Since my focus is usually Israel, you may ask what does the American economy has to do with Israel? A substantial amount! A strong economy allows the US to posses a powerful military capability that can influence world events. Israel depends on US military power and economy to a major extent. In fact, without US economic ties and the US military umbrella Israel could have a significantly more demanding task to survive economically and militarily.

My key arguments are: A strong economic base is mandatory to support a strong military power. (The USSR did not have this economic base and had to drop from the arms race.) As long as the US desires to be the most powerful military power in the world, or even share power with another one or two nations, we must have a strong economy. Unfortunately, the strength of our economy is declining at an accelerated rate and thus our future is cloudy. This decline in US economic strength, in my view, could be detrimental to global economic and political stability. With all our considerable national deficiencies, I prefer a world with strong US power. I do trust the American people and our system of government more than that of other nations.

Let’s look first at some of our key economic facts:
Our Gross Domestic Product, GDP, all goods and services in the US, is 13 Trillion dollars, that is 13,000 billion. ($43,000 per capita.) We are the largest global economic power, almost 25% of the global economy. This gives us the ability to spend $440 billion (3% of GDP) on our military, nearly half of all the world’s combined military budget. Military spending, contrary to common belief, is a drain on the economy since it produces almost nothing that benefits our population, except, obviously, national security. But from an economic point of view it is a waste. Garbage collectors keep our communities clean; teachers educate our society, but military budgets produce airplanes that at best are not used in wars.

However, our national wealth is in a steady decline. Consider our following economic problems:
1. We buy from other nations, mainly Asia, much of what we consume, eliminating good US jobs. We used to make over 90% of what we consumed; in the last fifteen years we are producing only 75% of our consumption- A huge drop! Therefore causing a $800 billion balance of payments deficit, 6% of our GDP! This year foreigners will own $800 billion more of our national wealth. They already own a noticeable portion of US businesses and properties. Result? Lower standard of living in US.

2. Our national debt is $8.5 Trillion, (65% of GDP), and growing,; that is $28,000 per every man, woman and child. That is a heavy burden for current and future generations, why? Interest alone is $300 billion a year. This is a major portion, 12%, of the Federal budget. Recently Congress and the president approved another tax cut of $70B, mostly for the wealthy. “They’ve been cutting taxes and adding spending,” says Robert Bixby, head of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan fiscal restraint group, “That’s the disconnect. There is just no relationship between spending policy and tax policy.” Only 22% of the public trust Congress now.

3. Every dollar increase in the cost of a gallon of gas reduces our economic growth by one percent

4. Toyota just replaced General Motors as the biggest global automaker. GM is losing billions and closing plants.

5. Cost of Middle East and Afghanistan wars is substantial and not expected to disappear soon.

6. In the next 5 years our Baby Boom generation is starting to retire, dropping the experience base of our managerial and trained personal by a significant amount. For example, average age of petroleum engineers is 54. The average faculty age of Nursing colleges is 52 while nurses are in great demand. There is a international competition for English speaking qualified nurses.

7. Our national saving rate is zero. People live from paycheck to paycheck, often buying lots of trivia. Three quarter of the US economy is consumer spending. The public can not increase its spending without negative consequences. The Federal, State and personal debts are at all time high.

8. Housing price boom- is a false wealth. It is inflation; same goods costing more. The ratio of average family income to average house cost used to be 4 to 1, now it is 8 to 1. It is beyond the ability of most expected home buyers to buy a home.

9. Our ability to innovate is declining. We are short on useful education. Our high school students are low in science education compared to many other countries. We are short of engineers and have too many lawyers and MBA’s graduates. About 60% of our PhD students come from other countries. They used to stay here, benefiting the US, many are now returning to their countries. Our R & D budget is proportionally miniscule compare to other countries. Our national ability to develop new technologies is diminishing. Developing new computer games and gadgets does not add to our scientific or medical capabilities.

10. Medical national expenditures are 14% of total GDP and rising, while 45 millions are uninsured.

11. The unemployment rate is low, however, this is misleading; a lot of high income jobs are replaced by low income jobs. The income of the middle class has not improved for years and that of the low income sector has declined.

What are some of the implications of our national economic deficiencies? We lack resources to benefit our society. We are facing the following needs: (You can add your own)
1. Forty five millions Americans do not have health insurance.
2. Social Security and Medicare are under funded. We can not continue to pay current level benefits.
3. Our infrastructure is literally crumbling: defective roads, highways and bridges. Deteriorating National Parks: Negligible maintenance and little new facilities. Insufficient budget for education.
The homeless are not taken care off.
4. Inadequate flood protection in populated areas, such as Mississippi and California Central Valley.
5. We have negligible funds to prepare for the potential Avian Flu Pandemic. The US death toll could be more than a million and federal allocation is $7B. Simply ridiculous.
6. Inadequate fresh water storage. For example: California dam’s storage has just three years capacity, at most. Weather fluctuation demands a minimum of five years capacity. We are short of fresh water, example: storage in Lake Powell, (behind Glen Canyon Dam,) a main reservoir on the Colorado river that supplies fresh water to several states, is a hundred feet below normal.
7. US contribution to help the third world is proportionally low. We need to help the underprivileged world population to fight disease, reduce starvation, over population, AIDS and other massive problems. It is not only good for them; it is beneficial directly to us.
8. Other critical economic problems: Over dependence on fossil fuels, especially foreign oil.
Energy is one of the most critical ingredients for economic growth. The exceptional growth of our national wealth in the last century was largely fueled by ready availability of low cost oil. We can not replace oil for some time to come. But can we reduce its consumption?

Contrary to common perception, the main problem of fossil fuels is creation of immense amounts of global warming gases, mainly CO2, that have already caused significant global weather changes, which will continue to accelerate in significance. Most climate experts agree that global warming is already here and will cause disturbing changes in global climate that will negatively impact the global population- including the US. It will increase sea level elevations, cause larger hurricanes, floods, and significant weather instabilities. But this critical subject will not be discussed here. See Harvard Magazine for excellent discussion and pictures: http://www.harvardmagazine.com/lib/06mj/pdf/0506-40.pdf

We consume 25% of global oil supply, 20 million barrels a day out of 83 million, (we produce 7 million barrels). The peak of global oil production is expected in the next five years, and with it shortages and ever higher prices. Our reliance on oil is expensive to our economy and causes serious political and military problems both for us and the global economy.

The American public complains, but is not interested in making any sacrifice to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. If we seriously wanted to reduce our dependence, Congress and presidents would have done it. We get the government we want- a government that caters to the wish of the ill informed, poorly educated public.
Compare our reaction to Europe and Japan when OPEC increased the price of oil from $2 to $12 per barrel three decades ago. The governments of Europe and Japan increased the cost of gas to $4 a gallon to curtail the use of this diminishing resource. The US did almost nothing to date.
The last time we increased the fuel efficiency laws of cars was in 1982.
The unwillingness to accept undesirable reality and act on it is shared equally by both Republican and Democratic administrations. We the people are the cause, our way of life is spend now, think later.

