Why there is no 'Jews for Jihad'
By Michael Freund
August 14, 2002
You've got to hand it to the Israeli Left. Though their vision
of an Oslo-inspired peace lies in ruins and their political folly
brought the State of Israel to the brink of war, groups such as
Peace Now and Gush Shalom refuse to admit defeat.
Seemingly oblivious to their impending political obsolescence,
they continue to soldier on, issuing press releases, preparing
reports, and organizing demonstrations, all in the hopes of compelling
Israel to make a deal with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.
By now, most politically oriented groups would have thrown in
the towel, realizing that they had placed their bets on the wrong
horse. But not Israel's Left. They stubbornly insist on rolling
the same set of dice again, and again, and again, even as their
string of failures continues to mount.
Before you confuse this fervent obstinacy with admirable determination,
consider the following: Though the Left's favorite "peace partner"
and his compatriots have murdered more than 600 Israelis in the
past two years, the main target of their ideological ire remains,
inexplicably enough, the Jews.
"Hell Made in Israel" is just one of the headlines appearing
on the Gush Shalom Web site, along with accusations about Israeli
"war crimes" and "vandalism."
"Sharon leads us to destruction" says an announcement about a
rally on a Peace Now Internet page. "The occupation breeds terrorism"
shrieks Yesh Gvul, another leftist group.
Needless to say, the fact that there are still intelligent people
out there who hold such opinions is, quite simply, astonishing.
It's as if there is nothing sufficiently bad or egregious that
the Palestinians could do to shake the Left's "true believers"
out of their ideological stupor.
Like followers of the medieval false messiah Shabtai Zvi, who
continued to view him as the savior of the Jews even after he
abandoned Judaism and converted to Islam, the proponents of Oslo
remain firm in their conviction that Arafat is the key to peace,
even as he wages war against us.
WHAT IS particularly perplexing, though, is the Left's failure
to appreciate the utter lack of symmetry that exists between Israel's
political divide and the Palestinians' political uniformity.
In Israel, there is a variety of organizations spanning the spectrum,
with some calling for annexation of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and
others demanding that the territories be handed over to the Arabs.
In the Palestinian-controlled areas, by contrast, no such political
diversity exists. Last time I checked, groups such as "Arab Friends
of Israel" or "Palestinians for Peace" had yet to be established.
To put it even more bluntly, there is no organized Palestinian
left wing to mirror that which exists in Israel. One would expect
that if Palestinian society were truly longing for peace with
the Jewish state, then its political arena would somehow reflect
this.
When was the last time you heard about Palestinian relief groups
offering to help Israeli victims of terror? When have Palestinian
human-rights organizations pressed Palestinian officials to make
concessions to Israel?
How many Palestinian clerics have issued rulings forbidding suicide
bombing attacks? We all know the answer to these questions. All
of us, that is, except for the hard-core ideologues of the left.
Sadly, the only real split that seems to exist among Palestinian
organizations is over the question of tactics, not strategy. Fatah,
Hamas, and Islamic Jihad compete with one another not over who
can talk with Israelis, but over who can kill them.
And while Israel's Left convenes rallies in support of peace,
Palestinian marchers converge on the streets to celebrate suicide
bombings and other terror attacks.
It is this dichotomy, more than anything else, that symbolizes
the primary flaw of the Left's position, if only because they
cannot point to a corresponding popular movement on the Palestinian
side.
Moreover, for all the invective that the Left directs against
the Israeli government and Jewish settlers, the fact remains that
there is thankfully no such thing as "Jews for Jihad" or the "Likud
Tanzim."
The popularity of such groups among Palestinians, and their absence
on the Israeli scene, is hardly coincidental. It speaks volumes
about the two societies their values, goals, and objectives.
By failing to acknowledge this painful, if inconvenient, truth,
the Israeli Left has doomed itself to both political irrelevance
and moral ridicule a fate, quite frankly, which it most assuredly
deserves.
This article was originally published in the The
Jerusalem Post on August 14, 2002
