Talking peace, waging war (ISRAEL HAYOM OP-ED) Ruthie Blum 04/15/12)
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1723
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Ben-Gurion airport will be particularly busy on Sunday, and not only
due to end-of-Pesach traffic. In anticipation of the pro-
Palestinian “flightilla” scheduled to bring hundreds of activists to
Israel’s shores – this time via the sky rather than the sea – the
police and other security forces might just end up outnumbering the
rest of the throng.
As in the case of the famous “flotilla” to Gaza, the “flightilla” to
the West Bank purports to have no other purpose than to
provide “humanitarian aid” to “poor Palestinians under a big bad
Israeli blockade.” (That there is no blockade on the West Bank does
not matter to these well-wishers any more than the fact that Israel
never stopped the flow of necessary goods and services into Gaza. But
then, the real aim of such campaigns is to make Israel look evil.)
To avoid the kind of bloodbath that ensued from the flotilla,
with “peace activists” bashing, stabbing and throwing Israeli
soldiers armed with paintball guns overboard, Public Security
Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch took the pre-emptive measure of
providing a blacklist to foreign airlines, warning them that if
troublemakers did land in Tel Aviv, they would be detained and
deported.
The government has also prepared an official letter, to be given to
any activists who do arrive. What it says is: “We appreciate your
choosing to make Israel the object of your humanitarian concerns. We
know there were many other worthy choices. You could have chosen to
protest the Syrian regime´s daily savagery against its own people."
It’s an appropriate dig. For all their worries about the suffering of
innocents, they never seem to care a bit about that caused by Muslim-
Arab rulers, including in the Palestinian Authority and in Gaza.
Nor do these “peaceniks” ever take note of the repeated refusal of
the Palestinian regime to make any deals with Israel that involve
peace. Even the settlement freeze that Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu instated made no dent in the Palestinians’ willingness to
meet with the Israelis or in their apologists’ position that Israel
remains the obstacle.
Other than real extremists, such as Gideon Levy of Haaretz and
American linguist Noam Chomsky (both of whose renown rests on their
radical left-wing laurels), most observers are having trouble these
days ignoring the mounds of evidence suggesting that Israel’s very
existence is the obstacle. There has been an abundance of Arab-Muslim
strife on display – currently connected to the so-called “Arab
Spring” – which has zero to do with the Jewish state, other than its
affiliation with the West and lack thereof with Islam. Ridding the
world of Israel, then, would not bring peace any more than curbing
Jewish housing in Judea and Samaria.
In the absence of peace, Westerners who consider it a goal – rather
than an outcome – push for negotiations. So, while a bunch of
insignificant European activists were packing their bags to stir up
trouble in Israel this weekend, a group of major players was
gathering in Istanbul for a summit.
Indeed, on Saturday, representatives of the U.S., Russia, China,
Germany, France and Britain met with senior Iranian officials. It was
the first time in over a year since they had done so. This was not
for lack of trying on the part of the Obama administration, however.
No, it was because the Iranians were too busy. They’ve had
centrifuges to perfect and uranium to enrich. They’ve also had to
deal with the Stuxnet virus that screwed up their nukes’ computers,
and the assassination of a number of their key mad scientists. To top
it all off, there’s discord between Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, as well as an
upcoming U.S. election. They know they’ve got to get a move on, in
the event that Obama – the best American president they could have
hoped for under these circumstances – doesn’t get re-elected.
But they realize that economic pressure is going to put a damper on
their plans. So they sent Saeed Jalili to Turkey to sit down with the
world powers to “talk.”
E.U. Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton couldn’t have been
happier. ´´What we are here to do is to find ways in which we can
build confidence between us and ways in which we can demonstrate that
Iran is moving away from a nuclear weapons program,´´ she said.
By the end of the day, she felt vindicated. The discussions, she
said, had been “constructive.”
Not only that. A date for a new set of “talks” was scheduled. On May
23, the parties will parlay in Baghdad. That’s one confidence-
building measure to which the Iranians can certainly relate.
They, like all enemies of the West, have no interest in peace
whatsoever. They have one objective – victory. If pointless “peace
negotiations” buy them time to achieve this aim, so much the better.
Ashton and her ilk either don’t know this, or they prefer not to,
because acknowledging it means having to do something about it other
than “talk.”
It is for this reason that Israel will have to take the initiative –
not at negotiating with a Palestinian entity that has no more
intention of striking a deal than Iran. Rather, it has to act against
a nuclearized Middle East before the only thing left to discuss is
how to survive the next world war.
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