Throughout history there have arisen great leaders whose mission it is to coax and lead public opinion into a total 180 degree turnaround, due to necessity and changes in circumstances. Churchill was one such leader. When he took power, all of Britain was convinced that Hitler could not be resisted and stopped, that some sort of reconciliation with Hitler’s domination of Europe was inevitable. Britain was still in the grasp of the great appeasement consensus. Churchill had to lead his people almost single-handedly into a great 180 degree swing-about, step by step, with great patience. He succeeded. Thanks to Churchill, the British became convinced that conciliation with Hitler or acquiescence with German hegemony over Europe was unthinkable. That even the thought of seeking to come to terms with Germany was treason.

FDR was a similar leader. Roosevelt took office when the United States was solidly isolationist. He himself had run on a platform of avoiding involvement in overseas conflict. The US had refused even to join the League of Nations. Roosevelt’s mission was to lead gradually and guide public opinion until it made a 180 degree swing-about. He sought to throw US support behind the democratic Allies in stages, ultimately to intervene militarily after public opinion was properly prepped.

Ariel Sharon and his Likud predecessor Bibi Netanyahu are exactly this same kind of leaders. It is their political mission to guide the public opinion in their nation through a 180 degree turnabout.

Both Sharon and Netanyahu were elected by voters outraged by Oslo and Labor Party disgrace and defeatism. In both cases the public solidly supported the use of military force and national assertativeness to reverse failed policies and to return the country to sanity and survivalism. In both cases the public was determined to abandon national suicide as national policy.

And in both cases, the Likud leader’s mission has been to lead public opinion in a 180 degree swing-about and reversal. Netanyahu’s mission was to take the Oslo "process", which was at the time rejected by 60-70% of the public, and to turn it into an unchallengable national consensus. Netanyahu decided to out-Peres the real Shimon Peres, making concessions to the PLO that even Peres refused to make. Turning Hebron over to PLO rule. Signing Wye. Making repeated "meter tick" withdrawals. By the end of Netanyahu’s reign it was clear to all that Israel would be unable to resist the creation of a PLO state and return to the 1949 Green Line borders. That Israel’s return to its 1949 position, neck inside the Arab noose, was inevitable. That Israel would do nothing to fight PLO barbarism and savagery.

Sharon, unlike Netanyahu, was elected by a huge landslide for the simple purpose of ending Oslo. But like Netanyahu, his mission is to be the Unchurchill, or the Unroosevelt. To lead public opinion in a 180 degree flip away from determination and miltance to obsequiousness, to pusillanimous defeatism, to marching down the path of Oslo oblivion.

Sharon has just announced that he is accepting the Mitchell Commission’s proposal for a "freeze on settlement construction", apparently including the neighborhoods of Jerusalem and even the building of new roads in the West Bank. The central point of the Mitchell Commission was to reward Arafat with some sort of strategic prize for 9 months of atrocities, lest the Palestinians start having doubts about whether violence always pays off. In exchange, Arafat would make a speech saying violence is a No-No wink, wink, squint, squint, finger-to-side-of-nose. This was to be the umpteenth time that Arafat would sell a promise of a ceasefire in exchange for strategic gains and of course this ceasefire would be honored only in the breach, like all the others.

The most that would happen, and even this is dubious, is that the level of violence and the incidence of atrocities would drop by 30 or 40 percent for a few weeks or days. Arafat would insist he was doing what he can and the Israeli Left and conscripted press would chant amen amen. Until the next escalation and the next time the US demands that PLO violence be rewarded with yet another strategic concession in exchange for a REAL and TRUE promise of a ceasefire.

The PLO ceasefire was celebrated last night with a new attempt to murder a Jewish baby. A car was attacked in Samaria last night by rock throwers. Naturally Mitchell, Powell, and the rest of the Munich team do not see rock throwing as a violation of the make-pretend PLO ceasefire. A baby was mortally injured and may die.

Of course, there are some who include De Gaulle and Nixon in the category of these Unchurchills, people who also lead their people in a 180 degree flip of public opinion. After all, De Gaulle abandoned Algeria and Nixon parleyed with the Commies and signed detente. But de Gaulle did not try to turn Paris over to the Germans nor agree to a unilateral ceasefire in which the Germans butchered French children. And Nixon did not import tens of thousands of terrorists into the suburbs of US cities and then provide them with free assault weapons and anti-tank missiles.

If there were any doubt about Sharon’s role as the Unchurchill that is leading Israel deeper into the Oslo quicksand, then consider this:

Israeli government spokespeople have confirmed (Haaretz June 6) that Israel was all set to launch a massive punishment raid into PLO territory this past Saturday. To make the PLO fascists pay a price for all the recent atrocities. Ah but then a Palestinian suicide bomber from the Jihad/Hamas wing of the PLO decided to murder 20 Jews, mainly schoolgirls, and maim lots of others. And so in response to this Nazi atrocity against Jewish children, the Israeli government reconsidered its actions and reached a momentous strategic decision.

Comrades, the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has officially announced that it decided to CALL OFF that punishment raid in response to the massacre of the schoolchildren and instead to continue indefinitely the Israeli-declared unilateral ceasefire while at the same time agreeing to freeze all settlement construction including within Jerusalem, which is now acknowledged by Israel to be an illegal settlement.

Comrades, I realize you think I am inventing this as a gag e-mail posting, and I’d give anything if only that were the case!

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission