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Isi Leibler , former head of the Australian Jewish community, now lives in Jerusalem. He was a leading personality in the movement to free Soviet Jewry and is a prolific writer on Jewish affairs.
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By Isi Leibler
July 12, 2004
After four years of bloodshed the Israeli media has again opened the debate as to the peace credential of Yasser Arafat. What self-inflicted masochism is this? In every generation we seem to spawn frustrated Jews obsessed with an urge to denigrate themselves and their people. Whether conscious or subconscious, the motivation stems from a thrust to evaporate, to be absorbed into society at large and to discard Jewish identity. In its radical manifestations it invariably degenerates into self-hatred.
For example, in the Middle Ages we had Jewish converts to Christianity assuming central roles in campaigns by the Church campaign to promote hatred of the Jews. During the Emancipation, there were Jews who reverted to anti-Semitism in order to embrace universalism and distance themselves from their people. Karl Marx has become a metaphor for the other self-hating Jews of his time.
Jewish communists picked up the mantle. The Soviet Jewish communist cadres inflicted more cruelty on their kinsmen than their gentile comrades. And Moscow would enthusiastically quote western Jewish communists denying the existence of Soviet anti Semitism, and even justifying the execution of fellow Jews on trumped up charges.
In Israel, there was the Marxist Mapam - Hashomer Hatzair group which continued to worship Stalin, even as he proscribed Zionism as an anti Soviet counter revolutionary movement. They retained this schizophrenic approach even after the arrest of Mordechai Oren, one of their most prominent political leaders on bogus political charges in Czechoslovakia.
And again in our time there are no shortages of Jews who demonize and delegitimize Israel for what can only be attributed as a syndrome of self-hatred.
We have our own politicians, journalists, academics and so-called peace activists who seem to relate more with the Palestinian terrorists than with their own people. Until the 1980s they were considered eccentric radicals usually associated with Matzpen, a Trotskyite fringe group. However today some occupy important roles in the Labor Party and feature prominently in the op-ed columns of Israel's most important newspaper, Haaretz.
These post-Zionist groups achieved the nadir of their power when Oslo and the "irreversible peace process" was the flavor of the day. They infiltrated the mainstream school curriculum promoting textbooks which undermined the ethos of Zionism. Some even hinted that the Jewish state was born in sin and therefore responsible for all the Palestinian suffering since 1948.
Their call for the transformation of the Jewish state into "a state of all its citizens" is a prescription for the elimination of the distinct Jewish character of Israel, including the abrogation of the law of return, erasing the Jewish symbols in the flag and rewriting the national anthem.
With the advent of the Intifada and the eruption of global anti-Semitism, most were forced to retreat. Yet in recent months in the wake of Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan they have begun regrouping.
On June 11 one of the icons of post Zionism, Haaretz journalist Akiva Eldar, published an interview with Amos Malka, a former head of military intelligence. Central to Malka's message was that senior members of the Intelligence Corps with an ideological axe to grind had suppressed the truth by accusing Arafat of readying himself for the Intifada even before the breakdown in negotiations with Ehud Barak. Malka's claim was that not only was Arafat reconciled to achieving an accommodation with Israel, but was even willing to give up the "Palestinian" right of return if Israel would agree to repatriate a token 20-30,000 refugees.
A drum beat of articles in Haaretz and elsewhere promoted this image of a benign Arafat forced into a violent confrontation because of an intransigent Israel.
On June 18th, a week following the Eldar article, a front page interview appeared in Haaretz with Arafat by the editor David Landau, and Akiva Eldar. The headline quoted Arafat saying "A Jewish State? Definitely!" The interview portrayed a peace- loving Palestinian leader conveying remorse that a peaceful settlement with Israel had not been achieved.
This of course was not the first time that Israelis had resurrected a discredited Arafat. They did so in 1993 after the Gulf War. Arafat's standing was then at an all-time low. He was perceived as a clone of Saddam Hussein and despised by everyone, including Arab leaders. But the Oslo architects rehabilitated him. They brought him and his gang out of exile in Tunis to the West Bank, providing them with weapons and opening the White House door to them. Furthermore after the Accords had been signed and Arafat continued making speeches promising armed victory, our leaders buried their heads in the sand and insisted that his words of incitement should not to be taken seriously. Terrorist outrages were glossed over and we were repeatedly given mind numbing admonitions that terrorists must not be allowed to derail the "irreversible" peace process.
Today after the murder of over 1000 Israelis it is surely somewhat obscene for newspapers to recycle the same rubbish we heard during the heyday of Oslo portraying Arafat as a noble partner for peace. To do so is to fall into the trap of his psychological warfare. Nothing has changed since his repeated undertakings in the language of his people that his real objective was an end to Jewish sovereignty through a phased design of incremental dismemberment.
Is not Arafat the ghoul who repeatedly blesses and continues to sanction suicide bombers? Who calls for a million shahids to go to Jerusalem? Who rewards the families of murderers? Who transforms the Palestinians into a truly evil society inculcating children to strive for the highest level of martyrdom by killing themselves in order to murder Jews?
The recently appointed editor of Haaretz is an observant Jew who is striving to promote a better understanding of Judaism through his paper. It is hard to comprehend how in the midst of war, when Israelis continue to be killed daily, he can justify providing Arafat with a respectable platform to repeat his lies. Does Haaretz really swallow the nonsense that Arafat is entitled to respect because (like Hitler) he is an elected leader?
Are we really so befuddled that we have to ask ourselves whether after his terrible track record, the man dripping with the blood of innocent Israeli citizens could still be a genuine partner for peace? What is this effort if not another manifestation of self inflicted masochism?
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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