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If 8,000 Arabs were forcibly evacuated from their homes by the Israeli government, the whole world would be up in arms. How can it possibly be that the Israeli government itself is planning to uproot, by force of arms, 8,000 law-abiding Jewish citizens from their own homes?
These citizens live on the Gaza strip. They’ve been there for 20 years. Their own government asked them to go there to live. The land was a desert when they found it. They brought in water and electricity. They endured terrorism in order to hold onto the land for themselves and for Israel. And now, after all that work, their own government is planning to force them to leave. The homes of the Israelis are to be turned over to the very terrorists who were killing them, for those terrorists to live in. This is not an exaggeration. It is anticipated that the literal terrorists who were killing citizens living in Gaza, will be living in the homes of the Israelis after evacuation.
Raphaella Segal, Speaking to a Group, Uses a Map to Illustrate a Point
In the past six weeks I have personally met and listened to Israeli government spokesman David Baker; Gaza resident Mr. Sody A. Naimer; Israeli citizen and Deputy Mayor of the city of Kedumim, Raphaella Segal; and numerous Americans who are very concerned about the planned evacuation.
No one can figure out what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is thinking.
Israeli government spokesman David Baker would say only this: “8,000 Israelis in the middle of 1.3 million Arabs doesn’t work.” But look at the map:
Gaza is contiguous to Israel. It’s bounded on the west by the sea. How is it in the middle of 1.3 million Arabs? I’m really asking. Charles Krauthammer, with whom I almost always agree, argues:
The idea is this: Israel must (unilaterally, if necessary) rationalize its defensive lines—in order to (1) protect its citizens, (2) permanently defuse the Palestinian terror threat and thus (3) open the door to a final peace.
How can this possibly be considered a rationalization of the defensive lines? For military purposes it is the reverse. It gives the terrorists a convenient staging location for attacks into Israel. Looking at the map, it appears that the Gaza strip is outside the 1950 Armistice Line. So in that sense it might be considered “rationalizing” the lines. But that seems like faulty logic; what’s the benefit to Israel of recognizing an artificial border from 50 years ago, when it is at such cost to Israel’s own citizens, and at such great reward to the terrorists? The world will say—and will say correctly—that terrorism was successful in winning the Gaza strip for the terrorists. That killing children at bus stops worked.
No one seems to be able to understand why Sharon is doing it. From Daniel Pipes:
With the passage last week of a budget bill in Israel, the government of Ariel Sharon appears to be ready to remove more than 8,000 Israelis living in Gaza with force, if necessary.
In addition to the legal dubiousness of this step and its historical unprecedented nature (challenge to the reader: name another democracy that has forcibly removed thousands its own citizens from their lawful homes), the planned withdrawal of all Israeli installations from Gaza amounts to an act of monumental political folly.
It also comes as an astounding surprise. After the Oslo round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (1993-2001) ended in disaster, many Israelis looked back on Oslo’s faulty assumptions, their own naïveté, and resolved not to repeat that bitter experience. Israelis awoke from the delusion that giving the Palestinians land, money, and arms in return for airy-fairy and fraudulent promises would lessen Palestinian hostility. They realized that, to the contrary, this imbalance enhanced Palestinian rejection of the very existence of the Jewish state.
So… what’s Sharon thinking? This appears to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, mysteries on earth at this time.
A woman at last night’s event, where Raphaella Segal spoke, observed that in World War II, Germany began by attacking its Jewish citizens, and moved on to attacking the whole world. She pointed out that the Intifada began in 1987, and was renewed in 2000; that the U.S. let it continue; and that terrorism directed against the U.S. increased tremendously during that same period, leading to 9-11. She has a point. The terrorists want to destroy Israel, and the U.S.
Terrorists must not be rewarded in any way, shape or form. It just encourages them. They must not be rewarded; they must be opposed, vigorously and decisively.
Click here to sign a petition opposing the forced evacuation of Israelis from their homes by their own government.
The post-communist empire that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to cobble together is coming apart, decomposed by the centrifugal forces of democracy and freedom that suck peoples from the grasp of the Russian gravitational field.
...as Putin seeks to bring down a second iron curtain around the former Soviet Union, he overreaches and misjudges the power of liberty and freedom to win the souls of men and women.
This is a series of debates between David Horowitz and prominent Libs on the far Left. The debates include discussions of Horowitz’ new site, Discover The Network. Discover The Network is a database of Liberals and their achievements, inspired by David’s insight that many on the far Left ”...don’t want a light shined on their activities, agendas, and destructive achievements. They don’t want to be accountable for what they have done and for who they are.”
Jensen: ...Let’s take the category of “anti-American radicals.” This is simply a rejection of any meaningful conception of democracy. I’ve made the point before, as have many others: To accuse someone who criticizes U.S. policy of being “anti-American” is to reject any meaningful role for citizens in a democracy. For example, if I believe the U.S. invasion of Iraq was unlawful and immoral, should I simply shut up and capitulate to the forces that pressed for war? To label opposition to the policies of the powerful as “anti-American,” displays incredible contempt for democracy. It’s hard to take seriously any project that uses such terms.
Horowitz: ...Jensen, who has prematurely celebrated America’s “defeat” in Iraq in a statement after the battle of Fallujah, calls the very use of the term “anti-American” illegitimate. “To accuse someone who criticizes U.S. policy of being ‘anti-American’ is to reject any meaningful role for citizens in a democracy.” But of course the site does not accuse anyone who criticizes U.S. policy of being “anti-American.” If it did, there would be five categories of leftists ranging from “Totalitarian Radical” to “Moderate Left” and “Affective Left.” Instead there would be only one category in the site – “Anti-American Radical”—since everyone in the database, in all categories, is critical – and in fact very critical—of U.S. policy. Since we do not regard all critics of US policy as immoral we have taken the pains to make five categories to describe these critics, only one of which is defined as “anti-American” – although leftists who qualify as totalitarian radicals would also qualify as anti-American. Jensen is unfortunately typical of radical critics of DiscoverTheNetwork who simply ignore what we have actually written as though ignorance (or more properly, denial) is actually a form of argument. It is not.
Is “anti-American” a meaningful category? In Europe and elsewhere “anti-American” has actually been a staple description of a political attitude for half a century or more, and is employed not just by conservatives. Why is the idea of anti-group prejudice so difficult for Jensen to comprehend, particularly since it is a core theme of leftwing politics? Leftists like Jensen have no trouble in describing conservatives as anti-Arab, or anti-black, or anti-gay. So why should the idea of someone being “anti-American” be so incomprehensible?
Is there anyone who honestly thinks the coverage of Sandy Berger’s theft of classified documents wouldn’t be dramatically different if he were a conservative Republican?
Imagine for a second what would happen if Condoleezza Rice were caught by the good folks at the National Archives stealing sensitive documents by hiding them on her person. Would that story generate the same minimal play the Berger theft has? No — it would be a firestorm.