What can be done realistically? I will sketch here just a few of many issues.

It is almost impossible to change our national mood of waste and self interest that is the core of the American economic spirit for many decades if not longer. A national catastrophe may be needed!

Most of the public is uninterested in events that they are unwilling to see. Part of the reason is poor education. Most of our students are ill educated in national and global affairs; do not grasp basic math, or numerical relationships. A generally intelligent committee chair of the California Legislation could not grasp that when you have million solar systems and each one costs $25,000, the total cost would be 25 billion dollars. He told me in front of the committee that it is impossible and laughed. And I have already explained it to his key assistant in a private meeting; he did not grasp it either! These are the people who make our laws and budgets!

Some of the steps needed but may not occur in the near future:
Sustained national drive to increase energy efficiency in transportation, housing and industry. Increasing Energy efficiency is the only approach that can be implemented rapidly at very low costs, and therefore, provides the maximum benefits.
Reducing our national debt by reversing the tax reductions of the last few years and taxing people according to their ability to pay. This will allow us to direct more funds to our critical national needs.

However, these are not appealing to many people. Most people want tax cuts, not tax increases. When I mentioned to Congressman Bob Matsui a few years ago (we are sadden by his loss) that I would gladly pay taxes to give our government the ability to improve our society, he told me that he is very glad to hear it. He said that every one is pushing him to cut taxes, but continue to expect government assistance.

The emphasis on energy efficiency is unappealing, it is too mundane. Most environmentalists are romantics who wish idealistic solutions, appealing solutions, such as Hydrogen fuels- unaware that you must spend energy to make Hydrogen - where will this energy come from?
Or another dream, Solar Systems on every roof- impractical, immensely expensive and, dollar per dollar as much as 40 times more expensive than simple attic insulation. If eventfully the practical solar technology would be developed, it would make impact decades from now. Increasing home insulation is not popular, but it can cut our energy for heating and cooling by 50% immediately.

I do not have the answer, national change of lifetime attitudes are extremely difficult to reverse, as I have already mentioned. But each of us must tell this to your family and friends, write letters to the editor, and challenge your three Congresspersons to help secure our future, rather than help destroy it. And, do cut your energy consumption even if it is not easy!

Obviously, this is only a sketch. Books have been written on this subject.

Matania
5/06
***

A hundred years ago, in the middle of a dark, starless sky, my 5 years old mother, Rachel, and her 7 years old sister, slept in two wooden boxes tied to the back of a small, poorly nourished donkey. The sisters were not a heavy load for this slow, melancholy donkey, as both sisters were thin; they were undernourished. They and the rest of the Barzel (Iron) family rarely had enough to eat. Their empty stomachs and the constant fear of a worse future drove them into action: to go to a new land. For more than a hundred years the Barzels lived, more like subsisted, in the Galilee area of the Holy Land, and it was a difficult step to leave the land of their ancestors.

Eight people were in that slowly traveling party, the tall thin father, a small, once very beautiful mother, the little sisters, three teenagers, a sister and two older brothers, and a hired guide. The guide

was not in a hurry, neither the donkey; what could the guide do to it? Beat it more?-it was used to it, and the donkey kept its easy, slow pace. They walked on narrow dirt footpaths for two days to reach the city of Haifa, just an hour drive today. No one could dream then that twenty five years later mother would be a middle class lady with her own
home on the beautiful Mount Carmel in Haifa. I don't know her dreams while she sat in that box but being a bright, energetic girl I believe her mind was very active. It was amazing enough that she did not jump out of the box aftzeluches, (just for the hell of it-Yiddish). She was, probably, pondering her strange uprooting from the familiar friends she grew up with. She probably wondered about the very narrow cobble streets

she used to played in, the small, flat roofed, stone house they all occupied, two or three kids to a bed. Her mother spent most of her days in the miniature kitchen, which had one small window, a wood stove, and like every one else they carried in their water twice daily from the communal well. No one talked while they walked slowly up and down the hills towards Haifa, first for security, voices carry far in the utterly silent night,

second they were quiet people; emotions and feelings were not recognized, nor shared. Negative thoughts were not expressed, life was difficult enough without talking about it. And if you talked about probable bad things, Aeen Raah, the "Evil Eye" could make them come true. On those lonely paths every one was occupied with their own sadness of the lost past and their uncertain dream of the future. All they wanted was a safe place to rest and enough food to eat. Their final destination was far, far away.

No hope was left for them in the almost empty Palestine, a miserable, mostly barren dusty land, but the future was beckoning to them in the land of the mighty Nile. In their home in Tzefat, like many other Jews in the Holy Land, they survived doing small jobs often paid from meager donations from Jewish communities in the Gola, outside the Holy Land. And that minor support was diminishing, not enough to sustain a family of young children. Others lost hope and remained in their misery, but the Barzels decided to leave all their relatives behind, (all poor like them) leave the familiar grounds, the quiet community they all knew so well. It took my grandfather a long time to decide, but he had to leave despite the hardship and the fear of Arab attacks along the desolated way. The prospect of additional uncertain years of this kind of agony finally drove my maternal grandfather to leave the familiar small utterly poor community of Tzefat in the Galil, northern Israel, close the Syrian border today. Back then there were no borders anywhere, nearly all the middle East was under the rule of the brutal and primitive Ottoman Empire, Turkey.

The hope for a secure life with a full stomach was the main reason why the Barzels were leaving for Egypt. Under the cruel Turkish administration survival was all that one could aspire to. On the other hand, Egypt was under a civilized British domination. Theoretically the British were just advisers to the corrupt, self indulgent Egyptian monarchy. However, the British need to control the Suez Canal - the main artery to "The Jewel of the Crown of the British Empire" - India, encouraged them to pressure the Egyptians whenever British interests were challenged. The British High Commissioner had a powerful and often benign influence then. British cultural influence instilled a modicum of
order and the rule of some kind of law, the laws of money and influence

of the powerful. But that was enough to allow capable, eager people to make some kind of a reasonable living. They were sufficiently safe, could eat plenty, their children could be educated. And they could even enjoy the opera in Alexandria, the capital.

Their guide led the Barzels to a cheap shelter in Haifa, were they stayed for two weeks, until grandfather arranged the long train trip to Egypt. Very few trains operated, their schedules erratic and infrequent,

and you had to give Bakshish, (bribe) to a Turkish officer to allow you to buy the expensive tickets to Egypt.. They stayed in one room in an Arab "hostel", a two story U shaped stone building, with small barred widows, secured at night by heavy, and corroded steel shutters. Mother and the older sister Ziporah cooked simple meals clandestinely inside, and all slept on thin mats at night; the same type of thin mat I slept on in a British prison decades later. You roll it and put it in the corner during the day, and you feel the hard, cold floor through it as you lay on it at night. In Tzefat their home, although small and poorly furnished was meticulously clean. Therefore, the dirt and bugs in this small room bothered them the most. They hanged their mats in the sun on the balcony iron railing during the day hoping to kill the bugs inside it. It did not work too well unfortunately.

