If only Israel would make more concessions... by Martin Sherman

Despite decades of proven failure, Israel’s doves cling to their fatally flawed dogma, insisting if only Israel would make more concessions, a new epoch of Judeo-Arab peace and prosperity would dawn.

Martin Sherman..
JNS.org..
11 October '19..

“The most righteous of men cannot live in peace if his evil neighbor will not let him be.” — From Wilhelm Tell Act IV, scene III, by Friedrich von Schiller, 1804

“It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.” — R. Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 1915

“He who comes to kill you, rise up early and kill him first.” — The Talmud

The Oslo process that resulted in the signature of the “Declaration of Principles” on the White House Lawns on Sept. 13, 1993 was in many ways a point of singularity in the history of Zionism, after which everything was qualitatively different from that which it was before. It was a point of inflection in the timeline of the evolution of Jewish political independence, during which once-vaunted values became vilified vices.

Thus, almost at a stroke, Jewish settlement and attachment to land—once the essence of the Zionist ethos—were branded as the epitome of egregious extremism. Jewish military might, once exalted as a symbol of national resurgence and self-reliance, was excoriated as the instrument of repression and subjugation.

This metamorphosis is decidedly perplexing. After all, even by the early 1990s, Zionism had proved to be one of the most successful—arguably, the most successful—movement of national liberation that arose from the dissolution of the great Empires, providing political independence, economic prosperity and personal liberties to a degree unrivaled by other such movements.

Moreover, despite the manifest justice on which it was founded, Zionism was always territorial and only prevailed, progressed and prospered because it was reinforced by force of arms. Without either of these two components—the land and the sword—it would be no more than a historical footnote today.

The staggering metamorphosis that took place in the Israeli leadership’s approach was aptly described by Daniel Pipes, who almost two decades ago wrote: “The policy of deterrence dominated Israeli thinking during the country’s first 45 years, 1948-93, and it worked well. … Eventually, Israelis became impatient for a quicker and more active approach. … That impatience brought on the Oslo accords in 1993, in which Israelis initiated more creative and active steps to end the conflict. So totally did deterrence disappear from the Israeli vocabulary, it is today not even considered when policy options are discussed.”

‘Historians will be baffled … ’

Presciently, he summed up the consequences of this ill-advised change:

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Martin Sherman is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.