It’s time for Israel, the state and the Jewish people, to unshackle themselves from the policies of restraint that enslave them to the UN the EU and the USA. It’s time to internalize the fact that Israel’s existence is no longer at the whim of others, or their largesse. It's time to stop acting as if Israel had no collective agency; was not a democratic country; with a powerful military.
Despite the passing of millennia, I suggest a sliver of slavery remains in the blood of all Israelis that prevents them from acting in their best interest. It’s from the memory the enslavement of the Jews under Pharaoh. Every Passover the Jewish people say, “We were slaves” as a reminder of the danger of allowing themselves to be slaves to others, honouring false gods. Each year Passover ends with “Next year in Jerusalem” in memory of the freedom the Jewish people had for but a moment in time, before they were scattered into the wind where they wandered for 2000 years, living under the rule of those who persecuted and prosecuted them, forced them to convert or into ghettos, treated them like second-class citizens in dhimmitude or expelled them from countries in which they had lived for centuries.
The Jewish people are back in their homeland of 3500 years,Israel, and their capital Jerusalem for which theirfathers, their grandfathers and forefathers and mothers fought so valiantly. Despite the lessons taught wandering in the desert for hundreds of years, it seems they have re-enslaved themselves to others with the shackles of self-restraint. And I think it began in earnest in Gulf War I (1990-1991) when Israel acquiesced to George Bush and the first coalition against Saddam Hussein.
I was reminded of this when I read “The Oslo Years: A Mothers Journal” by Ellen Horowitz. Israel had agreed not to respond to any attacks on her land for fear of upsetting Arab-Muslim coalition members. I, like millions of others watched this in real time on CNN. “Shock and Awe.” Israelis seeking shelter in safe rooms, gas masks at the ready, their destiny in the hands of America. President Bush himself remarked on Israel’s “Remarkable restraint.”
Did this event lay the groundwork for Israel’s seemingly suicidal tendencies of restraint including the returning of Sinai, the Oslo Accords, the withdrawal from Gaza and the never-ending “peace initiatives” thrust upon Israel?
Ms. Horowitz takes you by the hand and heart to the time of the Oslo Accords. I remember thinking at that time that this must be good, after all right-wing politicians had shaken the hand of the devil, Arafat, reincarnated as the saviour, all the while smiling. What I don’t remember hearing or seeing in the media were descriptions of the terrorist attacks targeting Jewish civilians: from September 4, 1993 when Yigal Vaknin was stabbed to death in his orchard to Salem(Sami) al-Kimlat a Bedouin from Rahat, shot and killed December 22, 2004 while securing a construction site from attack.
Ms. Horowitz wrote in her prologue that she hoped her book would “act as a catalyst to inspire others to write and document a truth that begs to be told.”
It’s taken me 12 years.
I suggest that the Jewish people become adept, perhaps too adept, at accepting mistreatment; perhaps from the fear of the twisted media reports and accusations of disproportionate response, as thousands of rockets are launched into the country, traumatizing ther citizens for more than a decade, as tunnels are built under the land into their homes and terrorists attack within Israel, kidnapping her soldiers and children, and blowing up babies and mothers on beaches, in buses, pizzerias and at Passover tables-the irony of death at the Passover tables.
And those who wish to do them evil laugh and carry on. Terror attacks in Israel increase as Israel restrains herself. Since September 13, 1993-the onset of the glorious days of Oslo Accords: The Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, more than 1400 Israelis have been killed and more and 11,000 wounded. From 1948 to 1993 during the many wars and incursions more than 14,500 of our people were killed and 23, 000 injured. From an endangered population of 6 million.
Peace demands a steep price-from the Jews.
Name another country that would have agreed to such things? Ghandi had the temerity to suggest to Britain at the onset of WWII to resist the attacks of the Nazis. In 1940 he said “I appeal for cessation of hostilities . . . because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans. The only difference is that perhaps yours are not as thorough as the Germans . . . I venture to present you with a nobler and a braver way, worthy of the bravest soldiers. I want you to fight Nazism without arms or . . . with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity…” We know Britain’s response.
No other country bows down to the demand of “proportionate response” and restrains itself-to the detriment and safety of its own citizens. Was restraint ever asked of Saddam Hussein? Idi Amin? Bashar-al Assad? Where are the calls to North Korea for restraint as it executes 70 officials? Where are the calls to Qatar for the killing of immigrant workers, treated like slave labour? What about calls to Hamas or the PA for restraint when they intentionally target citizens-others and their own? Where are the calls to Saudi Arabia and Iran for restraint when they murder gays, let alone Iran’s nuclear aspirations?
Where is the outcry against the USA/ Saudi Arabia coalition for collateral damage during their bombing raids against ISIL?
Israel acts as if she lived in a Panopticon, always under the watchful eye of the jailer and second guessing every action she takes to the point that she doesn’t take action for fear of upsetting the jailer- the UN, the EU or the USA-the slave -master.
It’s time for Israel to be the masters of her own fate, to free herself from her own shackles. Not only for her sake, but for the sake of all democracies. If Israel does not put herself first, we all could be under the shackles of Iran.
