| The Road Map: Another Folly? |
Good morning, my fellow members of the international Zionist conspiracy, nice to be with you here.
(Applause)
That would be a wonderful sound bite for some of our enemies to use in certain places to confirm all of their stereotypes. I come from Washington D.C., where the only politicians with convictions are in prison, with the exception of Senator Kyle, as Frank Gaffney has pointed out, and a few others. You haven't seen a lot of me in the past two days because I've been doing something that I think is critically important to telling the story that Frank has articulated and others have mentioned. I have this television show on the Fox news channel on Saturday night at eleven o'clock in the evening, Eastern time, 5 o'clock in the morning here at the current rate of exchange of time zones, here in Israel, and I'm doing something this Saturday that has not been done before so far as I know on American television and it's an entire half hour from Jerusalem presenting equal time. That is the truth. And we have Bibi Netanyahu and we have Richard Pearl, but we have something else that to my knowledge has not been done before, I have this little segment called "Caltoons" which my producer came up with, a play on "Cartoons", and we usually use cartoons from American newspapers but this time we're using cartoons from mostly the Arab and the Palestinian media. Because I want the American public to see...
(Applause)
I want the American public to see the unbelievable racial stereotyping that is being done in the Arab press. They never see this on "Nightline"; they never see it on "Nightly News" or the CBS evening news, or World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. They're going to see it on this show. And I...
(Applause)
I have a platform and I intend to use it as long as I have it. God has prospered my newspaper column beyond my wildest dreams, it's in 550 American newspapers and several overseas, nobody is more amazed at this miracle than I. There are far better writers than me, there are certainly greater thinkers - I see David Aikman here, who is certainly one of those greater thinkers — but there is no one who out-hustles me, I learned that from basketball.
(Laughter)
And this is a model that I think we need to perpetuate among ourselves and to the wider planet. We have to hustle this story; we cannot take it for granted. I've said to Morton Klein on more than one occasion, whenever he pulls out that map, I think all of us ought to be carrying that map. And we ought to be carrying it around like sandwich boards proclaiming the message to anyone who will listen, and to those who will not. That Israel is not some great Goliath, oppressing people who also live in this region, surrounded by weak people who want to live in peace with it, but in fact is a tiny little sliver of land, one eighth of one percent of the Arab land mass… I loved that, I wrote it down, surrounded by 22 Arab states that don't want to live in peaceful co-existence, but want to wipe out this state!
(Applause)
Now, I want to say a little about Yossi Beilin's latest proposal. He has the benefit of being consistent. Consistently wrong in all of his proposals.
(Laughter)
And this latest one, I must say, goes beyond all of the previous ones. The deal as I understand it is that if the Palestinian side gives up the right of return, they can have the authority over the Temple Mount. Now this begins with the faulty premise, once again, that there is somehow some great combination lock on the safe behind which exists peace, that if we just get the numbers right – 22 to the right, 13 to the left, 47 to the right – a great miracle will occur and the safe will be open and peace and everyone will live in harmony and understanding... sympathy and trust abounding… the age of Aquarius, remember that? People sitting around, smoking dope in their ashrams! Right?
(Applause and cheering)
What's that all about? I know the translators are going nuts back there. "How do I translate all this?"
(Laughing)
The formula is wrong, and the only thing I learned in math class before I flunked Algebra 2, was that if the formula is wrong, the answer can never be right. So let's stop fooling around with these wrong formulas and get to the real problem. The road map contains what should be unacceptable concessions by Israel in exchange for meaningless... just hold your applause, it's all great.
(Laughing)
...in exchange for meaningless assurances by the Palestinian side. These concessions include Israeli withdrawal from land it captured for its own security in the 1967 war, which was started by Israel's neighbors with the expressed intent of wiping Israel off the road map or any map. A goal that remains unchanged. These concessions would put Israel in great peril from her enemies, which now possess more sophisticated and lethal weapons than they used in each of the previous wars. In the past, Israel has said, it would start implementing the road map only after Palestinians cracked down on the militias. Terror got the Palestinians to the brink of their objective, so why would they give it up now when total victory seems so close. Hamas has said it intends to continue killing Israeli civilians regardless of any agreements. Many on the right in Israel and the United states hope the acceptance of the road map is merely a feint by Prime Minister Sharon, who should know better, given his experience in war and in politics. He has seen and heard the sermons, editorials from the Arab press, television programs, Palestinian textbooks and classroom videos, all of which express hatred of all things - Jewish, Christian, Israeli and western, and uphold martyrdom as the highest calling of any and all Palestinians! Now given such a history, why would any reasonable person not believe them?
