[lit-ideas] Daniel Pipes, a new kind of Israel-basher (!?)
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 20:38:55 -0800 (PST)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=700807&contrassID=2
Daniel Pipes, a new kind of Israel-basher
By Bradley Burston
Friday, 31 March, End of the Spin Cycle
I used to be an American Jew. And then I read Daniel
Pipes.
"As Israelis go to the polls," Dr. Pipes wrote this
week in an article that originally appeared in the New
York Sun, "not one of the leading parties offers the
option of winning the war against the Palestinian
Arabs."
Dr. Pipes goes on to admit "a certain frustration"
with the apparent unwillingness of Israelis to go out
there and do the right thing: bring the Arabs to heel,
by use of overwhelming force.
The article, entitled "Israel Shuns Victory," sets out
a kind of self-test for us, listing nine different
options by which Israelis from far left to far right,
and moderates in between, all "manage the conflict
without resolving it," "ignore the need to defeat
Palestinian rejectionism." and "seek to finesse war
rather than win it."
This is not the first time Dr. Pipes has let Israelis
have it for letting him down. In a 2003 speech to
college students, cited on his Website
www.DanielPipes.org, he suggested that Arabs will not
truly accept Israel's existence until Israel "punishes
violence so hard that its enemies will eventually feel
so deep a sense of futility that they will despair of
further conflict."
Where did we go wrong? "Wars are won, the historical
record shows, when one side feels compelled to give up
on its goals," Dr. Pipes writes, indicating that
Israel will win only when Arabs are forced to give up
their goal of eliminating a Jewish state.
He notes, by way of inference, that the wars in
1948-49, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982 failed to persuade
them. I guess we didn't fight hard enough, or well
enough.
I suppose if I were living in, say, Philadelphia, Dr.
Pipes' frustration, disappointment, and prescription
for setting things right, might make perfect sense.
In fact, a number of our readers who live in North
America, some of whom regularly use the word coward to
describe Israeli moderates, have any number of
suggestions for us as well, up to and including the
use of weapons of mass destruction on Palestinians,
apparently in an effort to change their minds about
us.
That said, I have a couple of questions. The first
concerns people like Mahmoud Masharka, 24, of Hebron.
Masharka was apparently disguised as an Orthodox Jew
when he set out hitchhiking late on Thursday and was
picked up by a car in which four Israelis were
travelling.
He then detonated the bomb belt he was wearing,
incinerating the car and killing everyone inside.
Does Dr. Pipes really believe that people who crave a
violent, Jew-murdering death are really going to
accept Israel if only enough military force is
applied?
Is Dr. Pipes telling us that people who celebrate the
sacrament of suicide are going to think differently of
us if we send in more tanks, bigger bombs, more F-16s,
more Apaches, more infantry brigades, more commandos,
demolish more homes, demolish more olive trees,
demolish what little is left of the Palestinian
Authority?
I understand that we have disappointed the analyst
with the Harvard pedigree. But if he'll allow me one
more question:
Since when did we become mercenaries for Daniel Pipes?
After reading Dr. Pipes, I'm not sure I can be an
American Jew anymore. I guess, at long last, I've
become an Israeli. Unlike Dr. Pipes, I can't bring
myself to win the war against the Palestinians. At
least not the way Dr. Pipes would have me do so. I
guess the guy's right. My friends in my IDF battalion
couldn't do it either.
Of course, there might be another explanation. One
that might fit a guy who lives 6,000 miles away and
lets us know we don't have the Right Stuff to show
these Arabs what for.
Daniel Pipes is a new kind of Israel-basher. He is an
equal-opportunity hater of Israelis. None of us is
good enough for him. We lack the will to fight like
the man he quotes as a role model for us, Douglas
MacArthur. From unilateralism to transfer, nothing we
come up with is good enough for him.
Try as we might, we just can't seem to win his war for
him.
I guess he'll just have to do it by himself.
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