ZioWatch
'Christian Zionism and Jewish Extremism'
Friday, December 03, 2004
The iron wall
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU TALKS A LOT ABOUT "SECURITY," BUT HIS ACTIONS SHOW HE'S INTERESTED IN NO SUCH THING.
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SALON April 13, 1998
JERUSALEM -- Just as Kofi Annan was leaving town and U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross was arriving to try to keep the peace process going, and just as Benjamin Netanyahu was once again donning the skullcap and visiting fortified Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, I managed to ask him in public whether he still believed in the relevance of early Zionist theorist Vladimir Jabotinsky.
He affected not to understand the question. The only things that mattered, he replied, were Israeli "security" and a further renunciation by Yassir Arafat of the Palestinian covenant, which called for the elimination of the state of Israel. This, I thought, was something of a dodge. The covenant made by Jabotinsky's Revisionist movement predates the PLO covenant by several decades, and calls for permanent Israeli control of "Judea and Samaria" along with the aspiration for so much of what is now Jordan. Given Netanyahu's determination to hang on to territory that, under the Oslo peace accords, should have been returned to the Palestinians in exchange for peace with Israel, I thought the question quite relevant.
A few weeks ago, in this holy city, a public lecture was offered by Benzion Netanyahu. It was in honor of a man named Abba Ahimeir. Neither of these two men is, perhaps, as well known as he ought to be. Benzion Netanyahu, the 87-year-old father of the Israeli prime minister, is a scholar at Princeton University and the author of "The Origins of the Inquisition," a brilliant and exhaustive account of the anti-Judaism of the Spanish Inquisition, which also explains the persistence of anti-Semitism in modern times.
Abba Ahimeir was a writer and activist in British Mandate Palestine, and a zealous lieutenant of Jabotinsky. In the pages of the magazine Doar Hayom, during the late 1920s and '30s, he wrote a celebrated column titled "From the Notebook of a Fascist." He hymned Mussolini, referred to Jabotinsky as "Our Duce," and even went so far as to say that Hitler was on the right track, except for his excessive anti-Semitism.
Jabotinsky, it must be said, demurred a little on that last point, but still, the Revisionist Betar movement did parade with torches and colored shirts, and had a generally friendly attitude to the emerging "New Order" in Europe until it was almost too late. Ahimeir, said the elder Netanyahu, had been his mentor. And it is very well attested that Netanyahu the younger makes few moves without consulting his revered papa, who also rose to be Jabotinsky's secretary and pallbearer.
In more or less voiding the 1993 Oslo accords and in demanding that Arafat operate as supreme policeman over his own people (but have no other power of any kind), Netanyahu is in fact operating in the spirit of Jabotinsky's famous essay "The Iron Wall," which basically states that there is only one language that Arabs understand. It is obvious, at any rate, that his loud and repetitive slogan about "security" is a euphemism for that same iron wall. One recent news account, and one editorial column, both taken from the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, appear to prove the point.
On March 21, Ha'aretz correspondent Shani Litman reported an address by Netanyahu to a forum of right-wing retired officers and security men in Tel Aviv. "We are making a constant effort to preserve the maximum," the prime minister told his audience, "including territories I would fight for even if they had no security value." (Italics mine.)
Writing in the same newspaper two days previously, Israeli analyst Akiva Eldar disclosed a "memorandum of understanding" signed between Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs last Dec. 17. Their meeting was facilitated by the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv/Jaffa. In the memorandum, the Palestinian side undertook to combat underground terrorist groups and exchange information on their sympathizers with Israeli security forces.
However, wrote Eldar:
"Netanyahu forbade representatives of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) to meet with their Palestinian and American counterparts for the purpose of establishing a joint monitoring mechanism that would supervise the implementation of the memorandum. It is difficult to fathom how this very same individual, who swears allegiance three times a day to the cause of the security of Israel's citizens, is willing to forego a formal Palestinian Authority. The reason for Netanyahu's position is that he is opposed to a concomitant Israeli commitment to confiscate firearms in the possession of Jews who plan, or support, terrorist actions." (Italics mine.)
Netanyahu does not just depend on the clerical and nationalist extremists for votes. He depends on them as allies against the Israeli left, and as shock troops for the West Bank. Moreover, they are his ideological forebears. On the same day that U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross arrived from Washington on yet another fruitless voyage of "mediation," it was discovered that the Israeli Defense Ministry had begun covertly recognizing certain "unauthorized" settlements in Samaria, and connecting them surreptitiously to the Israeli-controlled electric and water grids. This process is known as "laundering" of settlements, which are manned by the most intransigent and fanatical elements of the Greater Israel movement. (The main new Samarian "strongpoint" at Rehalim is financed by Rahavam Ze'evi, the leader of the Molodet Party, which demands the expulsion of all Palestinians from the occupied territories.
The Clinton administration persists in talking as if the only bone of contention between Israel and the Palestinians concerns "percentages" of territory, and the pace at which these would be turned over to Palestinian self-rule. Nothing could be more naive -- or more cynical. On the evidence of his words, Netanyahu is not sincere in his use of "security" as his reason for delay and obfuscation. On the evidence of his own actions, he is not even sincere in demanding that the wretched Arafat act merely as a police proxy. The work of annexation and colonization goes on, Oslo or no Oslo, because it is mandated by high priests and racial nationalists, some of whom have taken their leaves from the same "fascist notebook" penned by Abba Ahimeir. In the name of the father ...
http://archive.salon.com/col/hitc/1998/04/nc_13hitc2.html
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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SALON April 13, 1998
JERUSALEM -- Just as Kofi Annan was leaving town and U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross was arriving to try to keep the peace process going, and just as Benjamin Netanyahu was once again donning the skullcap and visiting fortified Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, I managed to ask him in public whether he still believed in the relevance of early Zionist theorist Vladimir Jabotinsky.
