By Chris Powell
This week as Connecticut marked the anniversary of Gaza’s invasion of Israel and the slaughter, rape, and abduction of hundreds of Israelis, there were more calls for a ceasefire not only between Gaza and Israel but also between Israel and Lebanon, whose de-facto government, Hezbollah, has joined Gaza’s war, launching hundreds of rockets into Israel’s north.
Some ceasefire calls in Connecticut came from Jews, including members of Jewish Voice for Peace, who accused Israel of genocide for defending itself and urged that U.S. military supplies to Israel be stopped.
In calling for a ceasefire members of Jewish Voice for Peace joined other protesters in Connecticut and around the country in blaming Israel for the latest carnage. Few of them protested last October after Gaza’s attack on Israel. Apparently that slaughter of innocents didn’t strike them as genocide. Indeed, those calling for a ceasefire are not really calling for peace at all. The history of Israel and its neighbors since Israel’s re-establishment by the United Nations in 1948 has been a history of ceasefire after ceasefire — that is, constant war.
Ceasefires in the war against Israel are just pauses allowing the aggressors to restock and regroup for their next attack. Tired of the ceasefire racket, Israel now may strive to settle the conflict forever by destroying all those committed to its destruction, though about half of Israelis seem to be as deluded as Connecticut’s Jewish Voice for Peace.
For the conflict’s only issue has been Israel’s simple existence. No peace is possible until Israel’s right to exist is guaranteed by those who have sworn to destroy the country, and it seems that no one among Israel’s proclaimed enemies — Gaza and Hamas, Lebanon and Hezbollah, and their patron, the theocratic fascist regime in Iran — will ever make peace rather than a mere ceasefire.
That’s because any leader of Israel’s enemies who sincerely offers peace — that is, recognition, legitimacy, and security — will soon be assassinated by the irreconcilables in his own ranks, just as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Egyptian irreconcilables, religious crazies, for making peace.
Of course Israel has its irreconcilables and religious crazies too, one of whom assassinated Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin in 1995 for trying to make peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader, Yasser Arafat. But irreconcilables aren’t yet a majority in Israel, even if Palestinian irreconcilables soon may make them a majority.
President Bill Clinton crafted a peace plan that gave Arafat and the PLO almost everything they demanded. Israel’s government accepted it but Arafat still rejected it, knowing that if he signed it he would be signing his own death warrant.
So the war and ceasefires continue — in large part because the United Nations, Iran, and even the United States subsidize the people ruled by the irreconcilables in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Those people have no incentive to demand peace from their rulers as long as their rulers don’t have to provide basic services to them and instead can devote their resources to war.
Just as thoughtless as the calls for another ceasefire are the calls — echoed by all members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation — for a “two-state solution.” These calls are misdirected at Israel, which long accepted a “two-state solution” in principle while Hamas and Hezbollah always rejected it and still do.
Those calling for a “two-state solution” seem not to have noticed that prior to last October two states were already in effect, since Israel had evacuated Gaza in 2005. Indeed, since Hezbollah long has been the de-facto ruler of southern Lebanon, prior to last October a three-state solution was in effect. But in 2006 Gazans elected Hamas, which quickly resumed its war against Israel. Even now Gazans prefer their own destruction by Israel to letting Israel have peace within any borders.
Israel’s enemies are unlikely to accept any peace of co-existence until their own states are leveled and the world stops subsidizing their incorrigibility.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
-END-
Chris Powell column 