1. The Post-Democratic state of Israel continues to exercise its First Amendment. Under this McCarthyist version of free speech, people whose political opinions are unpopular with the ruling elite are denied free speech, whereas each and every fanatical anti-Jewish racist, every Arab fascist, Stalinist and neonazi, every Leftist traitor cheering on Arab atrocities against Jews, enjoys total protection of free speech. A Rabbi is persecuted by the judicial authorities for calling a Leftist a Pharaoh, but Arab fascists every day call for ending Israel’s existence and for more terror against Israel and for more Hizbullah rockets on Israel, and this is all protected speech.

   Under this Post-Democratic First Amendment, the splinter factions of Kahanists - leftovers from Meir Kahane’s movement - have been declared "terrorist organizations" and legally banned in Israel. This for having and expressing radical unpopular opinions. The issue here is not whether or not one agrees with the Kahanist rhetoric or agenda. No one has ever accused the Kahanist movements of being moderate, cool-headed and parliamentary. The issue is whether Israel is to have free speech for ALL, including Rightists, or just for the anti-Jewish fanatics, Holocaust deniers, pro-violence Arabs, Islamic fundamentalists, and similar people.

   Yesterday four Knesset Members of the Right proposed a bill in the Knesset to take the Kahanist splinters OFF the list of banned "terrorist" organizations in Israel. The proposal was shot down in the Knesset by 42 to 4. For those of you without a calculator, that is 10.5 to one opposed. These opponents of establishing free speech in Israel included MK’s from the entire political spectrum, including the Likud of Ariel Sharon.

2. Middle East Luddism: Luddism was an antirational movement in Britain in the 19th century. Its members opposed all forms of science, rationality and industrialization, and were anti-technology. Since then, the term has come to mean (fairly or not) anti-rational people who deny reality, believe the earth is flat, cling stubbornly to superstition.

   The Middle East conflict has long been the focus of Luddism. What is amazing is that the past 8 months of nonstop PLO atrocities have failed to make the slightest dent in the superstitions of Luddist true believers.

   Take the Luddist belief that Israel can persuade world opinion and conscript it in favor of Israel if it simply maneuvers the PLO into demonstrating for all that it is anti-peace, in violation of all its commitments and promises, and engaged in violence. After so many years, the Luddists still cling to this superstition blindly.

   Amazingly, such Luddists include Ariel Sharon and the Likud government. This week, they called a unilateral ceasefire with the PLO in response to the Mitchell Commission report. No one seriously believed the PLO would comply with it, but the motivation for having it in the first place was the Luddist superstition that such a gesture from Israel would convince the world, or at least Washington, that Israel is full of goodwill and seeking a peaceful resolution and that the PLO are the bad guys.

   Clearly no rational person who believes in science and logic could believe such Luddist nonsense. It is clear that no matter how many goodwill gestures for peace Israel makes, the entire world, INCLUDING the US State Department, will blame Israel for all PLO violence. The world and Washington never expected the PLO to comply with anything and do not expect it to do so now. When the PLO murders Jews, it will always be the fault of Israel for building settlements or for discriminating against Arabs or for letting Sharon walk on the Temple Mount.

   Olso has never been about Israel and the PLO striking deals and complying with them. Oslo has been about Israel making unilateral appeasements and capitulations. And Oslo is about Luddism, where Israelis convince themselves that these appeasements buy goodwill and sympathy from the world, convincing the world that Israelis are not such evil, cussed, racist demons as the world has always thought. In other words, Oslo is based on a complete denial of the past 2500 years of Jewish history.

   Another aspect of Middle East Luddism is the obsessive drive to reach yet a new "deal" with the PLO. The Israeli government, and NOT just the politicians of the Left, keep seeking ways to get Arafat to sit down and at last strike a new "deal". Sharon keeps sending his prodigal son to meet with the Palestinian fascists in the hope of such a "deal". Naturally, the Israeli press and the Left insist all settlements be frozen and the Mitchell Commission Investigative Report into the Reichstag Fire be adopted in full so that a new "deal" can be signed.

   This pious and mystical belief in the promise of tranquility from any such new "deal" with the PLO reminds me of all those millenary sects that keep taking to islands and jungles after selling all their worldly goods because they are sure the messiah (or at least UFOs) are imminently about to put an end to the planet. Never mind how many times the end of the world has been declared imminent and they are proven wrong, the true believers continue to march.

   How anyone could think for a moment that any new "deal" would result in ANYTHING but MORE PLO violence, atrocities, increased pressures on Israel from the world to capitulate, and even more intense anti-Jewish agitprop on BBC and CNN, is beyond me. How can anyone think that such a "deal" will result in anything other than NEW demands on Israel to make "goodwill gestures" and concessions, even WITHIN the Green Line?

   As if any proof of PLO violations of its commitments were really still needed, here we have Muhammed Dahlan, the number one Black Shirt in the Gaza Strip, the head of the Gaza branch of the PLO’s Gestapo, one of Arafat’s highest officers, personally involved in producing mortar shells (Haaretz May 24, 01) to be used as weapons of mass terror against Israel. Personally managing the mortar shell factory. Naturally, in violation of Oslo. This factory in and of itself would be more than enough justification for Israel sending in its tanks and retaking the Gaza Strip and driving the PLO out and back to Tunis.

   But one of the great achievements of 8 years of Oslo Luddism is that no one thinks any more that PLO violations of its Oslo commitments matter at all. Remember all those assurances by Peres and Beilin back in the early days of Oslo that if the PLO would not comply with its Oslo commitments, Israel would just come right back in? What a joke! Today the world expects Israel to make concessions and comply with Oslo because it is the nice thing to do, regardless of PLO atrocities, and the Israeli Luddists all agree.

3. For years people have been warning that Oslo will result in Israel returning to the pre-1967 strategic situation, where Israel is at its narrowest 10 miles across, sitting in its 1949 Auschwitz borders (as Abba Eban called them in his pre-Luddism days). Well, it is now clear the result of Oslo is far WORSE than that. Before 1967, Israel could hold Egypt and Jordan responsible for any terrorism emanating from the West Bank or Gaza. It could retaliate. It was dealing with states.

   But Oslo has turned the West Bank and Gaza into large terrorist bases, exactly in the manner predicted by anti-Oslo dissidents from 1993 onwards. These dissidents proved correct in EVERY prediction, down to and including the forecast that Oslo would result in mortar shells from PLO areas being fired into Green Line Jewish areas. (My own such prediction being among the first, in November 1993 Midstream magazine.) As a result of Oslo, Israel has no sovereign power it can hold responsible for Palestinian atrocities, just a limbo in the territories, and where it is too afraid of Washington and Egypt to strike out against the PLO in a meaningful manner. Where Arafat can dissimulate and claim he just cannot stop all those Hamas terrorists although he sincerely condemns their atrocities. (Just witness the pathetic self-deprecation this past week over Israel’s "mistaken" shelling of the home of Jibril Rajoub.)

   And of course the man who thought of the idea of snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory in 1992, the man who imported tens of thousands of terrorists from Tunis and elsewhere into the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the man who converted the Gaza Strip into a mortar factory, the man who placed Israel’s very survival in imminent danger, that man is the number two in the government of Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Foreign Minister, Simple Simon Shimon Peres.

   Peres. The eternal Luddist who has never yet exhibited a blush.

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission