The Loser Mentality
Gary Cooperberg
19 February 2003
A few years ago, when Shimon Peres lost the election to Netanyahu, he confidently asked his supporters, "What, am I a loser?" To his surprise and chagrin he got an immediate, "Yes", in response. Peres has never understood that he has consistently projected a policy which can only be called a "loser" policy. All of his efforts operate under the assumption that Israel is a loser. When Peres made the brilliant observation that, "One doesn't negotiate with friends, rather with enemies", he left out an important condition. One only negotiates with his enemies when he either loses or wins the war. By running to negotiate in advance, you are, in fact, surrendering!
What Peres did accomplish was to set a precedent in world history. Never before has a stronger power surrendered to a weaker power. Oslo was truly an innovation in the art of surrender. What Peres failed to take into account is the fact that the entity to which he was surrendering, albeit conditionally, was bent upon the destruction of Israel. His surrender never nullified that goal.
The concept of inertia works politically as well as physically. Once this disastrous policy was established, it gained a false legitimacy simply because it existed! When Netanyahu won the election, rather than declare Oslo null and void, as his victory mandated, he fell prey to the inertia and felt "obligated" to continue with this disaster.
Today we have an outrageous situation which sees our enemies firmly implanted upon Jewish soil, conducting a war of terror upon Israel in which hundreds of innocent civilians have been murdered. To add insult to injury, we have the most right wing militant prime minister possible leading us and he too, owing to the inertia factor, fails to simply destroy our enemies!
No matter what the political implications, the clear fact is, and always has been, that the PLO exists for the purpose of destroying the Jewish State. As such any and every Jewish government has, as its most basic responsibility, the obligation to uproot and destroy the PLO and all of its followers. To accept legitimacy for any Arab authority on Jewish soil is nothing short of treason.
Even former Prime Minister, Yitzchak Rabin, made it clear that, in the event that the PLO would shoot even one bullet at a Jew, the entire agreement would be nullified and all lands taken back! Why is it that even an Ariel Sharon cannot justify such action today when even babies are being murdered?
The only answer is that we are being governed by a loser mentality. We cannot bring ourselves to unequivocally defeat and destroy our enemies because we are afraid of "repercussions". Why can we not see the far more gruesome repercussions which are already resulting from our failure to do so? Our enemies openly declare and demonstrate their willingness to even commit suicide in order to murder Jews. Why then do we feel a moral obligation to help them? If we are being bombed and shot by Arabs in Gaza, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah then why do we continue to permit armed murderers to be in these places and enjoy veritable sovereignty there? What can be more immoral than that?
People are worried about what will happen with Iraq. Why aren't they at least as worried about what will happen in Israel if we continue to refuse to defeat our enemies here? We do not have a choice to destroy our enemies. We have an obligation to do so. As long as we continue to pretend that we can make peace by negotiating, we are sentencing our own children to death. It is high time that Israeli leaders change course. There is no reason for winners to insist upon losing.
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