In response to my article “An Exercise in Political Logic,” a reader asked a question especially appropriate for Passover: “How different is it between the President of Iran saying he will wipe Israel off the map and Bush continuously sending [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice to Israel to nag [the Israeli government] to give up one piece of land after another?”
It’s an old story. The nations have ever sought to wipe Israel—really the Torah—off the map, but they have done so in different ways. The Persians tried by means of physical conquest. The Greeks tried by means of philosophy. The Romans (Edom) tried by creating a “New Testament” to replace the “Old.”
In our own times, when “spin” is the name of politics, semantic methods are used to wipe Israel off the map. And now the nations have the active collaboration of Jews—of Israel’s own government—to facilitate Israel’s demise. The new method is called the “peace process.”
The new method got into high gear when Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin concocted the Oslo “peace process” by which Yasser Arafat, the godfather of international terrorism, was brought to Israel to protect Jews from terrorism with the help of 40,000 PLO terrorists.
After Oslo came to a dead end with Arafat’s Terror War, new ways and names had to be invented to restart the “peace process,” such as the “Road Map,” the “Saudi Plan,” the “Two State Solution,” etc.
Enter Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has reverted to Persia’s ancient policy of wiping Israel and the Torah off the map. Yes, with Ahmadinejad we have come full circle.
It so happens, however, that Ahmadinejad is a little too much for President Bush, if only because this Islamic imperialist also constitutes a threat to American interests in the Middle East. And so Mr. Bush repeatedly sends Condoleezza Rice to pressure Israel’s spineless Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to facilitate Israel’s piecemeal destruction by withdrawal from Judea, Samaria, and the Golan Heights.
Some may conclude that President Bush is a “moderate” Ahmadinejad insofar as he repeatedly sends Rice to Israel to nudge Olmert to do the work of wiping Israel off the map—in stages. It seems that Mr. Bush has adopted the Fatah as opposed to the Hamas policy toward Israel. Notice how he has Rice and Olmert singing in harmony that Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is a “moderate.” Come to think of it, wasn’t Arafat called a “moderate” in preparation for Oslo?
So we have come back to Oslo, haven’t we? Nothing really changes when it comes to wiping Israel off the map. Yes, but Israel has survived all its enemies.