The Barzels collapsed in a dreamless sleep for a full day; the barking of the stray dogs, the shouts of the drinks sellers, and the donkeys braying did not bother them. They were dead tired. They needed the rest both because of the drain of the journey but also to say their goodbye to Eretz Hakodesh, (Holy Land). Every aspect of their lives was tied to the fact that they were religious Jews living in a Jewish community in the Holy Land-- their deeply shared culture, the holidays, their traditional clothes, the three daily prayers facing Jerusalem, trusted, long time friends. The home and the synagogue were the centers of their lives. And Shabat was Shabat. In Egypt they would be isolated among a multitude of strangers from many cultures. They did not know how long they would be away, and what the result of this daring move would turn out to be.

Mother set on the floor outside their room after she woke up and opened her eyes to that amazing new world. All day-time activities in the Arab inn were conducted in the large central open courtyard, which had only one gate to the outside. This two-doors swinging gate was made of heavy lumber and was locked from evening to dawn with a solid iron bar across the gate. Safety was the key commodity the inn sold. The country was lawless and the Turkish police were few and uninterested. The yard was a noisy place, camels and donkeys were tied to wooden posts on the shady side of the yard.

My mother was not able to stay in one place for long and being the favorite little one, easily convinced her brothers to take her and her sister to tour the city, while father was arranging their departure to Cairo. The kids were awed by the size and activities in that "huge" city. The older brother tried to show his knowledge by saying that Haifa was hundreds of times bigger than their Tzefat. They noticed immediately the difference between their cold, dry Tzefat, and the warm, humid air surrounding them. This little Arab town of Haifa, with a small but increasing number of Jews, was stretched out on three levels. The Arabs lived on the flat land near the sea, were their inn was; the Jews that could afford it preferred to live on the higher hilly grounds about two miles from the sea. The Carmel Mountain (actually hills), which dominated the scenery, was covered by small Tznobar (pine) trees with rarely a building or a soul in site.

They fell in love at once with the sunny and mellow Mediterranean Sea. The salty sea smell was so fresh, enticing them to take lots of deep breaths to savor that unfamiliar aroma. They had never seen anything so big, so blue, but they did not dare put even their toes in the water. Mother and her siblings sat gingerly down on the hot sand and quietly observed the slow activities of the small fishing fleet in the marvelous natural harbor. Grandmother was amazed that they were not fully cooked by the blazing sun and admonished them not to do it again; which they forgot immediately. The next day, with wide open eyes they walked through a big, noisy, smelly, unsanitary Shuk, open market. They moved slowly among the covered stalls containing all the colorful utterly fresh fruits and vegetables any one could desire. And many more things too- from hats to used cooking pots. Live chickens were a bargain, they killed and plucked them to order right in front of you. A terrible sight to a 5 year old. When I was 12 mother sent me to get a live chicken killed to order and I nearly vomited. I refused to do it again. The raw reality of the Shuk was not so pretty elsewhere too, as they saw freshly slaughtered goats and sheep hanging on hooks, feeding big clouds of large swarming flies.

My family dressed differently from the Arab kids, more heavily, and modestly, but they were ignored. Every seller in the Shuk was so busy attracting customers with shouts and yells. What a noisy place. Just like in Tzefat only seasonal produce was available, nothing was brought in from further than a few hours donkey ride away. A few days later, as they walked back to their inn they saw very few enclosed stored, but many little open cafes, with few tables under flimsy white tarps. The cafes were populated by lazy older Arab men sucking their Nargillas, a floor mounted glass utensil which filtered their smoldering Hashish through water. Haifa was very active during the day, with nearly completely empty streets at night.

My Barzel family destination was Cairo, the largest city in Egypt, with the largest Jewish community. The generosity of the Jewish community in Cairo to Jewish newcomers was famous and widely known. In fact, my father's family, Goldfarb, (later Ginosar) also emigrated to Cairo because of that generosity. Both the Barzels and the Goldfarbs knew that they would be supported by the Jewish community until they could stand on their own feet. The Goldfarbs also relied on interest free loans to start a small grocery store there. In 1900 the Goldfarbs escaped the difficult life of a farm community in the Ukraine, not far from Odessa, as poor and deprived as the one in Fiddler On The Roof. They were nearly penniless, were tired of the frequent murderous Russian pogroms and they wanted to start a new life in Israel. But when they found how difficult and hopeless was the life in the Holy Land then under the Turks, they came as close as they could, hoping to move there when possible. So both the Barzels and Goldfarbs settled in Cairo a century ago and that is where my mother and father met and courted.

My father did go finally to live in his beloved Israel, when he turned 22, in 1922. He and mother started a family and build their first home on the sand dunes of the new city of Tel Aviv, and he felt every event of the growing country in his soul. He loved Israel immensely, and this love motivated my older brother Pinhas, and later me, to join the Lechi underground to try to liberate Israel from the duplicitous British occupation. This twisted relationship with Britain which started as a League of Nations' Mandate to create a free state of Israel, and turned out to be an oppressive occupation to achieve the British Empire goals. Eventually we Israelis kicked the British out, and they have not forgiven us yet. Not to this day.

A quarter of a century later, when I was 5 years old, I repeated mother's journey. I also traveled from Haifa to Cairo by train, with mother, my 3 years old sister Sara, and Pinhas, which I loved and looked up to. We went to visit all the members of the Barzel family who had traveled a quarter century earlier to Cairo, in much more primitive conditions. on a similar train. It was an eye opening reunion for me, and of mammoth proportion. I never forgot it, and we never saw my mother brothers, a sister, father and mother again.. Just one sister returned to Israel during Nassar's expulsion of Jews in 1956. The rest died peacefully in Egypt.

Their life in Egypt was quite interesting, maybe some other time I will tell you a little about it, if you are interested.

Matania

For years I have heard considerable frustrations from American supporters of Israel about the extremely inadequate information that comes from Israel. Globally it is obvious that the Palestinian story, decidedly a distorted, often fabricated story, comes loud and clear for decades. Most of the Arab world and many left leaning people in Europe and even much of the US media believe them. My friends ask me why are the Israelis unwilling or incapable of telling their own story effectively.

There are a number of reasons, but one important reason is that many Israelis believe in “facts on the ground,” that is: reality, will determine events and words are often useless. There is some truth in that, but, in the long run, I am not sure it is true. This real war is more than 60 years old, has killed twenty three thousands Israelis, has created tens of thousands of injuries, and will continue, I believe, for decades. The American and European governments wishful thinking that this is a limited struggle of “land for peace” are ignorant of reality. This is a war and Israel must win this war in order to survive and it needs wider global support to win it.
I am not even sure if enough Israelis understand that this is a real war. They are, understandly, so eager for peace.

There is a related critical reason which the Israelis are unable to fully grasp that I would like to emphasize below: People “think” with their emotions, not with their intellect. As my friend tells me: humans are emotional beings that sometimes think. Notice the following case:

Hamas accused Israel last Friday of killing innocent civilians on the beach of Gaza. The painful picture of the crying little Palestinian girl for her dead father was circulated immediately around the globe by the internet and by Arab and European TV.

Israel military was hesitant and said, we are investigating it, and we will let you know the results when available. A typical person would surmise, the Israelis did it, they are stalling, otherwise they would have rejected the accusations immediately. The Israelis murdered the family. Period!

This is a large part of the reason why Palestinian propaganda is so successful- the ignorance of the Israeli military, media and government of the nature of propaganda. Israelis institutions are full of intelligent, highly educated people that are generally unable to understand, to grasp, that the world is populated mostly by emotional, and not well educated people. People do not think first, their emotions control their belief.
Israel should have rejected the accusation forcibly and immediately, even if not sure yet.

Israelis (obviously I generalize) want to be correct, factual, have unquestionable proofs. They take time to investigate and when they come with an answer, it will be factual, but it will be too late- the damage to Israel’s reputation had already been established.
The Israelis try to appeal to the intellect, to the person who wants systematic analysis, of proofs beyond doubts. There are very few people like that in the world- even in our Western world, even in the US. Most people are impacted by emotions first, facts to a much less extent. They are not bad, or uncaring people, they are normal people, overwhelmed with the demands of life. And we all are aware of the immense complexity of modern life. Most people, even educated people, spend very little time looking for the facts that Israelis supply some time later.

Remember the first powerful Palestinian global propaganda? The pictures of Palestinian father and son hiding from bullets and the son killed “by Israeli fire”. In the eyes of many people especially in Europe and Middle East, the Israelis did kill this little innocent Arab boy in the beginning of the Intefada. It was a lie, a well orchestrated lie, but it does not matter. It took the Israeli and other investigators over a year to supply “proofs” that the boy actually died from Palestinian fire. Who cares? By now the world has moved so much forward, the propaganda damage has been well established.

And here is a much more serious case of Israeli propaganda mistake, in my opinion. I grant you, it is a very difficult issue and I would like you to think about it.

When I was in Israel in May 2004, the Palestinians blew up two Israeli armored trucks in Gaza and killed the nine Israeli soldiers inside. The trucks contained explosives and the bodies of the Israeli soldiers were blown up. Within a short time Palestinian TV showed Palestinians youth playing football with the heads of several of these Israeli soldiers. The president of Egypt, Mubarak, called the Palestinian leaders and gave them hell to stop re broadcasting this gruesome soccer in human remains. He was concerned about the damage to the Arab cause by showing this inhuman behavior.

I watched hour after hour of Israeli television that night. Person after person, leader after leader form the right to the left and in between were in shock. “How can we deal with people like that?” was a common comment. Their face grave, their agony deep. Israel was in shock and mourning.
But the Israelis did not disseminate this story globally, nothing. They said it will desecrate the dead. I do not think so. It seems to me that by exposing the gruesome Palestinian behavior global support would increase and thus the number of future Israeli dead might be reduced. People must grasp the core attitude of many Palestinians to human life.
The Israelis would not have desecrated the dead, in my opinion, by telling the facts. They did not have to use the TV pictures, mind you.
No one outside Israel probably heard about this gruesome event. None of my friends here in the US, no one I have ever asked knows about it.

Israelis felt it was such a desecration that they kept it to themselves. Said nothing to the global media.
I think it was a mistake. They should have exposed it globally and powerfully in order to save more Israeli lives.

I wonder what you think about that.

Matania
6-06

SUMMARY: Arab terrorism has been extremely successful for the last eighty years because it gained increasing rewards. Arab terrorism drove Israel out of Lebanon and out of Gaza.
It would stop only when terrorism would not achieve results.

This is an overview of eighty years of Arab - Israeli war. To fully grasp the magnitude of the problem I am offering here information not normally discussed and often forgotten. But there are no short cuts to clear understanding. So take the time to understand the issues.

Most Arabs view realities in drastically different ways than western people, because the two cultures in many ways are politically and socially opposite. Also Arab culture is more persistent, a generation or two is a short time for it, whereas westerns expect quick fix. Therefore, when some western people look at the "Settlements" they notice that the Palestinians are against them and kill and injured many Jews there. Western thinking arrives at a quick-fix conclusion: give them the settlements and most of the grievances would disappear. Others believe that eliminating the settlements by transferring the quarter of a million Jews to the "Israeli side" would enhance Israel's security. Without the settlements a shorter security fence could be built around the Palestinian territories that might reduce terrorism to a trickle.
Simple and hopeful answers, but not realistic.

If the settlements were eliminated I believe the majority of the Palestinians and Arabs would think:
Our terrorism has worked again. We won part of our goals. We need to continue our terror to win all of our aims. And their ultimate aim is the destruction of the State of Israel. They have never accepted a two-state solution.

TO STOP TERRORISM we need to understand the terrorists' mind. It is less important what we think, but how terrorists view the situation.
When we give in to terrorists, they feel successful, and terrorism escalates. The terrorists have been fortified by your giving in to terror. They are now eager for more gains.

Let's look at the enormous successes Palestinian terrorism has had to date and why it has been escalating.

The Jewish people rebuilt Israel in one hundred years from a desert with a hundred thousand impoverished Jews, to a flourishing industrial country of one million Arabs and five millions Jews. The Israelis accomplished that with a lot of outside sympathetic and monetary help, but especially with their own sweat and blood. From 1947 to date, twenty three thousand Israelis have been murdered by Arab terrorists and organized military attacks. BUT THIS IS ONLY A SMALL PART OF THE CASUALTIES THE ARABS INFLICTED ON ISRAELIS AND JEWS ELSEWHERE.

The 1920's:
The 1917 British promise of the Balfour Declaration to build a Jewish Homeland in Israel became an international legal Mandate in the San Remo Allies Conference in April 1920. The British were officially committed to establish a Jewish National Home in Israel, and the French gave their official blessing to it so they could control Lebanon and Syria in return.

Under Turkish rule, prior to the British occupation, Arabs murdered Jews only sporadically because the Turks did not tolerate disturbances. The British were more lenient. The Arabs started their terror against the Jews with their 1920 Jerusalem Pesach pogrom that killed seven Jews and injured two hundreds. No response to this attack came either from the British or the Jews. The Jews acted like they did for millennia, accepted and cried. This lack of response, I believe, was a mistake.
The Jewish defense organization Hagana was created then to protect Jewish settlements from Arabs attacks since the British were not eager to do it. The purpose was defense only, no retribution. There were very few reasons for the Arabs not to resort to further terror.

