Israel's impenitent peaceniks By Zalman Shoval (August 3) - As Jerusalem buried 18-year-old Yuri Gushchin - one of its latest terror victims, though not its last - a group of Israeli and Palestinian "intellectuals" held a press conference at the offices of the Palestinians' most skilled spreader of anti-Israel hate propaganda - Hanan Ashrawi. Among the other Palestinian participants were prominent members of Fatah, the organization which had just taken responsibility for Gushchin's brutal murder. The Israeli party included some of the remnants of the dwindling Peace Now camp, headed by former justice minister Yossi Beilin. The Palestinian participants' motives in activities of this kind are no mystery: While never relenting on any of their most extreme positions, they hope that by sweet-talking the Israeli public on the one hand and while continuing the violence on the other, they will be able to weaken its fortitude and internal resilience in order - as Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam put it the other day - to make Israel "explode from within." But why Israeli politicians, academics and erudite men of letters - most of them honorable people - should collaborate with them is rather more perplexing. After Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's refusal to come to an agreement even on the basis of then-prime minister Ehud Barak's extremely generous proposals at Camp David, and after 10 months of Palestinian terror and violence, the vast majority of Israelis, not to mention some shapers of world opinion, have, quite naturally, lost any illusions about the Palestinian leadership's readiness for peace of any kind - now or ever. Yet the remnants of the former Israeli peace camp still cling to its old slogans - as if the collapse of the Oslo process, Arafat's intransigence at Camp David and Taba, the lynching in Ramallah, the suicide bombing near the Dolphinarium, the willful murder of Jewish children - even the Palestinians' refusal to abide by the Mitchell Report recommendations and the Tenet plan - had never been. This will surely puzzle future students of history - especially in comparison with similar cases in the past. In the 1930s, Britain, for instance, had its own "peace camp," exemplified by the "Cliveden Set" on the Right and like-minded supporters on the Left, who espoused appeasing Nazi Germany, branded Churchill a warmonger, and toadied to Hitler and his gang. However, it all fell apart the moment the war broke out and Hitler's aggressive designs became clear to everyone. Most of the former appeasers recognized the error of their ways - and said so publicly; others stole away shamefacedly, trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. A few were tried for treason. The dire consequences of that particular march of folly, however, did not prevent another demonstration of asininity once World War II was over. The Soviet Union became the object of adulation in certain circles, especially in the US and France, and Stalin was crowned the hero of peace and progress. Among his admirers were many naive, or not so naive, Israelis, primarily in Mapam, the forerunner of Meretz, as well as left-leaning intellectuals, journalists, and even the respected US vice president Henry Wallace, later to challenge Harry Truman for the presidency. All collaborated overtly or covertly with the Moscow-financed and promoted World Peace Movement and similar organizations. By then - the late 1940s and early 1950s - the world knew about Gulag and Stalin's reign of terror, and of the anti-Semitic show trials - but these were ignored by the peaceniks of the day in their quest for peace. Again, it could not last. The facts spoke for themselves: No longer could Soviet terror or the brutal repression of any flickering of freedom and democracy in Eastern Europe be explained away. For most, the moment of truth arrived; the ship of fools ran aground, and no more was heard of the World Peace Movement. Why then, in Israel of all places, the country of a people which through the ages, and especially in the 20th century, has paid such a terrible price for naively disregarding threats to its existence, have otherwise reasonably intelligent people not yet grasped that their genuine desire for a peace based on compromise is not shared by the Palestinian leadership? True, the number of these latter-day Jewish peaceniks has greatly diminished in the last few months. But why, unlike those British pro-German appeasers or the pro-Soviet dupes, is our own Peace Now crop not yet able or willing to face reality, to admit it made a tragic mistake - and to contritely leave the stage? Are they being disingenuous? Haven't they noticed? Do they lack civic courage? Or perhaps the answer lies in the realm of psychology - they recognize that everything they ever believed in and fought for was always a myth - or worse, a house of lies - but cannot admit it, even to themselves.