The 90`s

Labor Gov't opening a Pandora's Box

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of October 27th - November 2nd, 1994

Do you hear them?  Listen carefully, these are the cries of mourning, the muffled, plaintive wails of mothers, father, sisters and brothers; the anguish of those sitting shiva for the 22-plus Jews murdered while riding in a bus on Tel Aviv's Diezengoff Street. It is the mourning for Corporal Nachson Waxman, a 19 year old soldier who was martyred for his people.  The Diezengoff Bus Massacre brings the death toll to at least 85 since the signing of the Rabin Arafat deal last September.

Nackshon Waxman was a nice religious boy from the nice new Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot - considered "occupied Arab territory" by nearly the entire world.  The Diezengoff bombing occurred in the very heart of Israel. Like Yogi Berra says, "it's like Deja vu all over again." Now that the dust is settling, some probing questions need to be asked.  

How has internal Israeli security become so lax that soldier can be kidnapped in broad daylight near Ben-Gurion airport (Waxman was not the first soldier abducted this year inside Israel by Hamas) and bombings on Israeli main streets?  How is it that the Hamas terrorists who carried out the Yoel Salamon Street shooting-spree the week before had any access to rifles and grenades belonging to the Palestinian Police? How is it that no one apprehended these terrorists way before they were in center of town?  How is it that Israeli intelligence is unaware that Hamas is actively operating in Arab villages a scat few miles to the north and east of Jerusalem?

How come it doesn't bother the government when Yasser Arafat states, in Arabic, in Gaza, hat he has no intentions whatsoever of disarming Hamas?  Why isn't the government bothered by the PLO's failure to rescind its covenant calling for Israel's destruction? Arafat, again in Gaza said "I will never give my hand to the annulment of one paragraph of the Palestinian National Charter."    Statements made by people such a Farouq Qaddoumi, head of the PLO's political department, don't ruffle their feathers either. Qaddoumi asserts that "Israel will have to withdraw from all of the occupied territories including East Jerusalem." This, however, is the moderate stuff. Qaddoumi said recently on the PLO's radio that "the Zionists stole our land" and that "there is a state Israel which was established out of historic coercion and it must come to an end."

Why does the government permit the Palestinian Secret Police to operate freely throughout the territories and Jerusalem?  Why do they tolerate the existence of Feisal Hussein's PLO headquarters at Orient House in East Jerusalem, replete with its own security guards, visa requirements and the like?  Why does the government allow PLO activists from Gaza to freely travel to and address Israeli Arab audiences in Israel and say things like "the light which has shone over Gaza and Jericho will also reach the Negev and the Galilee,"  such were the utterances of Rashid Abu Shebak speaking recently in the Israeli Arab Negev village of Lakia.

Getting back to Cpl. Waxman: Would the government have been as hot and bothered over the affair if Mr. Waxman had been in civilian clothes, a resident of say Efrat in the territories - a religious settler? How come neither Prime Minister Rabin or Foreign Minister Peres attended Waxman's funeral?  How come they hardly ever attend any of the recent terrorist victim's funerals? Why were they in such a rush to ink a deal with King Hussein? Were they concerned that someone might notice that they agreed to cede 135 square miles of territory and retreat to the 1947 - not 1948 - border, that someone might notice they've agreed to give Jordan 13.2 billion gallons of Galilee water annually?  And who knows what else?

The government has accepted the principle that land gained as a result of successfully defending ourselves in wars of aggression ought to be, can be and will be returned in exchange for written documents of peace. They have long ago decreed there is nothing sacred about the territorial integrity of the Land of Israel.  The Syrians are calling for a return to the 1947 lines - the PLO wants everything the U.N. said it should have in 1948. These concepts are Pandora's bozes and once one has stepped inside it's as though you're Alice in Wonderland or Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.

Polls in Israel show Labor's support slipping dramatically.  Dr. Mina Zemach's Dahaf poll from two weeks ago reports that the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu would beat Labor's Yitzhak Rabin by 41 percent to 39 percent.  None too good for an incumbent prime minister. Gallup shows the two running dead-even and in overall Knesset elections, Dahaf shows Likud and its allies getting 41 percent of the seats and Labor and its allies getting 41 percent of the seats and Labor and its allies 36 percent.  In a nutshell, this says that the Israeli government still lacks a solid majority of public opinion to totally alter the course of Jewish destiny. To proceed further on the subjects of Syria, Jerusalem and the final status of Judea and Samaria, there needs to be elections now, to eliminate ambiguities and to give the victor a clear mandate from the people, so that if Labor is re-elected, at least the Nachshon Waxmans of the world will know what they're dying for and if Likud wins, hopefully there will be no more Nachson Waxmans.

