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OpinioNet Contributed Commentary - Steven Plaut

March 5, 2002

Steven Plaut

The "Let’s Try it and See" Doctrine


  1. When the Oslo paganism process began, many claimed that its ultimate result would be to force Israel to refight the 1967 war from its 1967 borders, but against 21st century weapons. Then along came the "Al-Aqsa Intifada" as reward for Ehud Barak’s megastupidity. After Barak at Camp David agreed to return to those 1967 borders, Israel suddenly found that those who predicted that Oslo would return Israel to 1967 were optimistic. In the initial stages of the "Al-Aqsa Intifada", Israeli Arabs besieged groups of Jews and Jewish towns in the Galilee, blocked highways, pulled Jews from their vehicles and beat them, and attacked police with live ammunition. In other words, Israel was forced to relive the conditions of 1948-49; the Jews discovered that Oslo would force Israel to refight its 1948-9 War of Independence, and not the Six Day War.

    But now we know that even that was optimistic. This week Israelis learned the truth. Oslo is not designed to return the Jews to either 1967 or 1948-9, but rather to 1944.

  2. From the very start, the debate over Oslo was one of futurology. The Oslo Camp would demand that Israel agree to turn the "territories" over to the PLO. When the anti-Oslo Camp pointed out that this would simply move the war against Israeli existence from the post-1967 borders to the 1948-9 "Green Line", and that the PLO would simply use any territory handed over to it to escalate terrorism, the country’s Left said, "Prove It!". Peres and Rabin agreed.

    Now there is a problem with "proving" things that have not occurred. One cannot prove that something that has not yet occurred will cause something else to occur. In the scientific sense, one can only prove something by letting it happen. The rest is conjecture, futurology.

    But this was the essence of the demands of the Oslo Left, going back even years before Oslo officially began. What have we got to lose?, they demanded. Let us give our ideas a try. Let us turn over the heart of the Land of Israel to the terrorists and see what happens. WE are so CERTAIN that it will bring peace!! We are even willing to give them 50,000 rifles and disband all of our intelligence networks among them in our certainty that our ideas will work!!

    Now there are many great problems with the "Let’s Try it and See" strategy of testing ideas. The first problem concerns the burden of proof. The "Let’s Try it and See" school has always insisted that their ideas be implemented unless the opponents of those ideas can "prove" they will NOT work. But when the entire country’s existence is at stake, the burden of proof must be on those advocating "Let’s Try it and See". They are the ones who must first PROVE in a scientific manner that their ideas WILL work before those ideas are tested. Their opponents need prove nothing.

    Second, the danger with any "Let’s Try it and See" is that if it is incorrect, it makes things infinitely worse. It is as if someone with a cold decides to take arsenic to see if it cures things. Just try it and see. Politics are like medicine; one cannot always make things better and find cures for problems, but one’s premier moral imperative is never to make things WORSE!

    Third, "Let’s Try it and See" has already been so thoroughly discredited in the past 9 years in Israel that it is incredible that anyone could still speak in its terms. It was "Let’s Try it and See" that turned Israel into the Valley of the Shadow of Death under the reign of the Cult of Oslo.

    It should be emphasized that the Israeli Mindless Left has never abandoned "Let’s Try it and See" as the nucleus of its "thinking". The TV, press and radio in Israel are under the totalitarian control of the Israeli Left. Moments after the weekend atrocities, the usual cuplrits from Meretz and the Left were trotted out to explain why the mass murders were caused by Ariel Sharon’s taking some half-hearted military actions against some PLO centers on the West Bank. These speakers were the very same people who decided to import the tens of thousands of PLO terrorists into the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, now on the screen claiming - without being challenged - that the butchering of Jewish children by those they armed is Arik Sharon’s fault.

    Speaker after speaker trotted out the "Let’s Try it and See" doctrine. Let us turn ALL of the "occupied territories" over to the PLO, expel all of the settlers, and build a nice fence of separation, says Ron Cohen, Knesset Member from Meretz, with a poker face, joined by his countless clones on the screen. And when anyone objects that he and his Comrades in Treason from Meretz have been wrong about everything else these 9 years; whenever anyone objects that implementing such a plan will simply cause the terrorism to escalate, not to mention rewarding nazi barbarism, while putting Israel’s existence in jeopardy; whenever anyone points out that there are countless reasons to expect that such a set of appeasements will NOT work and will result in more war and not peace, Cohen and his gang shrug and demand, "But how do you KNOW? YOU must PROVE it will not work.

    "Sure Oslo has produced mass murders of Jews so far and not peace, but that is only because it did not go far ENOUGH!! If OUR MERETZ ideas were implemented, peace would break out. Trust us. Try it and see!!"

    And when the Arabs build concentration camps and offer peace to the Jews if only the obstinate stiff-necked Jews will abandon their obstacles to peace and will only agree to be deported to those camps, peace will finally be possible. Skeptical?

    Just try it and see!!

Steven Plaut
University of Haifa


Read other commentaries by Steven Plaut.

You can e-mail Steven at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il.

About Steven Plaut

Copyright © 2002 by Steven Plaut
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission

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