s decision had been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thus, on May 6, 1882, an Act of Congress was approved which declared that after ninety days from the passage of the Act, and for a period of ten years from its date, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States is suspended, and that it shall be unlawful for any such laborer to come to, or, having come, to remain within the United States.” The Court ruled, with regard to the treaties of the country, that “circumstances may arise which would not only justify the Government in disregarding their stipulation, but also demand, in the interests of the country, that it should do so; [of which] there can be no question. Unexpected events may call for a change in the policy of the country.”[1]

At first blush it appears that Netanyahu succumbed to his ignorance of the law governing treaties. However, common sense alone dictates that if one party to an agreement repeatedly violates that agreement—as the PLO did on an almost daily basis—the other party has every right to abrogate the agreement at its own discretion. Of course, to have abrogated Oslo would have required politically courageous prime minister on the one hand, and a very different policy toward the Palestinians on the other.

Whatever the case, Mr. Netanyahu entrapped himself in the Oslo Agreement six months before that agreement was consummated. It should also be emphasized that the legality of the agreement was challenged by eminent Israeli citizens in a 78-page petition drafted by Attorney Howard Grief and submitted to the High Court of Justice (file HC 33414/96). The Court, notoriously left-wing, dismissed the suit as non-justiciable without discussing the merits, even though the petition accused the government of having violated several laws of the Knesset included sections 97, 99 and 100 of the Penal Law, which designates and prohibits four kinds of acts as treason:

1. the category of acts which “impair the sovereignty” of the State of Israel—section 97(a);

2. the category of acts which “impair the integrity” of the State of Israel—section 97(b);

3. the category of acts under section 99 which give assistance to an “enemy” in war against Israel, which the Law specifically states includes a terrorist organization;

4. the category of acts in section 100 which evince an intention or resolve to commit one of the acts prohibited by sections 97 and 99.

The punishment prescribed in the Penal Law for the first three kinds of acts of treason is death or imprisonment for life. Yielding Jewish land to the PLO does appear to be a prima facie violation of the treason law. This said, let us make a thought-experiment.

If a Prime Minister of Israel signs an agreement with his country’s enemy, an agreement that requires him to obscure the murderous creed and history of the enemy and even lie about the enemy’s bellicose intentions, a train of untoward consequences will follow affecting that Prime Minister’s successors. Suppose he is followed by six prime ministers. If the sixth prime minister were to reveal the truth about the enemy in question, he would be impugning the integrity of each and every one of his predecessors. And if a prima facie case could be made that that agreement constitutes a violation of the law governing treason, then, if that sixth prime minister revealed the truth about his country’s enemy—with whom that first prime minister entered into said agreement—he would be impugning all his predecessors, casting upon them the taint of treason. This is a mendacity trap from which no prime minister can readily escape.

Prof. Paul Eidelberg, President
Israel-America Renaissance Institute

Part I. Netanyahu’s Self-Incrimination

Near the outset of his speech, PM Netanyahu emphasized that, for the sake of peace, “Israel did more than just make sweeping offers [to her adversaries]. We actually left territory. We withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 and from every square inch of Gaza in 2005. That didn’t calm the Islamic storm, the militant Islamic storm that threatens us. It only brought the storm closer and made it stronger.”

This factual statement of Netanyahu unwittingly reveals that Israel’s political leaders are ignorant concerning the implacable nature of Islam and are therefore incapable of making strategic decisions conducive to the security of their country.

Netanyahu goes on to say: “Hezbollah and Hamas fired thousands of rockets against our cities from the very territories we vacated.” To this I ask, “What morally responsible and self-respecting government would allow Israel’s enemies to fire so many rockets against Israel’s cities without retaliating after only a few rockets were fired?”

Oblivious of his incriminating Israel’s government, Mr. Netanyahu went on to say that leaving Gaza did not stop Muslims from attacking Israel. Now ponder his further admissions regarding Gaza:

We didn’t freeze the settlements in Gaza, we uprooted them. We did exactly what the theory [of land for peace] says: Get out, go back to the 1967 borders, dismantle the settlements. And I don’t think people remember how far we went to achieve this. We uprooted thousands of people from their homes. We pulled children out of — out of their schools and their kindergartens. We bulldozed synagogues. We even — we even moved loved ones from their graves.

What a monumental display of self-incrimination! This forced expulsion of Jews from their homes was an unspeakable crime. Perhaps Mr. Netanyahu is too callous or self-righteous to see this uprooting of innocent men, women, and children from their homes and bulldozing their synagogues as a crime. His own father Benzion Netanyahu denounced the projected expulsion as a crime! I would only add it was a desecration of God’s Name.

Nor is this all. Listening to PM Netanyahu’s speech to the UN, the intelligent observer will ask: “Didn’t it occur to you that expelling the Jews from Gaza had grave military consequences, namely, that all of Gaza would become a launching pad for rocket attacks against your country?” Were you deaf to the warnings of your military and intelligence experts?”

Indeed, Israel’s highest defense and intelligence officials, Moshe Ya’alon (IDF Chief of Staff), Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash (head of IDF Intelligence), and Avi Dichter (Director of the Shin Bet—General Security Service), all warned against the Gaza withdrawal.

On January 5, 2005, in testimony before the Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, Dichter described the threats inherent in pulling the IDF from the Gaza Strip: “In a situation where Israel is not in control of the Philadelphi corridor [which separates Gaza from the Sinai Peninsula], terrorists arriving from Lebanon are liable to infiltrate through it into the Gaza Strip and there is the distinct possibility that in a short while the Gaza Strip will turn into south Lebanon.” Dichter also cautioned that the current “trickle” of arms smuggling through the corridor is liable to turn into a “river.”

On September 28, 2005, Farkash warned that Al-Qaida members are in the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip after infiltrating while the border with Egypt was opened two weeks ago.

Ya’alon warned, in interview published in Ha’aretz on June 3, 2005, that disengagement will lead to a renewal of the terrorist war in the West Bank.

On July 23, 2005, Maj. Gen, Yaacov Amidror (who served as commander of Israel’s School of National Security until 2002) warned: “There is no military advantage to leaving Gaza. You lose control on the ground, the ability to conduct intelligence operations and to stage ground efforts into Gaza City and Khan Yunis. You let Hamas and Islamic Jihad have a safe haven to launch terrorist actions from and in which to grow their terror apparatus.”

Despite all this, Netanyahu had the audacity to remind the UN how the entire world applauded Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza as “an act of great statesmanship … bold act of peace.” “But ladies and gentlemen,” he added, “we didn’t get peace. We got war. We got Iran, which through its proxy Hamas promptly kicked out the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority collapsed in a day—in one day.”

That’s right, Mr. Netanyahu, but I ask you: On what empirical grounds, on what historical grounds, on what logical grounds, on what psychological grounds, on what theological grounds, had you any reason to expect peace after this display of defeatism and this unconscionable crime against the Jews of Gaza?

(To be continued)