The 90`s

"In Perspective" 

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of September 9th, 1994

There are three classic movies from the 1960's that did much to sensitize Americans (and some say Soviets) to the dangers inherent in nuclear proliferation and missile-rattling.  One film was "On the Beach," starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. The word destroys itself and the last outpost of humanity, Australia, only has a short time until it's engulfed by radiation.  This film was very tearful and touching. The other film, more satirical was "Dr. Stranglove," or "How I fell in Love with The Bomb."

"Dr. Stranglove" stars Peter Sellers and George C. Scott and shows the dire ramifications of loose nuclear controls and the whims of madmen.  The third film, "Planet of the Apes" (with Charlton Heston) demonstrates man's penchant for self-destruction, and in the sequel, mankind blows-up the earth with a super hydrogen bomb.

The people running Israel and America today obviously didn't see these films when they were showing in theaters and probably haven't run down to their local video store to rent them.  This is obvious based on some truly astonishing and ridiculous decisions taken in recent weeks by both governments. 

First on the list of bright decisions has been Israel's ongoing sales of kyrogenic triggers, which initiate nuclear explosions, to Egypt and Oman.

How did this get started?  As Barry Chamish and Joel Bainerman reported, Energy Minster Moshe Chachal gave Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a geological map of the Sinai uranium deposits can be found.

Egypt (in partnership with Saudi Arabia) promptly started mining the stuff, no doubt for civilian uses only.  Selling American-manufactured nuclear triggers and helping the Arabs find uranium is all part of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' plan to spread nuclear knowledge around the region, believing hat this will enhance the peace process and bring Israel and the Arabs closer together.  A lawsuit brought by an executive at Israel Aircraft Industries is pending in Israel's Supreme Court to block these sales.

The Saudis are engaged in a full-scale campaign to acquire nuclear weapons, this according to Muhammad al-Khilwei, the Saudi diplomat who recently received asylum here after "defecting" from Saudi Arabia in protest over their policies.  Al Khiweli purportedly has reams of documents to back these assertions up, which is why all parties concerned went along with his "defection" from an allied country.

Next on the list of big boo-boos is our country's decision to permit the sale of Saudi Arabia of a spy satellite that can take high-resolution pictures from a 2,000 mile radius and show detail with a resolution as fine as just three feet.  While control of the satellite will be in U.S. hands, the raw data generated by this satellite will be directly transmitted to Saudi Arabia. The security implications for Israel permitting Arab countries to look-in on Israel from above, renders Israel's entire defense apparatus naked.

The Clinton Administration is saying that if we don't sell this stuff, the Arabs will buy it from the Russians, the French of whomever.  The French aren't interested in selling this technology. Quoted in The New York Times, Jean-Daniel Levi, the director general of the French space agency said that "for us, beyond 15 feet (of high-resolution imagery) is military, and we do not believe this category of image should be offered for commercial sale."

Mind you, this satellite sale has been approved over the objections of the CIA, the Pentagon and Israel.  Unlike the AWACS controversy during the Regan years, American Jewry and Israel have been deafening in their silence on this satellite sale.  Protests have not been what you could call vociferous.

In the shadow of Pakistani Prime Minster Benazir Bhutto's visit to Yasser Arafat in Gaza is something that should really worry us.  Two weeks ago, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif loudly declared that his country "could produce a nuclear bomb" and predicted a "nuclear holocaust" if India ever invaded.  What the Bhutto and Arafat discussing? Extending Pakistan's nuclear umbrella over his soon-to-be PLO state? Moving a Pakistani knight into check position against Israel? Eventual diversions of technology?  What if Pakistan goes the way of Iran religiously and becomes overtly hostile to Israel? For that matter what if Egypt's secular rulers are overthrown by the increasingly vocal fundamentalists? And what of Egypt's Israeli-supplied nuclear triggers and uranium?