In May 21, 1921 Jaffa' Arabs attacked Tel Aviv and murdered 47 Jews. The Jewish British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel declared a temporary halt to Jewish immigration. Britain continued from then on to catered to the Arabs. Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary of England, verbally supported a Home for the Jewish people; however, he first gave semi independence to Arab Trans Jordan, 80% of Israel's Promised Land, and then in 1922 published a White Paper. In it he said that a Jewish Home would be in Palestine, but not all of the remaining west side of Palestine. Again Arab terrorism was not fought, but appeased. Arab terrorism continued with the notable massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929. It drove the Jews out of Hebron; a place they had lived in on and off from the time King David used it for his first capital three thousands years ago. Hebron was the home of several of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs a thousand years before that. The Machpella, their burial site, is adjacent to Hebron.
Palestinian terrorism was reinforced. Terror achieved results - it cleared the Jews out of an area the Arabs wanted. No negative response came from any quarter. The Jews felt it was unjust and prayed. The British did nothing.

The 1930's:
The Arab Revolt of 1936-39. Jews who returned to Hebron were terrorized again, some killed, and many injured, and again left Hebron. Terror achieved results- Jews can be forced out by terror. To quench Arab terrorism the British brought additional troops to Israel and tried, but they were not too successful. The British did not want a Jewish State and were concerned about Arab reaction.

More significantly, to placate the 1936-39 Arab terrorism, in 1938 the British instituted a White Paper that limited Jewish immigration to a total of 75,000 Jews. Not per year, but for all times. Free Jewish immigration was one of the cornerstones of creating a Jewish Homeland. Restricting Jewish immigration was a critically important success for Arab terrorism.

Please grasp it: ARAB TERRORISM CAUSED NOT ONLY THE 23,000 DIRECT DEATHS IN ISRAEL, IT ACTUALLY CAUSED SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSANDS ADDITIONAL JEWISH DEATHS IN EUROPE DUE TO THE BRITISH WHITE PAPER.

At the time of this White Paper, Hitler allowed Jews to emigrate, but no country accepted them in any large numbers and six millions were later murdered. If this White Paper did not exist, many European Jews could have had at least one place to go. SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND JEWS COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED FROM THE GAS CHAMBERS, like the few thousands who arrived illegally.

At that time, most of us in Israel believed that stopping Jewish immigration into Israel was England's fault. Partially it was, but the clear cause was Arab terrorism. Britain was thinking about the coming war with Germany and did not want to use its troops to guard the Middle East - a logical national decision.

While Arab terrorism achieved so much, we in Israel did not fully grasp its importance, and how to deal with it. Of the two Jewish undergrounds at that time, (the larger Hagana and the smaller Irgun,) only the Irgun sometimes responded to Arab terrorism by attacking Arabs militants, and a few times civilians. Both the Hagana and Irgun later helped the British in their war effort, but after WWII they agreed that the British were our only enemy. The core belief of my Lechi underground [which started in 1940], was that the British were our sole enemy and ignored the Arabs. I still have my notes from the seminars I attended at Lechi. We believed that after we had liberated Israel from England, the Arabs would live peacefully inside a Jewish state from the Jordan to the sea. We shared this thinking with the majority of the Jews. The Irgun was more militant and wished the two sides of the Jordan.

The hope for a Jewish State has been reduced drastically by the 1936-39 Arab's terrorism. Millions of Jews died in Europe, many due to the White Paper, and the likelihood of achieving a Jewish majority in Israel was, for a time, destroyed.
By the way, the religious leader of the Arabs in Israel fled to Germany and assisted Hitler significantly in the systematic murder of Jews. No wonder many Arabs are now saying let's finish what Hitler started!

Israel is sliced again due to Arab terrorism:
To stop the Arab revolt of 36-39 the British produced the Peel Partition plan, planning to divide Israel once again. Britain first promised Israel on both sides of the Jordan, and then they gave eastern Israel to the Hashemite Family to become Jordan. The British decided that the Mandate would allow Israel only the west side of the Jordan. The Peel Partition would have divided Israel yet again to a big Arab state and a smaller Jewish state. Despite that significant loss of territory the Jews agreed to it; the Arabs rejected it, and the Peel Partition was dropped.

One clear and unambiguous act continues to this day: the demand by the Arabs for a single state on the full West side of the Jordan, and no Jewish state at all. The Jews accepted every offer of a two - states peaceful coexistence with the Arabs, starting with giving up the eastern side of the Jordan, and then again, the Peel Partition. The Jews accepted the UN Partition, and later Barak offered a Palestinian state.
What amazes me is that despite the clear evidence, some believe that the Arabs are now willing to accept only the Territories and Gaza, and not all of Israel, as they have been continuously advocating in Arabic to their own people.

The 1947 UN Partition and the creation of the State of Israel did not slow down Arab terrorism. Again, Jews accepted the two-state solution, the Arabs rejected it. Local Arabs attacked Jews all over the country, especially isolated Jewish settlements, and many Jews were murdered. This organized terror, and the War of Independence afterward, were very successful for the Arabs. If you look at it from a Jewish or Western point of view you think the Arab lost since Israel did become a state. But from the Arab point of view they have succeeded: first the State of Israel was quite small, and second, Israel did not become a normal state among the nations. Arab attacks on the Jews of Israel not only caused a lot of deaths and suffering to the Jewish population, it also succeeded in stopping the Jews from having a secured life in a free state. And this terror has been accepted by many western countries as legitimate.

On Saturday morning, a day after Ben Gurion declared a Jewish State on May 14, 1948, the Egyptian Air Force attacked the Tel Aviv airport. I was there, saw and wanted to shoot the Egyptian planes on their way to the site: they were just a hundred feet from me, but they disappeared before I got my Brengun. Five Arab armies attacking Israel were defeated at the cost of six thousands Jews, one percent of the Jewish population then. I lost about a quarter of all my friends, one out of each five young men I had known.
Arab attacks did not destroy Israel, but they succeeded in creating immense suffering for the Jewish people there. Most Israelis lost relatives and friends. To this day the casualties of the last fifty years are an emotional strain on Israelis.
After the War of Independence, no Arab government agreed to a peaceful coexistence as the result of their defeat. They only signed Armistice agreements, meaning-- "we will get you next time."

Despite the Armistice, and no Occupied Territories, no Israeli settlements in Gaza or the Territories, nevertheless Israelis lived under continuous terror attacks. No one was safe any place in the country. Arabs terrorists murdered women and children at home. They took over schools and murdered the kids. They commandeered buses and killed passengers. They murdered any Jew they found unprotected. In 1950 they had murdered three members of my border kibbutz, a kibbutz within Israel. Arabs terrorism succeeded to interrupt normal life in the new country, and make Jewish life precarious. Arabs suffered just a few counterattacks when their own terrorism was especially notorious.

