Ezra Ben-Shalom
jewishstate. com

30-3-2005

Last week, Joel Beren, the Chief Executive Officer of the United Jewish Council of Greater Toledo, wrote an article for the Toledo Blade entitled, "If Jews are a minority, Israel can't be a state". In it, he suggests that Israel must go ahead with the Sharon disengagement plan. But Prime Minister Sharon himself has not really tried to justify the handing over of land to an Arab terrorist organization intent on destroying Israel. He only points to a letter from a leader on a distant continent, President Bush. This letter will supposedly allow Israel to maintain its control over strategic settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria, despite the terrible precedent of Israeli withdrawals in exchange for nothing. But previous presidents of the United States had already affirmed their support for Israel's right to land in the disputed territories.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the real influence of this letter on US foreign policy. Practically before the ink dried, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared in an interview with the Washington Post, "Large population centers have grown up [in the disputed territories], and that will need to be taken into account in a final status agreement, but that final status agreement has to be negotiated. In other words, how that is taken into account has to be negotiated." Rice is saying that there are not any guarantees for the territories; their role in negotiations is not clear. Perhaps they could be traded against the so-called right of return or other ridiculous demands. Clearly, the US does not firmly stand by its engagements. Every president has a different agenda, but they are all quite distinct from the grand strategy of the Jewish State.

Beren overlooks Sharon's argument and offers his own: giving away Gaza, and nearly all of Samaria and Judea, is necessary to the demographic viability of the Jewish State. Now, demography presents a real concern for the Jewish State. The solutions are strict controls on immigration, essentially equal rights for all non-Jews who accept the Jewish State, expulsion for non-Jews who want to destroy the Jewish State, and deprogramming for anti-Zionist Jews. Israel also needs to recognize that every religion that maintains a majority invests a lot of energy into the proselytizing of non-believers. Even if the Arabs in the territories did not exist, Muslim citizens of Israel would soon overtake Israeli Jews, if the current birthrate continues. A higher standard of living will decrease the rapid expansion of the Muslim population. Aggressive proselytizing would also take a bite out of this compound growth.

For Beren, however, the only hope of salvation is to hand away almost all of Judea and Samaria, and all of Gaza. Now, no one who understands demography would suggest keeping all of the territories until the end of time. But Beren fails to persuade me that demographic concerns mean that we have to give away land to a terrorist organization openly dedicated to destroying the Jewish State - in exchange for nothing. Beren even fails to convince himself, closing his article with these lines, "Once land has been sacrificed for 'peace', will peace come? That is the question that every Israeli asks and for which no one has a definitive answer." In other words, "I have lost hope and I do not know if this will explode in my face or not, but would you like to come join me?"

Beren affirms that, "Israel cannot survive as a Jewish state [Jewish State]" unless we recognize that "there is no choice but to move forward with the evacuation of Gaza and enter into final negotiations on West Bank [Judea and Samaria] lands." But there will not be any "final negotiations", at least not until the current leadership of Arab extremists is long gone and forgotten. Indeed, there is something terribly pathetic about Beren's idea of the future, something déja vu. Reading this sentence, I feel the kind of sadness that you feel when a friend has abandoned the goal of self-preservation in exchange for an illusion. It reminds me of a child getting on a cattle car, talking about the new life that he is going to have "in the east".

Let us not forget that the American Jewish community totally let down its foreign kinsmen in their time of greatest need. While boatloads of Jews were approaching the eternal Jewish Homeland; and Britain, Arab extremists, and the whole world were forcing them back to Nazi Germany; most American Jews argued that Judaism was only a religion, not a nation.

Let us use logic and resolve to settle Israel's serious demographic problems, and not the chanting that jihadist terrorists share with us.

How can we differentiate rational thought from chanting? It is simple. If we judge Arab terrorists on what they have done, and on what they have said to each other, rather than on what they have said to us, we do not risk losing our hold on reason. If we listen to what we want to hear, and mix hope with reality, we choose the path of Identification with the Aggressor (IA), which is already killing us.

Why do pacifists, anti-Zionist Jews, and the news media talk so infrequently about the Phased Plan? Arab extremists have published their Mein Kampf, but we turn away from it. Surely, there are lots of people in Europe and America that embrace the Phased Plan, but prefer to talk about the imagined crimes of the Jewish Devil.