The whipped-cream on the sundae here is the ever-increasing porousness of Russia's nuclear stockpiles.  Hungry scientists and administrators are letting enriched uranium out of the country for big bucks. Some of this has been intercepted by the Germans, but, as in the drug trade, we have to assume that for every interdiction there must be a few shipments that get through.  as Jackie Mason would say, "Mister, you understand what I'm talking about here?"

The broad implications of all these atoms flying about are all too-clear for Israel.  The specter of nuclear blackmail or heaven-forbid, destruction I looming far-off on the horizon.  Helping the Arabs obtain nuclear capability is the gravest form of folly, far surpassing even the deal with the PLO.  These are the apples of appeasement, falling all over the ground from what was once Israel's might tree.

Yitzhak Shamir, in his new book "Summing-up" hits the nail right on the head: "It is rare in the history of nations for a government to make so many mistakes in such a short time...This chapter in Israel's history will go down as the perfect example of how one can lose the war after winning so many battles."

The 90`s

Can Rabin Make Peace with Likud?

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of August 12th - August 18th, 1994

The ghost of peace plans past has arisen from the depths of the diplomatic graveyard and is now cavorting about the corridors of the Knesset, Foggy Bottom and the Royal Palace inAmman.  I refer, naturally, to the rapid rapprochement between the State of Israel and the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.

Now don't get me wrong.  Peace with Jordan is a good thing.  The Knesset's 91-3 vote in favor is a clear indication of a broad Israeli consensus on the subject.  This contrasts mightily with the lack of Jewish parliamentary majority for the PLO deal.

So whose spirit has risen from the dead?  Why that of former Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, whose Allon Plan of 22 years ago is the born-again romance novel for Laborites everywhere.  

Simply put, Allon's plan was for Israel to retain the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem, gush Etzion and not much else, with the rest going back to Jordan's King Hussein in exchange for peace.  The wily king managed to pass opportunity by so often that he had to officially drop his claims to Judea and Samaria in favor of the PLO. This, however, will not keep Hussein out of the game.

Hussein made peace with Israel now for several reasons.  First, he has cancer and may not have long to live. He's concerned with his place in posterity and isn't afraid of being assassinated.  Second, he doesn't want to see a Palestinian State in Judea and Samaria with its capital in Jerusalem. Hussein is more steadfast on this than many of his Israeli counterparts today.

Even the New York Times (July 26) finally admits that Jordan's population "is some 80 percent Palestinian."  Hussein knows there are precious few Hashemites in the Hashemite kingdom. He doesn't want to be the victim of an anschluss between "the Palestinian entity" and his country - especially a union led by either Arafat or Hamas. 

How to best get around this?  Make a deal with Allon's people.  They don’t like Arafat anyway, and this would go down the collective Israeli throat with a whole lot more honey than the bile being swallowed from Arafat's spoon.

According to the deal between Israel and the PLO, there will be elections in the next year or so throughout the territories.  Look for a very strong candidacy on behalf of the king. He'll be spreading around the baksheesh along with a message of stability and prosperity by having the Palestinian Arabs align themselves with the kingdom.  Look for Israel to lend plenty of helping hands in this direction. Boxing Arafat out of Jerusalem in favor or Hussein is the first step on that road.

The economic objective between Rabin and Hussein will be to make the Jordanian dinar and Israeli shekel so indispensable to the average Arab that there will be no room for an independent Palestine to breathe.  Hussein could also prove to be more malleable concerning the Jewish communities in the territories, thereby alleviating a contentious issue for Israel for the next few years. 

The big question, though, is with all the rapport between the Israeli government and the PLO and Jordan, why is it so difficult for Labor to make peace with the rest of Israel? 

Why is it that Rabin compares Likud to Hamas as enemies of peace?  Why is it that Rabin accuses the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu of "dancing on blood" when Netanyahu criticizes the government's handling of the continuous wave of terrorism?  Why does the government demonize those Jews living in Judea, Samaria and the Golan as though they were somehow less Jewish than those living in Ramat Gan and less worthy of compassion from their own government?

How is it tolerated when Knesset member Dede Zucker of Meretz, as quoted in Yediot Aharanot, says, referring to Likudniks and their allies, that he "would rather live with Arabs than with those Jews" and that "I don't want shalom bayit [peaceful relations] with those people?"