A dangerous game is being played by the U.S. State Department, extending over several administrations. Ignoring or downplaying Palestinians' terrorist acts and choosing to pressure Israel into making dangerous concessions while accepting empty and unfulfilled promises from Israel's mortal enemies, American officials have laid the groundwork for Israel's destruction on the installment plan. In his memoir The White House Years the former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says something that is so unbelievable, I couldn't believe it when I first read it, but it’s true. "Washington ignores or minimizes evidence of Arab violations of peace agreements". Here’s what he says, "Israel, with her survival at stake cannot afford to take chances". Well. That is a good beginning. But it gets bad from here on. "The nature of the Israeli situation is bound to influence their interpretation of ambiguous events”. Ambiguous events. "We, on the other hand, have an incentive to minimize such evidence, since the consequences of finding violations are so unpleasant. Violations force us to choose between doing something about them "- what a concept - "and thus risk the blow up of our initiative, or doing nothing, and thus renege on our promises to Israel, posing the threat of her taking military action. Accordingly, we tend to lean over backwards to avoid the conclusion that the Arabs are violating the cease fire unless the evidence is unambiguous". For you proof-texters, that’s page 587 in his memoir.
Now that philosophy continues to be practiced and believed in the State Department. In his autobiography Warrior, Ariel Sharon writes about peace: "a widely acceptable formula must somehow be found so that Israel can take the initiative in the peace process rather than be relegated to responding to the demands of others. Then, after we had the most nearly bipartisan approach that we could come up with, we should if possible attempt to get American support on substance. At that point, when our house is in order and our allies are with us, then we can approach the Arab Nations. Pages 576 to 548 from his book. Sharon adds that two prerequisites must be in place before progress can be made. The first, he says is that peace must be equally important to both sides, Arabs as well as Jews; the second prerequisite is that the peace process cannot be rushed. Sharon wrote that in 1989. Nothing has changed except the peace process is being rushed and the road map has not been widely accepted. Other than that…
Communism had its useful idiots too. These were people who believed whatever Communists said, and were helpful and advancing their cause. In the Middle East the enemies of Israel, the United States, and all things Jewish, Christian and Western have far more useful idiots than Communists ever counted on. These are the people who refused to believe what they are repeatedly told and see in bloody streets, in mosques, in political literature and in schools where children are taught to hate and to be martyrs before they are potty trained. In the matter of "the road map to peace", all of which is in quotes, between Israel and her mortal enemies, we are seeing the usual "razzle dazzle". Remember that movie, Chicago, and the play before it? Where Richard Gere does the "razzle-dazzle 'em" song -- man, that's not just about lawyers, that’s what’s going on over here too, and in the United States. "Razzle-dazzle' em". Elected Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon stood a few months ago next to appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abas... now they have another one who promises only to save thirty days, he’s got an expiration date on his behind, I guess. Who mimics Sharon in his western style suit, both men, it doesn't matter who's standing there at all… both men make pronouncements required of them by their American puppeteer, the useful idiots think Abbas and his band of bloody brothers will play the lion lying down with the Israeli lamb.
In the midst of all the photo ops and feel-good diplomacy comes a sober and welcome word from someone the useful idiots no doubt will regard as a skunk at their party. Uzi Landau told Israeli radio then, just a few months ago, that Israel should set a timetable with dates or clearly define a measurable Palestinian course of action regarding security. These would include, he said, collecting weapons, outlawing terror organizations, unifying Palestinian authority security groups in one group and ending propaganda against Israel, which requires among other things the removal of regional maps that do not show Israel on them and elimination of anti-Israel text books from Palestinian schools. My, how intolerant, how insensitive can you get? Actually desiring and demanding performance!
