In the first in what I hope will become a regular feature on Not Another Israel Blog – I will respond to Caroline Glick’s weekly column in The Jerusalem Post. Let’s get started.
In her latest contribution, Caroline targets Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his new disengagement plan, which calls for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a few isolated settlements in the northern West Bank. She wastes no time in utilizing the weapon of mass destruction when it comes to discrediting peace plans. She claims by that Sharon’s new disengagement plan “comes straight from Yossi Beilin’s drawing board.” Well then, if that’s the case, then it really must be a bad idea. But let’s not stop there. By this logic, anything connected to Yossi Beilin is bad for Israel, bad for the Jews.
Don’t insult our intelligence, Caroline. Criticize the plan on its own merits, not because leaving the Gaza Strip was once the idea of leftists like Beilin and former Labor Chairman Amram Mitzna. (By the way, why do you need to pick on Amram? The poor guy lasted just a few months as head of the Labor Party and didn’t even have a chance to implement any peace plans whatsoever.) Oh, and the last time I checked it’s not just Sharon and the left-wing extremists who brought us Oslo who want to quit Gaza, but also the vast majority of Israelis. The use of the "Beilin weapon" is is just a cheap emotional appeal to the visceral reaction most Israelis have to anything connected to the architect of the Oslo Accords.
Caroline also argues that allowing international troops into Gaza “would automatically harm Israel’s national interest of ensuring the security of its citizens and the inviolability of its territory.” Well, keeping international troops out of the Strip has certainly been effective in recent years. Just ask the families of the soldiers killed two weeks ago in Gaza during operations to protect settlers. The difference here is that when it comes to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, “the inviolability of its territory” of which Caroline speaks includes settlements. Only this time, we will be removing the settlements in the Gaza Strip. No more Israeli presence in the Strip. End of the Greater Israel dream. Time to get over it.
Caroline cites continuing attacks by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, despite the presence of UN troops there, and the UN’s concealing of information regarding the Hezbollah kidnapping/killing of three IDF troops along the border as another reason not to trust Israel's security to international forces.
I’m not going to fall into the trap of defending the UN’s actions here, but it seems to me that the border with Egypt south of the Gaza Strip, where I have done reserve duty and saw UN patrols carrying out inspections to ensure that both sides adhere to the peace treaty, has been pretty quiet since that handshake between Begin, Carter and Sadat. But I’m sure Caroline would have opposed that peace treaty too, had she been old enough to do so.
On another note, Caroline writes that the IDF troops abducted by Hezbollah in October 2000 “were murdered by their kidnappers.” Let’s give Benny Avraham, Omar Sawayid and Adi Avitan the respect they deserve. They died during battle or later on from those wounds sustained during battle. Saying they were murdered suggests that they were weak and incapable of defending themselves. I’d like to believe that they gave those Hezbollah bastards a fight, and died doing so. And I’m sure Hezbollah would have preferred taking them alive, because the soldiers would have been more valuable in ransom negotiations with Israel.
It's too bad Caroline feels that she must fan the flames of fear to prevent Israel from leaving the Gaza Strip because I'm sure she could make a contribution to a better policy that will indeed ensure the safety of more Israelis. Maybe it's about getting ratings?
There's so much more I could comment on in her column, but that's all I have for time today.