You can't make a real peace with your friends and family.  Mature democracy and real statesmanship rest in the ability to accord respect to one's political opponents.  What this government is doing is analogous to our own government's handling of the antiwar protesters during the Vietnam era.  It's a form of Zionist political correctness in the extreme.

Lastly, by concluding themselves in this manner, the government's leaders set a poor example, and even worse tone, for the whole of Jewish society.  We all want peace, but peace must come first between Israel and Israel before grand gestures can be made to our enemies.

The 90`s

Why I Agree With Yossi Beilin

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of July 22nd - July 28th 1994

Can there by anything more awful for a Likudnik than to be in agreement with the likes of Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, a leader of the left wing of the Labor Party? 

Back in my idealistic student years, I was going around the Jewish community like Jeremiah at the gates to the city preaching the woeful message of rampant assimilation, galloping intermarriage and negative population growth.  Back then I got myself in heaps of hot water with the local leadership for daring to suggest that Jewish education and student funding were grossly under-funded.

So he comes Yossi Beilin, telling American Jews to keep our $500 million and put it into Jewish education and Israel experiences.  Beilin says Israel isn't some poor Third World Country, s stop with the pity and get with the new program. He couldn't be more right.

Overall, intermarriage in the U.S. exceeds 50 percent, which means that in the Reform, Conservative and unaffiliated communities it can range as high as 75 percent.  Dating non-Jews? The percentages are even higher. And young Jewish couples are probably not making hordes of babies. One to two kids is the fashionable number.

More than half of American Jewry is over 45, while the median age for Americans as a whole is something like 26.  You don’t have to be an actuary to know that declining Jewish marriages and few babies equals self-inflicted genocide.

So what is Beilin advocating? Get our kids in Jewish school and get our teenagers to Israel.  The Catholic Church has got it right - its parochial schools charge about $1,500 for annual tuition and it extends scholarships all over the place.

We should guarantee a full-time Jewish education through high school to every Jewish child who wants it.  Make the tuition so affordable that money becomes no object. Create a dual-tracked Jewish school system modeled after Israel's.  Religious schools for those who wants them and secular Jewish day schools for everyone else - heavy on Hebrew and Yiddish language, Jewish history (including the Bible), Jewish literature and culture with a heavy dose of Zionism thrown in.  Graduation present? Send all the high school seniors to Israel, where they'll see their education in action and bridge the widening gap between Israelis and American Jews.

Statistics all bear out that graduates of full-time Jewish schools intermarry far less frequently and are far more likely to be involved in the community.  The best thing my parents ever did for me was send me to Jewish schools and to Israel. I'm living proof.

Beilin is right on the button when it comes to how Israel is presented.  Nobody likes a loser, especially Americans. Stop with suffering, poverty, weakness and all that negative stuff.  Show Israel as a success story - and it is. Anyone who has been there lately can tell you about the 2 million cars choking Israel's highways; the American-style shopping malls and cable TV; the improved high-tech and real estate industries; the growing stock market.  When you count national health insurance and free tuition at the religious public schools, many Israelis have it better than many American Jewish families in Brooklyn and Queens.

Beilin is also correct in calling for the abolishment or wholesale restructuring of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency, both redundant and, excuse the pun, pork-barrel machines dispensing far more jobs and patronage than results.

Beilin is also right about democratic Jewish life, letting the common people share power with the plutocrats.  Let the community as a whole decide where the gelt should go.

Before this love fest goes any further, let me say that I totally disagree with Beilin's native notions about peace with the PLO, Syria and every other pseudo-reformed terrorist and tin-horned despot.  I subscribe to the Jabotinsky ideals of full-throttle capitalism - he doesn’t - and Jewish rights to settlement everywhere and anywhere in the land of Israel. Also, I vehemently reject Beilin's utopian plans to divide Jerusalem into separate semi-sovereign cantons.

I'm of the view that very few people - even left-wing Laborites - are all bad, so on the other stuff I'll hold my nose and go along with Beilin on saving American Jewry because this is an emergency, and emergencies call for radical thinking.

The 90`s

The truth is always the same old story

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of July 7th - July 13th, 1994

There are a million stories in this naked "peace process" and I'm going to tell you some of them.

It was 10:15 and I was working the day watch over at Likud office when hundreds of calls came in reporting crimes against Israel and the Jewish people's future.  It was a classic 1939, just like the Chamberlain case. My name is Barbanel and I carry a badge, actually a "Peace for Peace" button which is starting to look a tad quaint these days. 