In the summer of 1967 the Arab countries around Israel marshaled their large Soviet supplied armies to destroy Israel once and for all, and were defeated. Again, no peace agreements were accepted by the Arab states, just armistice. During this war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Israel conquered the Gaza strip from Egypt, the so called "West Bank" from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria... Initially, Arab residence there accepted the Jews peacefully since their lives were much better than under their previous "Brothers" control. The Israelis then faced the dilemma: How to achieve permanent peace and reduce the likelihood of another war. The Israelis wanted to trade land for a real peace, but the Arab Summit a few months after their defeat reaffirmed their continuous determination to "destroy the Jewish state and drive the Jews to the sea."

What options were opened then to Israel?
1. To give the three areas back to their avowed enemies to be used again as a jumping point for another war?

2. To negotiate a Peace for Land exchange? That was already rejected in the Arab Summit.

3. To give the land to the local Arabs and hope for peace? The armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria would have returned the next day.

4. To hold the lands until the Arabs would accept that peace is better for them than war.

The last one was the only sensible option: to hold the lands for peace negotiation.

Israel has spent millions of dollars to improve the miserable life of the local Arabs in the three areas. They hoped that they would change Arab attitudes towards the Israelis, reduce their hatred, and may be, just may be, this would lead to a peaceful coexistence with them. The form of coexistence was not clear. Several plans were discussed in Israel. None was accepted by a significant majority in a democracy that demands a majority decision.

The surprising and dangerous 1973 war increased the feelings in Israel that better defensive borders are a must for Israel's security. It took a few years for Israel to settle down after that war. The 1967 feelings of the superiority of the Israeli secrete services and military were much more realistic and sobering after 1973. For security reasons, and sometimes for political reasons, all Israeli governments supported the building of Jewish communities in the "Occupied Territories". (The settlements occupies less than three
Percent of the West Bank's area, and were built on empty government-owned land.)

President Sadat of Egypt understood that despite the Arabs successful surprise, despite the Arabs immense forces, and despite the powerful support of the Soviet Union, the Israelis were not likely to be defeated by war. He was willing to risk his life to achieve peace, if he could redeem Egyptian honor - regain the Sinai. Very difficult negotiations began between Sadat and the Irgun leader Prime Minister Begin, under pressure from President Carter. The result was the peace for land agreement in which the full Sinai was returned to Egypt for peace and normalization of relationship.
For the first time Egypt agreed to accept the existence of Israel.
That was a major and critical milestone in the relationship with the strongest Arab country in the region. Israel hoped that that this milestone would open the opportunity to peace with the other Arab countries. It did not happen till the peace with Jordan in 1995, fifteen years later.

Egypt made light demands that peace with the Arabs in the conquered territories should follow, but the 1981 assassination of Sadat nullified this effort. The Egyptians did not want control of the Gaza strip as part of the peace agreement, probably because of their negative experience with the local Arabs between 1948 and 1967. They preferred to leave the trouble to the Israelis.

For many years the Jordanians continue to claim the West Bank as theirs, and that Israel should return it to them. Arabs in this area continue to hold Jordanians papers and strong ties continued with Jordan, both economically and culturally.

The murder of the Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics brought Arab terrorism to the world's attention. But instead of rejecting it and fighting against it, the majority of nations catered to it. Just one example of a European complicity with terrorists. The German government was warned of a likely attack on the Israeli Olympic athletes, but refused Israel's request to have its own guards there. The Germans were not trained in anti terrorism, and after the terrorists attacked, the Germans refused to allow Israeli special antiterrorist forces to attempt a rescue. The German botched the rescue attempt and captured three terrorists. There is now evidence that less than two months later Chancellor Willy Brandt arranged with the terrorists a contrived hijacking of a German airplane from Beirut and to hold its few, select German passengers as hostages. Upon a prearranged terrorist’s threat of killing these passengers, the German released the three captured terrorists.

If you read the excellent book on the causes and potential cures for terrorism: "Why Terrorism Works," by Alan Dershowitz you will see a twenty page listing of international Palestinian terrorism. It lists: Murders across the globe, airplane hijackings, terrorist’s attacks on civilians inside Israel, attacks on numerous passengers’ air terminals, and attacks on synagogues and restaurants in Europe. Reading the list you may start to grasp the extent of this unrelenting terror waves. And more significant, you will also see how this terrorism was rewarded by the UN, by Germany, by France, the Vatican [six meetings between the Pope and Arafat, more than any other leader], and several other European countries. Note: "Of the 204 terrorists arrested outside of the Middle East between 1968 and 1975, only three remained in prison at the end of 1975." These rewards of recognition and support embolden the Palestinian terrorists to intensify their atrocities.

If we want to stop terrorism, the use of terror must never be rewarded, it must be penalized!

CONCLUSION: Arab terrorism has won to date. It won because terrorism achieved results and is rewarded too.
If the Israelis give up the settlements and a Palestinian State is created without defeating terrorism first, an unrelenting wave of terrorism to gain all of Israel would certainly commence.

Matania
(originally written 2003)

"Palestinian terrorism is likely to stop only when both following conditions have been met:
[1] Reversing terrorism's rewards--The likelihood of achieving their aims would be diminished by further acts of terrorism.
[2] Penalty--It would be more costly to their aims and their leaders to continue terrorism."
****

Actually the title should be: I was an Israeli Freedom Fighter, not AN ISRAELI TERRORIST. There is a great difference between the two as you will read below. I used the title terrorist above to attract attention.

My personal story as printed in The Sacramento Bee

In 1944, when I joined the Israeli underground LECHI at age 15, the British, and most Israelis, called me a terrorist and tried to arrest and even kill whoever they could from our meager membership. Before I joined LECHI, an Israeli told the police where our leader Avraham Stern was hiding and British detectives murdered him in a closet. We were called "the Stern Gang," the British murdered most of our leaders, and arrested almost all the rest.

One member, Yehoshua Cohen, who later became my friend and was, many years later, the bodyguard of Ben Gurion, resurrected us from obscurity and built up our dedicated teams (cells) slowly, spreading them over the country. Many of our leaders escaped prison by digging a 150-foot tunnel and joined the fight. Many, many, dedicated members died, including my cell leader, Mordechai. He was shot by a Jewish policeman and refused to shoot back.

I was lucky; I spent just a short time in jail. My brother spent nearly two years in a British detention camp in Africa like hundreds of other freedom fighters. His wife, a freedom fighter too, was arrested with him, and served that time in prison.

I knew in my soul, as my friends did too, that Israel was ours and the British would have to leave, no matter how long it would take, and how many of us would die in that fight. All my education, my upbringing, my inner feelings told me that one day, all this area would, again, be our land. We expected the local Arabs and Christians to live in our Jewish State as equal citizens.

