19/10/00 (unpublished)

We have lost the war

Amazing, isn't it: only Israelis are mortified that Palestinians array their children in the line of fire.

By: Sam Orbaum

Oh, I'm going to get hell for this, but I can't evade this monstrous conclusion: My fellow Israelis, we have lost the war.
    Militarily, diplomatically, politically, emotionally, socially -- in every way but admittedly -- we have lost. We cannot win.
    Humaneness, it turned out, is our soft underbelly, so vulnerable to the astonishing inhumanity of the enemy. We could have wiped out the Palestinians in one day between breakfast and lunch, but we could not. We could not acquiesce our ingrained morality, and we will not accept as a price of victory the consequences we all know would follow: the unstoppable worldwide jihad against Jews everywhere, the frenzied armies of Allah pouring over our borders, the unforgiving global wrath, even our own soul-searching.
    We cannot even say the words "The Temple Mount is ours" because we're afraid of what CNN will say.
    We cannot win a war in which the very act of self-defense incites mass outrage and greater savagery, in which laughably meek retaliation is hypocritically decried as "excessive use of force."
    The IDF, unbeatable against any army, has not figured out how to stop children throwing rocks. The government, not since the Begin era, has not had the courage to eschew the spineless doubletalk of diplomacy to boldly state what is true and what is just. The public still cannot desensitize war fatalities.
    The difference between the Jews and the Arabs is still the same difference between the words of Golda Meir and the words of Gamal Nasser. In 1967, Meir solemnly stated that to lose one life would be to lose the war; Nasser proclaimed that he would be willing to sacrifice one million Egyptians to win the war. Is Yasser Arafat any less cynical?
    They who inflict judgment on Israel, with their smug self-righteousness, conveniently ignore a startling truth: Israeli society cares more about the safety and welfare of Palestinians than Palestinian society. (Notwithstanding, of course, the crocodile tears Arabs shed so copiously for the gains of publicity.) 
    Could you imagine a Jewish mother allowing her 10-year-old son on the battlefield?
    The Arabs don't abide by the accepted rules of warfare, but callow critics cry foul -- against "the most moral army-at-war in history."
    This is why we cannot beat the Palestinians at war.
    We have not won at war since 1973, and that's being charitable, because half our hearts secretly admit moral defeat. For that matter, delving deeper into the mysterious failure of our vaunted might, Israel has only rarely won a battle outright since Entebbe in 1976. Just about any other confrontation one can think of has, in one way or another, turned sour. Since the total elation on that one day 24 years ago, Israel has been only humbled -- militarily or diplomatically. That includes the army, the political leadership, diplomatic hasbara, the Mossad (too often and too spectacularly), though apparently not the GSS.
    Our government cannot even provide its citizenry with the most basic provision of a democratic state: the provision of security. Palestinians are brazenly firing into bedrooms in Gilo (where until recently I lived with my children), mocking the inert IDF tank overlooking their village; interminably laying siege on Psagot; commandeering bridges to Elazar and Efrat. This has been going on for weeks! It is as if we do not have the right to defend ourselves. Where else in the world, when else in history, would such a thing be tolerated?
    The Palestinians, brilliant at manipulating both Israel's fatal vulnerabilities and the gullibility of world opinion, are right now dictating the terms of surrender.
    It is so assured that all Israel can do to limit the damage is to unilaterally create an independent Palestinian state -- a macabre irony -- but even that would blow up in our faces, because the Palestinians would refuse!
    Yasser Arafat has absolutely no compunction about governing the situation, and deepening Israel's frustration and helplessness, in any way he sees fit. Nothing is sacred -- signed agreements or human life. Ehud Barak is utterly unable to seize the initiative of decisive action.
    It is only a question of what, and how much, the Palestinians demand.
    If there is one hope to cling to, it is that we escape this debacle with a definitive conclusion: the one result we must arrive at, the total separation of the Palestinians from the Israelis. 
    We have lost the war; we can still win freedom from them.