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Ukraine can happen in Israel too – opinion

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The Jerusalem Post 23.03.2022

 

Ukraine can happen in Israel too – opinion

 

 

Imagine if Ukraine had 1700 nuclear warheads at its disposal today, because it had not surrendered them in 1994 – in exchange for supposedly-binding promises of peace and territorial integrity from Russia, America, and the world. Admittedly, history is a river; you cannot isolate one current. Had Ukrainians resisted the American and Russian pressure then, Ukraine might be a rogue state today. Still, as they dodge another Russian missile, fight tanks with pistols, remove more corpses from rubble, or flee their homes, historically-minded Ukrainians must be thinking, “boy, were we suckers,” as sober-minded Israelis sadly agree.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine controlled one-third of the USSR’s nukes. Bruising negotiations led Ukraine to relinquish the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. Years before this Putin-triggered invasion, one Ukrainian website called the Budapest Memorandum, which also neutralized the nuclear powers of Belarus and Kazakhstan, “the Greatest Treason in Ukrainian History.”

The international community’s impotence, and the irrelevance of promises made 28-years-ago, haunts Israelis. Despite Volodymyr Zelensky’s inaccurate-Holocaust-shaming, most Israelis have rallied with the rest of the Jewish community and the West to support Ukraine –sidestepping without sanitizing Ukraine’s blood-drenched Jew-hating past. But, for most Israelis, Vladimir Putin’s war has stirred this rarely-mentioned-but-ever-present anxiety that our little Promised Land paradise could become a warzone instantaneously.

We all know: Ukraine could happen here, and we would be on our own — far more than Ukraine, because even some of our best friends would blame us, soft-pedaling our enemies’ enmity, deeming our tragedy self-inflicted.

Israel is super-skittish because as the Russian bloodbath grows despite impressive Western sanctions and massive arm shipments. America seems to be succumbing again to Iranian charms. Whenever someone from or for Joe Biden’s administration, says Putin’s aggression proved that you must take dictators’ threats seriously, I want to scream “WHAT ABOUT IRAN????”

How do those Murderous Mullahs keep fooling so many Americans? It’s particularly mystifying to watch many liberals go soft on these thugs. Talk about politically incorrect! These Iranian dictators weaponize religion. They oppress women, torture dissidents, and execute gays. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards drain Iran’s economy to export terror throughout the Middle East – and beyond. Moreover, when the Mullahs threaten genocide, they target “Big Satan,” America, not just “Little Satan” – Israel.

Under those circumstances, how could any responsible American consider delisting the Revolutionary Guards as terrorists, pumping billions back into the Guards’ coffers as the JCPOA did in 2015, or trusting anything Iranian officials say about slowing down their irrational rush toward nuclear power?  

Further adding to the anxiety, although President Joe Biden has wisely avoided inflaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his new Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides chose last week to virtue-signal to America’s Bash-Israel-Firsters, rather than being a constructive force here in the Middle East. Nides’ gratuitous attack on settlements as “infuriating,” while addressing Americans for Peace Now, did not advance the cause of Middle East peace – but did risk draining his credibility in Israel.

The conflict runs much deeper than “the settlements.” In fairness, Nides acknowledged some complexities by criticizing Palestinians’ “pay-to-slay” policy. Nevertheless, his occupation preoccupation – call it “settlementia” — makes three rookie mistakes.

First, because many Palestinians see all Israelis as “settlers,” they experience anyone targeting “the settlements” as attacking Israelis more broadly. Every Western dupe who helps delegitimize Israel feeds the conflict by fueling the Palestinian maximalists’ illusion that the world buys their lies.  Expanding extremists’ appetites and stiffening their spines only breeds more violence.

The rot spreads further than Pay-to-Slay – under the Palestinian Authority dictatorship, not just Hamas. It starts with Educate-to-Hate – from infancy. It builds into Incite-to-Fight – from youth. And continues with Propagandize-to-Delegitimize – at all ages.

Second, demonizing “the settlements” strengthens another Palestinian illusion sanctifying the pre-1967 borders and thus encasing them in cement. Such generalizations deny Jews’ bonds with Jerusalem, which many Palestinians consider a post-’67 settlement; or Gush Etzion, which Jordan overran in 1948; or Hebron, Shiloh and other sites central to Jews’ national heritage, stretching back to the Bible. Whether Israel should keep all or some of those lands is a security, diplomatic, political, even existential, conundrum. But the Jews’ legitimate historic rights there are matters of fact.

Acknowledging the conflict’s complexity and the clashing flows of history is shrewd not just true – confusion can spawn compromise, fanaticism can’t.

Finally, instead of regurgitating now-discredited “Peace Now” talk, Nides should be updating the conversation with “Peace More” talk. The Abraham Accords prove how many Arabs and Israelis seek a new approach. The first step involves “shrinking the conflict” as Professor Micah Goodman argues – reducing Palestinian hardships and Israeli-Palestinian frictions.  But that’s tactical. The “Peace More” strategy expands the circles of peacemakers, elbowing out the haters. While building peace and robust alliances region-wide, progress cannot start closer to home without ending the Palestinians’ evil, self-destructive crusade against “normalization,” boycotting the most benign trust-building, humanizing initiatives.

More is more. More ties, economically, culturally, personally, will yield progress diplomatically, militarily, and politically. America and the West should be Building-Toward-Peace not imposing it, trying to nurture Palestinian democracy, reduce delegitimization, and refute their destructive delusions, while fostering Israel’s peace consensus with the goodwill, person-to-person gestures, and business ties that have made the Abraham Accords the greatest step toward peace in decades.   

Unlike Ukraine’s 1994 Budapest Treaty or the Oslo Accords, Abraham-Accord-fused relationships are real, lasting, textured, bottom-up ties not fleeting top-down promises. Ultimately, this approach builds nation-to-nation and people-to-people bonds rather than simply trusting leaders to keep the peace. 

 

Recently designated one of Algemeiner’s J-100, one of the top 100 people “positively influencing Jewish life,” Gil Troy is the author of the newly-released The Zionist Ideas , an update and expansion of Arthur Hertzberg’s classic anthology The Zionist Idea, published by the Jewish Publication Society and a 2019 National Jewish Book Award Finalist.. A Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University,and the author of nine books on American History, his book, Never Alone: Prison, Politics and  My People,  co-authored with Natan Sharansky was just published by PublicAffairs of Hachette.

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Copyright © 2022 Prof Gil Troy, All rights reserved.

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