In the course of an investigation I interviewed many people and asked for "just the facts, Ma'am," and so here they are, just the facts - in no particular order of importance - with some opinions thrown in to help you, the jury arrive at a verdict.

Fact: Serious discussions are taking place on Capitol Hill to divert at least half of the $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees toward cash compensation for Golan Heights residents for leaving their homes and farms.  This is according to House Banking Committee member representative Rick Lazio (R-Long Island). The funds were originally slated to help absorb Soviet immigrants. Fact: the Israeli government has also been floating the trial balloon of a $5-8 billion grant from the U.S. to pay for sophisticated high-tech monitoring equipment on the Golan if Israel withdraws.

Fact:  According to the Al HaMishmar, Arafat's Palestinian policemen from Jericho have been wandering around the territories and Jerusalem without asking permission or checking in with anybody.  Fact: If asked, the IDF would grant permission to these folks to travel around, but only if they would apply formally. 

Fact: Leaders of the Golan Heights Settlers Council and the Council of Settlements in Judea and Samaria report that Israel's security forces have tapped the phone lines of top settler leaders and organization.

Fact: In a Johannesburg mosque, in English,  Yasser Arafat told those assembled that "the jihad will continue" and that "you have to come and fight a jihad to liberate Jerusalem."  The Random House Dictionary defines jihad as "a holy war undertaken as a sacred duty to Muslims," or "a bitter crusade." Fact: Also at the mosque, Arafat said the Cairo Accords aren’t worth the paper they're written on by comparing his agreement with Israel and one that Mohammed made and subsequently violently vitiated after just one year.  Fact: Shimon Peres believes and accepts Arafat's rationalization that a jihad can be peaceful and about peace. Fact: Faisal Husseini, the "moderate" PLO leader in East Jerusalem said recently in Arabic that "our goal is to bring about the dissolution of the Zionist entity, gradually."

Fact:  Arafat and the PLO have violated every agreement they've made with Israel since Sept. 13.  Fact: They've not condemned terrorism and they've not rescinded their covenant calling for Israel's destruction.

Fact: From the signing of the "Israel-PLO peace accord on Sept. 13 of last year until April 21st of this year, 45 Israelis have been killed in terrorist acts.  Add this to the four Israelis wounded on April 18th in an ax attack on Jerusalem bus; the two Jews killed on May 17th by Hamas in Hebron and the two soldiers killed in Gaza on May 20th.  Fact: The government calls these people "victims of peace." Both Israeli's military establishment and the government warn that terrorist attacks should be expected for the indefinite future.

Fact:  The PLO has been pleading poverty with all the tenacity of a panhandler on the subway. Tales of woe abound.  The world community pledged $2.4 billion over the next two years to help pay for the Palestinian autonomy. The U.S. is committed to a half billion with $250,000,000 this year.

Fact: Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service, as reported in The Wall Street Journal reveals that the PLO has worldwide financial assets ranging from $8-10 billion and annual income of $1.5 - $2 billion.  The PLO owns major interests in airlines, airport duty-free shops and factories throughout the Third World and Eastern Europe. The PLO owns major interests in airlines, airport duty-free shops and factories throughout the Third World and Eastern Europe.  The PLO is a partner in Nigeria Airways, controls Air Zimbabwe and Kenya Airways and 25 percent of Nicaragua's airline. Additionally, the PLO is heavily involved in drug trafficking and still receives heavy annual subsidies from Libya and Iraq.

Fact: The PLO uses these funds for the personal enrichment of its leadership, to train terrorists and for the "struggle against the Zionists."  The funds are not used to better the conditions of their own people. Fact: The PLO has picked up the august brokerage house of Morgan Stanley to manage its assets.

Fact: The newsletter Inside Israel reports that Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, usually the point-man for government initiatives, has a plan to return Israel to the 1949 borders and a division of Jerusalem into autonomous zones where Palestinian Arabs will control vast sections of East Jerusalem with border posts under U.N. control.

Fact: The government is moving swiftly to extend autonomy over the whole of Judea and Samaria within months.  Fact: Negotiations will commence on the return of hundreds of thousands of Arabs to the territories from homes they left in 1967.

Fact: Virtually every major Israeli public opinion poll shows 66 to 75 percent of the public is opposed to a Golan withdrawal.