He affected not to understand the question. The only things that mattered, he replied, were Israeli "security" and a further renunciation by Yassir Arafat of the Palestinian covenant, which called for the elimination of the state of Israel. This, I thought, was something of a dodge. The covenant made by Jabotinsky's Revisionist movement predates the PLO covenant by several decades, and calls for permanent Israeli control of "Judea and Samaria" along with the aspiration for so much of what is now Jordan. Given Netanyahu's determination to hang on to territory that, under the Oslo peace accords, should have been returned to the Palestinians in exchange for peace with Israel, I thought the question quite relevant.
A few weeks ago, in this holy city, a public lecture was offered by Benzion Netanyahu. It was in honor of a man named Abba Ahimeir. Neither of these two men is, perhaps, as well known as he ought to be. Benzion Netanyahu, the 87-year-old father of the Israeli prime minister, is a scholar at Princeton University and the author of "The Origins of the Inquisition," a brilliant and exhaustive account of the anti-Judaism of the Spanish Inquisition, which also explains the persistence of anti-Semitism in modern times.
Abba Ahimeir was a writer and activist in British Mandate Palestine, and a zealous lieutenant of Jabotinsky. In the pages of the magazine Doar Hayom, during the late 1920s and '30s, he wrote a celebrated column titled "From the Notebook of a Fascist." He hymned Mussolini, referred to Jabotinsky as "Our Duce," and even went so far as to say that Hitler was on the right track, except for his excessive anti-Semitism.
Jabotinsky, it must be said, demurred a little on that last point, but still, the Revisionist Betar movement did parade with torches and colored shirts, and had a generally friendly attitude to the emerging "New Order" in Europe until it was almost too late. Ahimeir, said the elder Netanyahu, had been his mentor. And it is very well attested that Netanyahu the younger makes few moves without consulting his revered papa, who also rose to be Jabotinsky's secretary and pallbearer.
In more or less voiding the 1993 Oslo accords and in demanding that Arafat operate as supreme policeman over his own people (but have no other power of any kind), Netanyahu is in fact operating in the spirit of Jabotinsky's famous essay "The Iron Wall," which basically states that there is only one language that Arabs understand. It is obvious, at any rate, that his loud and repetitive slogan about "security" is a euphemism for that same iron wall. One recent news account, and one editorial column, both taken from the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, appear to prove the point.
On March 21, Ha'aretz correspondent Shani Litman reported an address by Netanyahu to a forum of right-wing retired officers and security men in Tel Aviv. "We are making a constant effort to preserve the maximum," the prime minister told his audience, "including territories I would fight for even if they had no security value." (Italics mine.)
Writing in the same newspaper two days previously, Israeli analyst Akiva Eldar disclosed a "memorandum of understanding" signed between Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs last Dec. 17. Their meeting was facilitated by the CIA station chief in Tel Aviv/Jaffa. In the memorandum, the Palestinian side undertook to combat underground terrorist groups and exchange information on their sympathizers with Israeli security forces.
However, wrote Eldar:
"Netanyahu forbade representatives of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) to meet with their Palestinian and American counterparts for the purpose of establishing a joint monitoring mechanism that would supervise the implementation of the memorandum. It is difficult to fathom how this very same individual, who swears allegiance three times a day to the cause of the security of Israel's citizens, is willing to forego a formal Palestinian Authority. The reason for Netanyahu's position is that he is opposed to a concomitant Israeli commitment to confiscate firearms in the possession of Jews who plan, or support, terrorist actions." (Italics mine.)
Netanyahu does not just depend on the clerical and nationalist extremists for votes. He depends on them as allies against the Israeli left, and as shock troops for the West Bank. Moreover, they are his ideological forebears. On the same day that U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross arrived from Washington on yet another fruitless voyage of "mediation," it was discovered that the Israeli Defense Ministry had begun covertly recognizing certain "unauthorized" settlements in Samaria, and connecting them surreptitiously to the Israeli-controlled electric and water grids. This process is known as "laundering" of settlements, which are manned by the most intransigent and fanatical elements of the Greater Israel movement. (The main new Samarian "strongpoint" at Rehalim is financed by Rahavam Ze'evi, the leader of the Molodet Party, which demands the expulsion of all Palestinians from the occupied territories.
The Clinton administration persists in talking as if the only bone of contention between Israel and the Palestinians concerns "percentages" of territory, and the pace at which these would be turned over to Palestinian self-rule. Nothing could be more naive -- or more cynical. On the evidence of his words, Netanyahu is not sincere in his use of "security" as his reason for delay and obfuscation. On the evidence of his own actions, he is not even sincere in demanding that the wretched Arafat act merely as a police proxy. The work of annexation and colonization goes on, Oslo or no Oslo, because it is mandated by high priests and racial nationalists, some of whom have taken their leaves from the same "fascist notebook" penned by Abba Ahimeir. In the name of the father ...
http://archive.salon.com/col/hitc/1998/04/nc_13hitc2.html
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Milton Frihetsson, 1:22 AM
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