Not in Pleasant Ways

Mekor Rishon, June 30, 2000
Editorial by Emanuel Shilo

 There are two options available now to the inhabitants of Judea,
 Samaria, and Gaza and the [Jordan] Valley and their supporters
 throughout Israel, who want to aid them in their struggle against the
 unbridled plans of the Barak government.

 One way is to attempt to remove the threat by means of a referendum.
In order to be successful in this, the majority of the public must be
persuaded that the agreements are destructive, dangerous, and immoral.
Informational efforts and propaganda of this type are not necessarily
transmitted by logical reasons. No less important than them are
appearance and image. In order to reach the mind of the urban
television viewer, one must look good and be nice. Statements that
sound extreme to the average ear, disturbances of the public order,
attacks against members of the government - all these do not
photograph well and lessen the sympathy of the majority of the public
for the demonstrators. This mode of struggle is nice, sympathetic, and
mainly - not harmful.

 Whoever adopts it will not escape media criticism for the very fact
of his being an opponent of peace who does not understand that he must
joyfully evacuate his home, but, on the other hand, he will not be
charged with incitement to murder Barak and responsibility for the
assassination of Rabin, no one will call for his investigation or his
being placed on trial, and the public at large may even be sympathetic
to him.

 This way is nice and pleasant. There is only one problem with it: it
is not effective under the current circumstances. The inhabitants of
the Golan, who adopted this method of action, were saved temporarily
thanks to Assad's insistence upon 100 meters next to the Sea of
Galilee. If Assad had demonstrated minimal flexibility, their chances
in a referendum would have been slim. And all this, when we are
talking about the Golan Heights - where there is no intifada, no
refugees, or rule over a foreign people, but only bubbling streams,
breathtaking landscapes, and inhabitants who were sent by the Labor
government and who are not, Heaven forbid, "settlers."

 If the inhabitants of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza were to adopt the
method of sterile informational efforts, there would be no chance of
defeating the well-oiled propaganda machine of the left, that has been
chipping away for years at their image and at public support for their
positions. If Barak succeeds somehow in surviving the frequent crises
that are generated by his shaky coalition, in arriving at Camp David,
and in signing an agreement there - the probability of stopping him in
a nice manner is nonexistent. Israel's journalists will mobilize, the
people of Israel will undergo a media brainwashing, and the majority
of the public will not dare say no to Clinton and to the entire world
and reject the signed agreement.

 If the settlers want, not only to make noises of a struggle, but also
to win, they have no choice but to turn to the other, less sympathetic
way: the forceful way. At the basis of this way lies the assumption
that the forced evacuation of settlements or the abandonment of their
inhabitants to a foreign and hostile rule are not legitimate, and are
contradictory to an unwritten social contract of the Jewish people and
the State of Israel. The very thought, that it is possible to compel
50,000 people to be uprooted from their settlements, in which they
have already raised a second and third generation, or to live in
intolerable conditions under the rule of corrupt and hostile
gangsters, is the product of the cruel totalitarianism from the
distorted school of the Israeli left. Such a plan would be
inconceivable in any normal country, and even in Israel it is accepted
with understanding only when it refers to "settlers," the veteran
punching bag of the fashioners of public opinion in the country. In
such a struggle, care is to be taken to avoid violence, which is only
harmful, but a forceful and unambiguous message is also to be
delivered: we will not accept the decision of evacuation and
abandonment, even if a majority of the public supports it. The
democratic majority cannot decide, for its benefit and convenience, to
cast out the minority as a scapegoat. The plan will fail, because we
are determined to cause it to fail, and we are have the ability to do
so. Barak cannot deliver the goods to Arafat.

 Emanuel Shiloh