We called ourselves Lochamai Cherut Israel, (LECHI), Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, and after years of fighting the British alone, convinced the other two undergrounds, the Irgun and Hagana, to fight together our enemy -- Britain. All three undergrounds then coordinated their attacks on British installations, making an effort not to kill even their soldiers unless it was necessary, and we raised so much hell for them that they asked the United Nations to take over. And we got a sliver of a free state.

Were we terrorists or freedom fighters? Terrorists aim to create terror in the civilian population by killing innocent civilians, men, women and children. The freedom fighters of Israel did their best to prevent killing even British policemen.

One of our underground members hated the British and killed a policeman without orders. We warned him, but he did it again. One of our leaders killed him under orders. We had many opportunities to kill British policemen, but we targeted those that killed and tortured our members while prisoners.

When the Irgun underground decided to blow up the King David Hotel, a British headquarters, they warned the British half an hour earlier, but the British could not believe that the Irgun could penetrate their command center and did not evacuate it. Their arrogance caused the death of many people, including civilians.

Why am I telling this old story now? Because I am concerned about the way some Americans, and painfully some Jews, misunderstand the situation in Israel and what occurred there for the last hundred years, and now. Some still blame Israel for the agony there. Some withhold their support because they find lack of perfection in this Jewish State, which is fighting continuously for its survival. Some sit here in judgment on a state and people that they have little understanding of.

Please understand that most people know very little about the utterly desolated and unpopulated land Palestine was 100 years ago, when Jews started to come to Israel in increasing numbers. The Jews did not displace anybody; it was nearly an empty land. Americans know very little about the Arab pogroms in Israel starting in earnest in 1929 when my sister-in-law family escaped Arab murderers in Hebron by sheer luck, but 69 others Jews did not. You may know about the murders of 21,000 Israelis by Arab armies and Palestinians to date, but it did not touch you personally as it still does the majority of Israeli families. You heard, but you do not know, how much the Israelis sacrificed to live on this thin sliver of a land just 5 percent the size of California. Yes, twenty Israel's can be placed inside California, and this current sliver is a tiny fraction of the land we expected to have as the Jewish Homeland when I was growing up there.

Please allow me to tell you a little of my own family experience there so you may start to feel a little of the agonies that the Jews of Israel went, and going, through. The dream of my family for an Israeli State was not different from the dreams of most Jews there.

My father was two years old when his parents left Russia to go to Cairo, Egypt. They hoped to go to Israel, but the poverty and severe occupation of the Turkish Ottoman Empire was so hard that Jews already there left Israel to live in the British-controlled Egypt. A few years later my mother and her family left Metula, on donkeys, in the Galil of northern Israel, also for Cairo, after living there a 150 years, because of starvation and torment under the Turks. When my father was 17 the British government issued the Balfour Declaration giving their support to the creation of a Jewish State on the two sides of the Jordan River (as it was in biblical times). After the British conquered the Middle East in 1918, and promised the Jews to help them create a state on the two sides of the Jordan, my father and many of his friends moved to Israel to build the new state. In 1922 Churchill created Trans Jordan and gave three-quarters of the land promised to be Israel to the Arabs. The smaller portion, all the land between the Jordan River and the sea was to be a temporary British Mandate under the League of Nations dedicated to the creation the state of Israel in that full area.

My older brother, my sister, and I were raised to continue our hope for an Israel on both sides of the Jordan, and to fight to achieve that goal. We did not accept the duplicity of the British, cutting down our country to its minimum size. You may say it was an unrealistic dream, but that was part of our soul, an integral part of who we were. And we fought for it, as many other Israelis did. The Left and the Hagana accepted the shrinking of Israel; the Right, and the Irgun and Lechi undergrounds, did not. We were still hoping.

As the United Nations divided Israel in 1947 into an Arab and Israeli portion, our hearts were cut again. It was a severe blow to our dreams, but we wanted a Jewish State to accept the millions of wondering, stateless Jews. Eventually most Israelis, including my father, my brother, my sister, and I, accepted that sad reality. I accepted this reality despite the Arabs' killing a quarter of my elementary and high-school friends during the war of 1947-48 that they imposed on us, despite their killing three of my kibbutz friends, out of 40 members, in "peace time" after the 1948 war. We wanted bygones to be bygones.

You may have read about the anguish in Israel, but unless you went through this yourself, with your relatives and friends dying in one war or another, or by a suicide bomber, you are not likely to feel it like an Israeli feels it. Almost all Israelis have a friend or a relative that was injured or killed in the many attacks or wars imposed on them.

And still these Israelis want peaceful coexistence, minimize civilian casualties, and do not lash out, as some other nations would have done. One hundred million refugees were resettled around the world in the last 50 years starting new lives, but not the Palestinians. They want all of the land, from the river to the sea, and clearly state that their aim is to have whatever land they can get now, so it could be used as a springboard to take over all the land from the Jordan to the sea.

Unlike the Palestinians, we did not accept this sliver of land as a step to take over all the land. Maybe a small number still dream about that larger Israel, but most Israelis want to build the country and bring in as many Jews as possible and accepted the reality with a heavy heart. The Palestinians claim that the Israelis took their lands. It is not true and we can, needlessly, argue about it for a long time. Some say, see how much the Palestinians suffer losing their lands. Israelis suffered no less from the slicing of their promised lands, reducing it from the two sides of the Jordan and then cutting it to the current sliver of land.

The question is what to do with the reality of today? The question is what can be done now so both people live in peace and safety?

The answer I hope for is: for the Palestinians to have a good life they have to accept reality, stop the terror, and give peace a chance.
*****

“The Palestinians can not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”, said the Israeli leader Abba Eban half a century ago. With all his outstanding qualities, Eban did not understand one fundamental issue: You can not understand the world if you look at it only from your own point of view.

Again and again my friends ask me, why, even after they have gotten all of Gaza, the Palestinians continue suicide bombings, rocket attacks and all other methods they can use to kill Israelis? (The attacks are continuing; the media just stopped informing us about them). Why do the majority of the Palestinians and Arabs in general, support these hateful attacks? Don’t they understand that they are injuring themselves in the process, that their ability to have a peaceful life and live to enjoy the fruit of their labor is diminishing? Now even the Europeans are suspicious of the Palestinians and would prefer to drop their long term support.
What is it within the Palestinians that seem to work against their own best interest?

The real issue is not that the Palestinians are making mistakes and increasing their agonies, it is that we are looking at their actions purely from our own deeply ingrained Western point of view-- life is sacred, peace is superior, love your neighbor, are our standards.

We want peace, democracy, cooperation between people and nations, unfortunately most Palestinians and Arabs all across the Middle East consider personal honor, national, and religious pride, and destroying the enemy, as much more important than personal freedom or standard of living. Here is what was in the newspaper last week:

“Karbala, Iraq—More than one million Iraqis marched and beat themselves Thursday in blood-soaked processions through this holy city and other Shiite centers around the country to mourn the 7th-century death of their revered martyr, Imam Hussein.”
By Khalid Mohammed, Associated Press

Read it again and again to grasp what is to us an unthinkable behavior: One million people, mutilating themselves, are proud to bloody themselves in public, in honor of a religious leader who died thirteen hundred years ago! It is not one hundred, not thousand, but a million! And we expect these people to embrace Democracy, peace, and the rule of law? And that fanaticism is not only in Iraq.

