May 13th, '03
Settling the Issue

He may be a stylish writer, he may have the ear of presidents and kings, but I don't care: Thomas Friedman gets on my nerves.

No matter what this New York Times columnist is writing about, he always reserves a column inch or two for a ritualistic attack on the Israeli Settler Movement. And this time he went too far.

Get Tom's advice to George W:

He will have to halt the attacks on Colin Powell from the Pentagon and make clear, for once, that he stands behind his secretary of state; tell both the Christian right and the Likud-run Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that he is not going to let them block his path by their support for the lunatic Israeli settler movement; and tell the Arab leaders it is put-up-or-shut-up time: that means helping to ease out Mr. Arafat and taking steps to accept the Jewish state.

Excuse me? Likud-run Conference of Presidents? Is Tom aware that this umbrella organization also counts among its members the leaders of American Friends of Peace Now (hardly friends of Ariel Sharon)? As a seasoned journalist, I would expect Tom to entertain the possibility that pro-Israel sentiment among American Jews might stem from that niggling little fact that Jewish Israelis are getting blown up in the streets at an unprecedented rate. And after Palestinian homicide bombers kill themselves along with a few dozen Jews, Arafat's Palestinian Authority names public squares after them and puts their faces on Pokemon cards to distribute to the kiddies.

The settlers are lunatics. Yeah.

Tom's stern words to the Palestinians don't make it much better. If his idea of "put up or shut up" means "taking steps to accept the Jewish state, well, sorry: Arafat and his crew have publicly accepted Israel any number of times, while simultaneously turning out terrorist attacks with assembly line efficiency. We don't need steps towards acceptance. We need the killing to stop.

In a recent editorial, Yossi Klein Halevi did a great job of analyzing the facile thinking that makes people like Tom Friedman demonize the "settler movement", and to present territorial withdrawl as the magic formula that will make all our other troubles melt away.

Most Israelis have decided that withdrawal is both necessary and inevitable. And the man who built the settlements, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, now agrees with them.

Still, as we approach our moment of decision, the language of euphemism with which we speak about withdrawal feels increasingly untenable. As a people, we need to courageously confront the consequences of uprooting - what Sharon calls, with rare understatement, "painful concessions." We need an advance account of the enormity of that pain, not in order to dissuade ourselves from accepting the brutal decree of history, but to do so without illusions. The failure of the Oslo process hasn't released us from the necessity of withdrawal, but it does demand an end to self-deception. And a key element of that self-deception has been our unwillingness to concede the human, social, and historical consequences of withdrawal.

The deception begins with the sterile phrase, "land for peace." "Land" implies a pristine landscape, devoid of human presence. In fact, the formulation means a destruction of worlds - neighborhoods and homes, schools and synagogues, hangouts and hitchhiking stations. It isn't "land" and it probably won't be "peace" - at least not a peace that means recognition of our right to exist and respect for the inviolability of our borders.

The human toll that will result from the destruction of organic communities is incalculable. After the Sinai town of Yamit was destroyed in 1982, many never recovered; for some, the result was depression and divorce. At its peak, Yamit contained perhaps 5,000 residents. Increase Yamit by tens of thousands and you can begin to imagine the implications for Israeli society that will result from a similar uprooting - the real word is "transfer" - in Judea and Samaria.

And Yamit was barely a decade old when it was destroyed. By contrast, some communities in Judea and Samaria are well into their third decade. Unlike Yamit, a native generation has grown up in Judea and Samaria for whom Israel lies across the green line. And a third generation is now being formed there. Think of that next time you read a newspaper account that refers to children killed or wounded in a terrorist attack in Judea and Samaria as "settlers." Beyond the personal is the national trauma. The towns and villages of Judea and Samaria are the legacy and symbol of this generation of religious Zionists. The destruction of dozens of communities that form the emotional core of religious Zionism will be a blow from which it may not fully recover...

Failure to convey the full extent of the price we will pay for withdrawal will result in the world continuing to indulge Palestinian intransigence, while taking for granted our self-inflicted mutilation.

Full Article by Yossi Klein Halevi

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