May 31, 2006

Conference Call with Nobel Prize Winner, Professor Aumann, on Possible Further Israeli Pull-outs

Yesterday I participated in a conference call organized by the ZOA, with Professor Robert Aumann, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics. Professor Aumann discussed his views on the pullout of more of Israel's citizens, planned by Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, from the West Bank. Professor Aumann is strongly opposed to the pullout.

From my notes (not expected to be verbatim: )

Prof. Aumann: It is morally repugnant. It will make relations with our Arab neighbors worse. It is morally repugnant to throw people out of their homes on a wholesale basis.

Mort Klein: What do you think Olmert thinks is good about the expulsion?

Prof. Aumann: Some kind of situation where it would be easier to defend the borders. And sort of a consolidation - that's what you might want to call it. There would be less friction with the Arab neighbors. I think that there will not be lesss friction - there will be more friction. The Arabs will see that their policy of terror is being rewarded - it works. They're encouraged by this to engage in more terror.

People say the people who blow themselves up are acting irrationally. I don't think they're acting irrationally. It's rational as long as it works. And what we're doing is giving them the fruit of their terrorist acts. And in fact we're witnessing all over the world - there's not any letup on the pressure on us. In England they're now declaring a boycott against Israeli scientists - and this is in the wake of the expulsion from Gaza. Our enemies are encouraged by this withdrawal.

Mort Klein: Are pressures from around the world a factor on Olmert?

Prof. Aumann: Well, I really don't know the answer to that. Some people say that Bush is really opposed to be this and had to be convinced. Others say Bush pressured Olmert. I really don't know.

The following was an unpleasant surprise for me:

Prof. Aumann: The Israeli public was very much aware of Olmert's policy and they voted him in. A large part of the Israeli public supports [the pull-out]. The opposition parties don't feel very strongly against this. The Israeli public does more or less back this up. The reason is there's a lot of tiredness, of battle fatigue in Israel. We've been fighting now for 80 years and it doesn't look like the fighting is going to end. The truth is we have to go on this way and we're going to go on this way willy nilly. because this policy is not gonna help us.

[On a recent visit to Israel I was told] that people in Israel are less interested in the country these days, and more interested in themselves - in not doing reserve service and in not getting blown up.

It appears probable that the decision by the Israeli government to expel Israelis from their own homes in Gaza, and to give Gaza to the terrorists, is in large part responsible for this new loss of interest among Israelis in fighting for the state. If their own government is bent on giving away large portions of the country to their enemies, why should the average Israeli citizen fight for the state?

There is some hope that a further pull-out would give Israel more defensible borders. But this reluctance to fight back is killing Israel. They don't do terrorism and they don't wage war - all they do is get killed. The policy of targeting terrorists and picking them off whenever they can isn't working, because the Palestinian people constantly generate more of them. As the election of Hamas has shown, Israel is not at war with some small subgroup of Palestinians, it's at war with the Palestinians as a people.

Israel's policy of targeting terrorists and picking them off whenever they can, is like a policy of fighting a war by picking off a few soldiers at a time, and leaving the rest of the enemy army untouched.

The likelihood is that Israel's going to have to fight back, and it's going to have to fight this war like a war, or it's going to be destroyed - it's going to be nibbled to death, one dead citizen at a time.