Conditional Surrender
Gary Cooperberg
August 29, 2002
In today's Jerusalem Post there was an article by Douglas Davis describing the official response of the UK Israeli embassy to comments made by that country's Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. This commentary does not seek to either defend or condemn the Rabbi's remarks. What is far more important to discuss is the Israeli response. Through it we can see the tragic mistakes which have placed our homeland in such a mess.
In part the statement says: (this war) "has been imposed upon Israel by the Palestinian leadership, who rebuffed Israel's far-reaching offer of peace and instead adopted a strategy of indiscriminate terror and virulent incitement." "The Palestinians' aspirations can only be addressed through peaceful dialog. The current national unity government of Israel has repeatedly stated that, once the necessary measures are taken by the Palestinian leadership to end the campaign of terror, it is more than willing to resume negotiations and address all the outstanding issues."
While the above statement may sound quite impressive it is truly an expression of self deception. The war was not imposed upon Israel by the PLO. It was Israel who placed the PLO on Jewish soil and gave it weapons. And it did so as a direct response to the so called "intifada" which was an act of rewarding terror to begin with. What exactly did they expect the murderous terrorists to do, shower us with love and flowers? The PLO has always been a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. How can any normal thinking person, much less official Israeli government policy makers, assume that "far-reaching" offers of peace will placate murderers who demand nothing less than the destruction of Israel?
It would be interesting to pursue further just what negotiations Israel is prepared to make with those who intend to destroy us and who have already murdered hundreds of our civilians. The only way to address the "aspirations" of the PLO is to make it unshakably clear that none of them will ever see the light of day. If our leaders cannot see that the primary "aspiration" of the PLO is to destroy Israel, then it is high time to find a new government.
The problem we face in Israel today is the fact that we are fighting a war which we have no intention to win. No war will ever succeed unless the goal is to destroy the enemy. As long as we insist upon trying to force our enemies to win on our terms we will never see an end to the fighting. The negotiations we seek are actually a conditional surrender to the PLO. The PLO wants nothing less than an unconditional surrender. And we still want to negotiate.
Project Shofar is dedicated to spreading these truths wherever it is possible to do so. It is sounding the alarm, to Jew and Gentile alike, to open our eyes to the G-dly process that is presently underway, and work to support it. We dare not stand idly on the sidelines.
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