Let us face reality. Arab extremists recognize that they cannot destroy Israel in one blow, as they tried to do in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. They understand that their only hope is to kill children today, show small kindnesses and ask for land tomorrow, kill children again next week, and show small kindnesses and ask for land at the end of the month. This is the pattern. A combination of terror and false hope, it is an effective way of imposing a new identity on a victim through IA. We only vaguely understand the dynamics of this psychological process, and we will surely perish unless we make an effort to comprehend this mental evolution and reverse it.

The Palestinian Authority has re-affirmed the Phased Plan millions of times through words and deeds. Immediately after signing the Oslo Accords, Arafat explained in an interview that it was all part of the Phased Plan. For Beren's study, I include a copy of the Phased Plan below.

THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION'S
Phased Plan for Israel's Destruction

Text of the Phased Plan resolution:

The Palestinian National Council:

On the basis of the Palestinian National Charter and the Political Programme drawn up at the eleventh session, held from January 6-12, 1973; and from its belief that it is impossible for a permanent and just peace to be established in the area unless our Palestinian people recover all their national rights and, first and foremost, their rights to return and to self-determination on the whole of the soil of their homeland; and in the light of a study of the new political circumstances that have come into existence in the period between the Council's last and present sessions, resolves the following:

1. To reaffirm the Palestine Liberation Organization's previous attitude to Resolution 242, which obliterates the national right of our people and deals with the cause of our people as a problem of refugees. The Council therefore refuses to have anything to do with this resolution at any level, Arab or international, including the Geneva Conference.

2. The Liberation Organization will employ all means, and first and foremost armed struggle, to liberate Palestinian territory and to establish the independent combatant national authority for the people over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated. This will require further changes being effected in the balance of power in favour of our people and their struggle.

3. The Liberation Organization will struggle against any proposal for a Palestinian entity the price of which is recognition, peace, secure frontiers, renunciation of national rights and the deprival of our people of their right to return and their right to self-determination on the soil of their homeland.

4. Any step taken towards liberation is a step towards the realization of the Liberation Organization's strategy of establishing the democratic Palestinian state specified in the resolutions of previous Palestinian National Councils.

5. Struggle along with the Jordanian national forces to establish a Jordanian-Palestinian national front whose aim will be to set up in Jordan a democratic national authority in close contact with the Palestinian entity that is established through the struggle.

6. The Liberation Organization will struggle to establish unity in struggle between the two peoples and between all the forces of the Arab liberation movement that are in agreement on this programme.

7. In the light of this programme, the Liberation Organization will struggle to strengthen national unity and to raise it to the level where it will be able to perform its national duties and tasks.

8. Once it is estabished, the Palestinian national authority will strive to achieve a union of the confrontation countries, with the aim of completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory, and as a step along the road to comprehensive Arab unity.

9. The Liberation Organization will strive to strengthen its solidarity with the socialist countries, and with forces of liberation and progress throughout the world, with the aim of frustration all the schemes of Zionism, reaction and imperialism.

10. In light of this programme, the leadership of the revolution will determine the tactics which will serve and make possible the realization of these objectives.

The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization will make every effort to implement this programme, and should a situation arise affecting the destiny and the future of the Palestinian people, the National Assembly will be convened in extraordinary session.

Joel Beren's reply

Sir-

For your review attached is the original version of my editorial before the Toledo Blade changed the headline and edited it. I am flattered that an article in an almost insignificant Midwestern community of only 3600 Jews has caused such a stir with you. If your interpretation is that I do not care, or that I am misinformed, or that I am anti-Zionist, you are sadly mistaken.

A closer and more critical review of the article would lead the reader to recognize the conundrum we (Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews) are in as regards Israel's current geo-political position.

Except in a dream world can you truly envision a scenario where non-Jews are forcibly removed from Israel? The answer is no. Not because it has never been done before (usually and historically it has happened to us), but because we are Jews and like it or not we have a moral obligation and a relationship with G-d that thankfully (and often painfully) has kept us from reacting like those of lesser moral integrity.

Only time will reveal the outcome, but I can tell you this about where I stand. Should we make these drastic territorial concessions and the violence continues, I will be the first to write an editorial supporting the forced exodus of every Palestinian in Judea and Samaria, and the erection of a bubble around and over Gaza (what sane person would want it under any circumstances).


Joel S. Beren, CEO
United Jewish Council of Greater Toledo
www.jewishtoledo.org