There is a song from an old American musical called My Fair Lady, where Eliza Doolittle gets tired of these professions of love and she sings a song: "Show me, don't talk of words! Don't talk of love, lasting through time! If you're in love, show me! Prove it! By your actions, not by your words, words words, words, I'm so sick of words, I get words all day, first from him, now from you, is that all you braggarts can do?" What a great piece of writing that is. We should have that as the theme song over here! These seem like reasonable requests from Uzi Landau. If the Palestinian side is sincere about ending decades of war, more than words and signed documents ought to be required, don’t you think? Israel is being pressured to give up more land. When it is done so before, the gestures have not brought Israel closer to peace, but allowed for more war to be made! From the relinquished territory in order that more territory might be gained on the road to Israel's obliteration! Such remains the stated goal oozing from every Palestinian pore. The German philosopher Hegel said: "What experiences in history teach us is this – that people and governments never had learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it". Useful idiots continue to accept new promises built on a foundation of previously broken promises. This is what makes them useful! It is also what makes them idiots. Israel has waited in vain for Palestinian deeds to live up to their words. Agreements, covenants, promises and pledges! At what point should it be concluded that the Palestinians leadership and so many of their people have a definition of peace that begins and ends with the annihilation and elimination of Israel. We hear about the enemies of peace, we hear a lot about that in the states, who would destroy the peace process or peace like happiness is not an objective to be pursued. Peace and happiness are byproducts of nations deciding they will study war no more and lay down their arms and hostile intentions.
(Applause)
The Bush administration unbelievably proposes to pay protection money to the Palestinian Authority in amounts that would make even the Mafia blush with embarrassment. Until now, the United States has provided [inaudible] terrorist regimes around the world now plans to give US taxpayers' dollars directly to a corrupt terrorist regime. Now why should the enemies of Israel and America disarm, when they can get the United States to subsidize their murderous ways? This makes the United States the biggest and most useful idiot in history if they continue in this line which in its secular mindset does not understand the depth of the Palestinian religious mandate, or their commitment to fulfilling a prophecy of their own making.
The dismantling of the terrorist infrastructure, the ending of incitement and the election of a new leader is not compromised by terror as well as the embracing of democracy and free market economies, were all conditions laid down by President Bush on June 24th, 2002, if the Palestinian side wanted American support for the creation of its own state. Not one of those conditions has been fulfilled but the United States continues to pressure Israel to give more, thus encouraging terrorist to kill more. Why compromise when your murderous policies are working? Former national security advisor Brad Scowcroft, an ally of Jim Baker and the rest of that bunch, repeated the miscalculation of those who support the so called road map when he wrote in the August 20th Washington Post that the Israelis and Palestinians must take steps "in parallel rather than sequentially in order to increase the prospects for building and sustaining momentum". Otherwise, he says, "there will be renewed violence".
Now what in the world is he talking about? Violence as an instrument of policy by the Palestinian side has not stopped; it ebbed and flowed as a strategy for extracting the maximum possible concessions from the Israeli and American side before the coming all-out war to eliminate Israel. Any cessations are pauses that the terrorists merely use to rearm. Despite all of the gestures and hand -wringing by well-meaning Westerners, eradication of Israel has been the objective of the Palestinian and Arab states since modern Israel's creation in 1948. Nothing that Israel's enemies have said and done in the last 55 years has shown has done anything to change their minds.
Now, I want to say a few words about the media here because I've been a part of it all of my professional life. I don't think that there is any kind of conspiracy going on against Israel, but I do think there is an enormous amount of ignorance in my profession. You know, we have little signs in shopping malls in the United States near elevators, near lifts, that says "you are here". Most people can't find their way around. I know where I am; I want to know where I need to go! We don't teach… we don’t teach basic historical truths in American schools anymore. If you watch Jay Leno's show, he does these "Jaywalking" segments where he goes out and asks people things, and the most incredible outrageous stupid things are said. Most people couldn't find Israel on a map, and if they did, they would be surprised at how small it is. When I spoke in a synagogue a couple of year ago in the Washington area, Morton was there and he carries this map around, you've already seen it, and it just struck me, as he held up the map, and the 22 Arab states and tiny little Israel – this is so obvious to all of us. It is entry level grade school stuff to all of us. But to overwhelming number of people, they don't have a clue. Most people are people of good will. If you explain things properly to them and show them, hopefully we can still get them to reach the right conclusion. But most of the American media don't do that.
