Friday, May 29, 2009
"A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, 'Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase...'" -Exodus 1-8
In the double-speak of the Arab Israel conflict, the latest coded phrase that is circling the globe is "natural growth." Most recently, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton - according to many liberal, American Jews, "Israel's greatest friend" - recently declared,
"He [Obama] wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions."
As with so many other existential issues that confront the Jewish State from water rights to security barriers to prisoner releases, the issue of "natural growth" is but another frog in the saucepan, slowly boiling to death. It is now revealed truth that Jews must not be permitted to increase their population in certain areas. Most statesmen and the media (other than Palestinian Arabs) argue that Jews must not be permitted to even reside in certain areas. Now, if those two obviously racist conditions were imposed on, say, African Americans, (which, of course they were for hundreds of years in America) today, the world would burst its collective blood vessels with moral outrage. But when applied to Jews in the Middle East, hardly an eyebrow is raised. Indeed, such racial restrictions have taken on the "Progressive" seal of approval.
Not only are such obvious ethnic cleansing dictums acceptable to most of the world, but they are even compulsory for many Left wing Israelis. Peace Now recently claimed that the "bluff of natural growth is just one of the tricks the government is using to keep it from fulfilling its obligation to freeze settlement building..."
In 1726, King Charles II of Austria, decreed that only one male from each Jewish family be allowed to marry in an attempt to halt "natural growth" of his kingdom's Jewish population. "Toleration taxes" (not dissimilar to the sanctified "Jizya" (poll tax) payments required of Jews and other "Infidels" for centuries under Muslim rulers) were imposed on Jewish populations throughout Eastern Europe. Outright residential restrictions in the form of squalid ghettos are well-known and were not abolished, for the most part, until the last quarter of the 19th century. In 1813, the newly formed Kingdom of Bavaria enacted the "Jew Edict of 1813" whose discriminatory provisions chillingly pre-figured both the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and the current policy of the Obama administration:
"Section 12: The Number of Jewish families in places where there already exists a Jewish settlement is not allowed to increase, as a rule, rather it should be gradually diminished if it is too large."
Were such strictures placed on any other ethnic group, especially, Arabs within pre-1967 Israel, to cite just one particularly relevant example, the Arab and Muslim world would erupt violently, not to mention compelling righteous indignation throughout the West.
Dr. Andrew Bostom points out that the PLO Charter of Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's putative "peace partner," sought to reduce the Jewish population of Israel to 5% of its present number and to then assimilate Jews as traditional second-class citizens of a Muslim state.
Among the ancient Jewish communities of the Arab and Muslim world, "natural growth" has been eliminated either by expulsion of entire populations or, as in the case of Iran's hostage Jewish community, been reduced to certain extinction (the birth rate for Iranian Muslims is nearly 17 per thousand, while the tiny Jewish population yields less than 2).
In no other conflict in the world today - from Sri Lanka to Pakistan to Thailand- does the world demand that a sovereign state impose demographic suicide. Not even after 400,000 murders in Darfur does the world seek to curb an Arab birth rate. If only, the argument goes, there were fewer Jews affronting their Arab neighbors by simply living, then peace could be achieved.
And we all know that if every Jew in the region were to disappear overnight, peace would break out spontaneously.
Absolutely and even repulsively deplorable. Makes my skin crawl with revulsion. It would be one thing if they advanced such ideas along intellectually and morally clarified grounds, drawing distinctions, weighing and contrasting differences in the balance, adding scope and commensurate depth and contexts, etc.
But it's all advanced as little more than a political slogan, together with that cadenced rhetorical style that, in contexts such as this, becomes positively inane, boorish and foppish. What abyssal dullity, what oafish stupidity, yet it's advanced with a rhetorical gloss and people listen and nod their heads.
Change!
For better or for worse, Israel and the Palestinians are currently enemies -- in spite of Israel supplying electricity, food, fuel, and jobs to the Palestinians.
For better or for worse, one does not achieve peace between enemies by negotiation -- not unless there is a high degree of mutual respect. And, for better or for worse, achieving respect between enemies has historically happened when one side pummels the other side to a pulp, thereby gaining respect that wasn't there before (i.e. "I didn't think I needed to be afraid of him before, but now I do -- better sign a treaty").
And, for better or for worse, demographics have been just about the ONLY weapon Israel has used effectively against the Palestinians!
The Palestinians will never come to the negotiating table in good faith, if they know that they need only wait it out. The way to get them talking is to make it clear that, if they make a deal now, it's better than anything they'll get next year, which in turn is better than what will come later.
This is why Israel, after capturing the West Bank in 1967, waited nearly ten years before settling it in earnest. Israel waited for someone, anyone, to sign a peace treaty in exchange for those territories. There were no takers. Finally Israel gave up on holding land in escrow for her enemies, and effectively said, "if you don't want it, we do".
And THEN, all of a sudden, land-for-peace started looking very good to some people.
It does not surprise me in the slightest that the Palestinians want Israeli activity to freeze. Israeli growth is one of her subtlest and most powerful weapons, one that the Palestinians really hate; of course, they want Israel to throw her weapons away. (They're enemies, remember?)
In fact, for the longest time, Israelis responded to Palestinian terror attacks by establishing a new settlement where the terror attack had been. (Please note: this was very effective, long-term, in cutting down such terror attacks.)
Let's go with what works, shall we? Israel has been subjected to Palestinian terrorism since at least 1964 (when the PLO was established). Israel should announce -- when terror stops, and STAYS stopped, we will negotiate, and maybe that negotiation will involve dismantling a settlement or two, depending on what we're offered for them in return. In the meantime, every rocket fired at Sderot will mean settlement expansion... as will every day that Gilad Shalit is not returned.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline