Krauthammer: Israel has abandoned Oslo messianism

By Etgar Lefkovits  
June 11, 2002 
Jerusalem Post
 
Dr. Charles Krauthammer "Guardian of Zion" speech 

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's vision of a "new Middle East," 
as espoused over the last decade, is a lethal form of secular 
messianism that has led to the worst bloodletting in Israel's 
history, internationally acclaimed American columnist Charles 
Krauthammer said last night. "Israel has at long last awoken 
from the most devastating messianic reverie the Oslo Agreements," 
Krauthammer said last night at a Jerusalem lecture, where he 
was presented with Bar-Ilan University's annual Guardian of 
Zion Award. 

Calling the 1993 Oslo Accords "the most catastrophic and 
self-inflicted wound by any state in modern history," which 
was based on "an extreme expression of post-Zionistic messianism," 
Krauthammer said that the secular messianism espoused by Peres 
was more dangerous than the religious messianism of Gush Emunim 
or certain followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe because of its 
impact on shaping contemporary Jewish history. 

"For the messianic Israeli left, Oslo was more than a deal, 
it was a ratification [in their minds] of a new era in modern 
history, a new era in human relations and a radical break in 
history which they declared was occurring not at some point 
in the future, but now," he said. 

"In the 1990s America slept and Israel dreamed," said the 
New York-born and Montreal-raised Krauthammer, whose weekly 
syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group, which 
now appears in over 100 newspapers including The Jerusalem Post, 
won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for distinguished commentary. 
"The U.S. awoke [after the terror attacks on America] in 
September 2001 and Israel awoke [after the start of Palestinian 
violence] in September 2000," he said. 

"Like the Israeli Left, the U.S. in the 1990s was intoxicated 
with the idea that history had changed from military conflict 
to a world of markets and technology. September 11 abolished 
that illusion and taught us that there are ideological enemies 
who care nothing about economics, and like in the old history 
of war of one God against another, will use all military means 
to attain their goals," he said. 

Krauthammer, one of the few American columnists to warn from 
the start that the Oslo peace accords were a fraud and deception 
that were doomed to failure, said that talk of Israeli-Palestinian 
economic and technological cooperation as espoused in Oslo was 
an "insane" idea which was based on a "dangerous mirage" of 
those who sought to transpose the entirely different idea 
of EU cooperation on the Middle East. 

"Israel labored seven long years until reality declared itself 
with former prime minister Barak's astonishing conciliatory offer 
at Camp David [in July 2000], which was met by Arafat with 
suicide bombings and terrorism," he said. 

Declaring that peace is "not impossible," but contingent on 
an Arab willingness to live in coexistence with the Jewish 
state, Krauthammer said: "The idea that one can strike a real 
peace agreement with [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] 
Arafat without a Sadat-like acceptance of the Jewish state 
is an illusion." 

In contrast to what he saw as the secular messianism espoused 
by Peres, Krauthammer said Zionism was the very antithesis 
to messianism, in that it was against Jews waiting in the 
Diaspora for a last-minute miracle to occur. 

In contrast to the Oslo Accords, which were dependent on the 
will of Arafat, Krauthammer said, "Zionism was a movement 
based on self-reliance, self-realization, and a refusal to 
depend on others. Zionism accepted the world precisely as 
it is and because of that Jews saw that they had no future 
in the Diaspora and that they must go and build a state for 
themselves in Zion."