Somewhere around Entebbe in 1976 something switched in the minds of the media. They were happy to portray Israel up into that point as little David overwhelmed by the Goliaths of the region who wanted to eliminate her. But after Entebbe and that incredible brilliant rescue that we celebrated along with our own freedom, because we identified with Israel's freedom, a beacon of democracy in a sea of dictatorship – something happened, it began to change. It wasn't overnight, it was very slow, and all of a sudden Israel became the big Goliath. Fueled in part by a subtle kind of anti-Semitism that no right-thinking individual would openly express any more than we would express today racism or homophobia, because it would come back to reflect on us as un-modern and bigoted and backward, and things of the past and the Klan and all of those other horrible images. We prefer now to do it more subtly, we are more sophisticated and the anti-Semitism that is reflected in so much of the media now is obscured, not with a sheet but with a phony intellectualism and a phony appeal to equality and tolerance and a Rodney King philosophy – can't we all get along? Well. Wouldn't that be nice? Israel is willing to get along but its enemies are not. And so what we have to do in my judgment is to begin to tell the story in the media and we do that in several ways. About the failure of the road map – it has no possibility of succeeding, because it is based on a flawed formula. First we begin to identify those friends in the media who will tell the story, and we begin to support them by supporting their programs that are on and watching them and spreading the word, writing letters to the editors which are often read more than the columns that inspire them, I am sorry to say. And making sure that the papers that do the best job of supporting the things in which we believe are subscribed to by us, and if we have businesses or friends in businesses, patronize the newspapers by advertising in them and doing just the opposite, of course, to those who do not do those things. Everybody else is doing that. Why aren't we more sophisticated in doing that?
Secondly, I think we need, as a start, developing friends outside the so-called mainstream media. The President is doing that this week by being interviewed by local television stations around the country, not wishing to put his ideas through the filters – a properly used word – of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the three major broadcast networks. This is the way to get your message out. Find a friendly journalist or one you can meet with who has an open mind or doesn’t know the truth yet in Des Moines, Iowa! In Charleston, South Carolina! Now why do I pick these places? Because these are places where radical Islam is establishing chapters! They are doing it funded by the Saudis, the Hamas front is setting up... they have so far at least 18 and maybe more since I left America, 18 chapters of radical Islam existing around the country. They are putting in the libraries their story of the history of Islam, which is a perverted story and is filtered on its own. Why aren't we doing that? Why aren’t the friends of Israel doing that? Why aren't the friends of freedom doing that? Because we think that the inertia begun by our founders is going to continue without being renewed! It isn't that each generation must renew the truth and embrace and endorse and live the principals that were handed down to it, because it takes only one generation for those to expire. Just one. That's all. We need to start doing this aggressively and regularly.
People say, "Why do you write about this subject so much?" I say, "Because I know there are so many others are not". Richard Cohen had a piece in the Washington Post just last week. It was basically about, you know, the failure of Israel: it’s never going to work, basically you got to give in and surrender kind of thing. I'm oversimplifying, but that's basically what it was. You got Anthony Lewis, thank God, now retired from the New York Times, so he can only do damage in (inaudible)! You know, he actually wrote after Reagan's tremendous Evil Empire speech about the Soviet Union in the early eighties: Debunk the idea of evil as a proper metaphor and concept for sophisticated diplomatic discourse. And I remember writing in response at the time: "well, what was Hitler than, in need of a behavior modification course? Maybe, but first you had to stop him from killing people!" I think that we can prevail in this battle but only if we tell the story. We've got to go out and tell the story. Every day, every hour, every minute and every second. You have to be a living testimony to that which has been passed down to you in a wicked and adulterous generation to dredge up an old biblical statement about who we are. It's not going to be easy, but freedom never is. It has to be bought and paid for with the blood and the sweat and the intellect and the commitment of people like us. We've got to go out and tell the story. And we must reject every formula, every road map, every idea that comes down the pipe that is not based on truth and that is not based on history and that is not a prayer, voluntary or otherwise of succeeding, we have to tell why. The formula is wrong. It's not about giving Israel's enemies what they say they want, because they want it all. It is about defeating them.
Germany is at peace today because Hitler was defeated. Communism is less a threat, except in china, because it was defeated. Not in war, but intellectually and economically. And people breathe free for the first time in nearly a hundred years because they were defeated. There is nothing wrong with victory. Red Socks and the Yankees aren't saying: "well, you know... we're all baseball players and we all love the game, let's not keep score".
(Laughing)
I mean, do you know any other areas of life that is like that? Hey, let’s all get along! It doesn't really matter what anybody believes! That’s bologna; you're setting yourself out for defeat. Let’s go out and tell the story, and let's do it with new vigor and new hope and new encouragement for being together, let’s network, let's support people in government, in the media, in schools - we're on the right side. They don't call us right for nothing! We ought to have right wing and wrong wing, forget left wing! The wrong wing! Let's come up with new language. The other side has language that they use against us, let's come up with new language that tells the story that's ideologically loaded, that reflects the truth and let's do it with humor, and let's do it with conviction, and let's do it with passion, because we have the truth on our side, we have nothing to be ashamed of! Let's go out and do it! All right!
(Applause)
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