Doubting Thomas

They?!?!

After Binyamin Netanyahu won the premiership in 1996, Thomas wrote a column title "The man who voted twice." He started by focusing on the right to vote accorded to assassin Yigal Amir. Thomas claimed that by first killing PM Rabin and then by voting for Netanyahu Amir exercised the franchise twice. His assertion is based on the unsupported notion that Netanyahu would not have won the premiership without the killing of Rabin. That is a dubious notion.
At the time Rabin was killed, Netanyahu had just passed him in popularity polls. The assassination turned the public against Likud and without the terror surge of February to March 1996, Netanyahu never would have won in June. As it was he squeaked by. Netanyahu won despite the assassination not because of it.
As an observer of the Middle East, Mr. Friedman should have known that. But real analysis is not his purpose. Slander is. He concluded that column "The bad guys won."
Three months after a wave terror swept Israel without Arafat lifting a finger to stop it, Friedman's only bad guys in the Middle East were the democratically elected leader of Israel and the people who supported him.
His slander is on display again today in "Rooting for the Good Guys." After asserting that PM Sharon changed his mind lest Israel would find itself

... in an apartheid situation - a minority of Jews would be ruling over a majority of Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

There is no mention of the risks involved in disengagment. Yesterday Ha'aretz reported that outgoing Chief of Staff Gen Ya'alon warned that disengagement will be followed by greater violence. In another article Ha'aretz reported that related relaxing of security positions will also likely lead to an increase in terror.
MEMRI just quoted Hamas leader Khaled Mesha'al saying that his organization's current calm is just a wait for a more opportune time to start terror up again.
So there is risk in Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. It is the assessment of Israel's military and the threat of Hamas. Yet Thomas disregards all that. What does he focus on?:

But this withdrawal is a threat to the Jewish religious nationalists. Their goal is not peace, but to conquer Israeli society with their messianic vision and biblical map. They killed Mr. Rabin for getting in their way and have threatened to do the same to Mr. Sharon. Some of these settlers will not go down quietly.

First of all, as noted above, withdrawal will likely not bring peace. (Friedman should be a little chastened. He was a champion of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon, claiming that it helped Israel. Here's an abstract of "Taking the High Ground":

Thomas L Friedman Op-Ed column holds that at time when Israeli rightist parties are debating whether to approve Prime Min Ariel Sharon's proposal for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, it is worth recalling Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000; disputes contention that withdrawal was failure; holds that with UN-approved pullout, Israel completely reversed its situation; maintains that it went from holding strategic and moral low ground, to holding strategic and moral high ground

Maybe Israel holds the "moral high ground" along its northern border but the strategic high ground may be a different matter. Yesterday the Jerusalem Post reported:

The air force has increased its reconnaissance over Lebanon as the military has reinforced its forces along the northern border to address any attempt by Hizbullah to escalate tension.

Certain reserve units have also been instructed to prepare for training and be available for immediate call-up should action be required against Hizbullah attacks.

According to military sources, reserve units have been training in the North to prepare for possible confrontation with Hizbullah. They will work in conjunction with the air force and other special forces to thwart attempts to fire rockets into northern Israel.

Being so wrong hasn't really taught him humility.)
While certainly there is a religious component to to the belief those religious residents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza who see the lands as part of their Jewish heritage, I suspect that the vast majority of them would object less to the withdrawal if they really thought it would bring peace. But non-religious Jews, such as Datya Yitzchaki also see a historical significance to Gaza:

Kfar Darom was among the 11 settlement points established in the Negev in 1946 and bravely withstood the Egyptian siege of many long months under the most difficult of conditions. That is the most impressive story of courage in all Israel's wars, says historian Aryeh Yitzhaki. And this week, we received a copy of a letter sent by Avraham Diament, the legendary district commander, who led the group of young men and women that lived in Kfar Darom during that difficult war, to the prime minister:

Mr. Ariel Sharon, my dear friend, shalom and greetings, As the district commander of Kfar Darom in 1946-48, I am appealing to you with an entreaty from the depth of my heart that you, rather than disengage, connect! How much better would it be that a preeminent fighter like yourself be remembered as the prime minister rather than as the prime destroyer, Heaven forbid.

I sign with genuine fear for the fate of the settlements of the Gaza Strip in the west and east, and with greatest respect, A. Diament.

This isn't strictly speaking an exclusively religious issue.
And it wasn't settlers who killed PM Rabin, it was Yigal Amir who wasn't even a settler. His brother and two other acquaintances of his were also implicated in the crime. His use of the word "[t]hey" is false and inflammatory.
Once again Thomas shows his contempt for citizens of Israel who live outside of the Green line. What he has not shown is how disengagement will make Israel safer.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Doubting Thomas.

Posted by SoccerDad at April 20, 2005 05:33 AM | TrackBack