There are several ways of looking at these questions, but as long as we think we are right and they are wrong we will miss the essence of the issues involved. Our ways may be right for us, but their ways are singularly important to them! Often their beliefs are more important than their comfort, standard of living, even their lives, and even, to some, the lives of their children!
Marian Farahat was a mother of six, and with her encouragement three of her sons died as suicide bombers killing Israeli civilians. She is famous in Gaza for a recruitment video showing her 17 years old how to be a suicide bomber like his brothers, telling him not to come back. Along with other Hamas terrorist she just was elected to the Palestinian Legislative council.
M. Zukerman, Editor in Chief. US. NEWS

We are unable to grasp it, it is beyond our experience. And, therefore, we often dismiss facing it.

The Palestinians will continue to believe we are selfish, self centered, leisurely oriented people, afraid to die, and therefore, we are inherently weak. In the end, many Palestinians believe, they will eventually win.

It is not a matter of right and wrong, it is a matter of deep cultural beliefs, of profound cultural differences. You may say the hate and the killing are not advocated in the Koran, but what is important, I believe, is what people do, not what is in their books.

I would like to reemphasis, since it is so essential to grasp:
We believe our ways are superior and that many of them are either uncivilized murderers with no regard to human life, either their enemies’ lives, their religious brothers’ lives, or their own lives. We think, Palestinians will soon learn their mistakes and be able to live with us in peace.
However, they don’t think they are mistaken. They believe that their personal needs and preferences are secondary to the long term religious and cultural need of spreading their religion globally.
Again, it is not a matter of right and wrong, it is a matter of a substantially different world view.

It is also not a matter of poverty and low standard of living. Millions of people around the world have a considerably lower standard of living; in fact millions are on the verge of starvation all their lives. They do not resort usually to indiscriminant murders of their own religious brothers like in Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other Muslim countries.

Back to Israel, Gaza and the potential for peace:
This basic lack of ability to grasp the nature of your enemy, the underlining core of the enemy soul, drove Rabin, Peres and Clinton too, to lead the Israeli people into one of the worst nightmare of their existence to date. It is easy to understand the naivety of the American President, we, the American people, on the whole, so much believe that if you give peace a chance it will win. Many of us do not grasp that there is more than one way to look at the world. And the more idealistic you are the more likely is that you would miss the real issues. That is why often tough men like President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin, can achieve reasonable peace for their nations. They are less likely to be swayed by idealistic views and more by down to earth concerns for their own countries, and more important, he/she are more likely to understand the enemy’s core views.

The Oslo peace agreement was done on the Israeli side by good, peace loving people, such as Peres and Rabin. But on the Palestinian side by a smart, politically savvy, pursuer of a long term vision completely different from peace, by Arafat. Arafat nationalistic, no compromise belief, set the Palestinians on a course that it would be very difficult to undo for decades!!

Arafat and his associates, including Abbas, took two and a half million, highly emotional and easily impressionable people, more than half below 20 years of age, and systematically, continuously, relentlessly, taught them to hate, to murder as the only method of national liberation. These ingrained feelings do not suddenly disappear. It takes decades to reduce, to change, and to diminish.

“In school in Gaza, I learned hate, vengeance, and retaliation. Peace was never an option. At school we sang songs with verses calling Jews "dogs." Hundreds of millions of other Muslims also have been raised with the same hatred of the West and Israel as a way to distract from the failings of their leaders.” Nonie Darwish (Telegraph-UK)

It does not matter what peace agreements Israel may eventually reach with the Palestinians. Even if ever a Palestinian leadership would emerged that would seriously and comprehensively pursue peace and work systematically to destroy terrorism, it would still be nearly impossible to stop this ingrained hate from surfacing again and again in murdering of Israelis.

That is the sad reality of the Middle East.

Matania
2/06

WHY IT IS SO HARD FOR SOME AMERICAN JEWS TO SEE THE BASIC FACTS ON ISRAEL.

The desire for universal peace for all people is a deep Jewish creed for untold time. It was stated by our prophets and supported by our faith despite many odds. We also abhor killing. After the Nazis were defeated people from other nations in the death camps killed as many German as they could. However, the Jews abhorrence to killing is so strong that Jewish survivors did not kill their tormentors, but just enjoyed their freedom. We hate to see any body suffer or being treated badly irrespective of their nationality or religion. It is especially sad to us Jews when a member of our faith behaves in an immoral way; we all feel some shame.

We want to be so faultless, so righteous, that we often ignore what does not fit our wishes.

So, what do we feel when we see the real suffering of Palestinians and the hundred of deaths they encountered in the last eight months? Some of us believe that the Israelis are using undue force against these innocent civilians.
However, despite our dream for a world of peace we have to live with current reality. Judaism is based on accepting reality, we do not assume people are angels, just human, subjected to all the potential of humans, but also to the limitations human have. We must accept facts and act according to them.

When we see act A being done, it would be a mistake to say, no, really it is B. If we would continue it for long the same thing would happen to us that happened to the German Jews before W.W.II. The facts were plainly in front of them, but many of them could not give up the life they had and rationalized that the German people would eventually reject Hitler.
THOSE THAT ACCEPTED REALITY ESCAPED AND SURVIVED.

There is another reason why good, caring Jews have great difficulty accepting reality in Israel. We see how each side is suffering, but despite the facts we do not want to be a part of those who inflict harm. As Golda Meir said to Sadat, "We can forgive you for killing our children, but we are unable to forgive you for making us kill your children."

This thinking is part of the reason why sensible, logical, caring Jews and other liberal people, have immense difficulty accepting the facts of the Middle East, that many Arabs have very little problem with killing people, either their own, or others.

Does it shock you to read this?

Are you still unaware of the suicide bombers and the encouragement that key Muslim clergymen give them, and the support they get from their community at large?
Did you see the joy of the murderers of the two Israeli reservists some months ago, displaying their bloody hands to the cheering crowds?

We often do not want to remember these events. They are so gruesome.

HERE IS REALITY, AS DIFFICULT AS IT IS TO LOOK AT: When someone tells you that they are going to kill you and proceed to attack you, a logical person would try to protect himself, and be prepared to defend him/herself better. May be the first time it would be a surprise, but if it is a surprise the second time, one could question his ability to accept reality. And when this attempt to kill is repeated verbally and in action, and ignored, the person is clearly unable to see reality and eventually would be killed.

Luckily for Israel, collectively they muster the strength to defend themselves from repeated attempts to kill them and annihilate Israel.

I can understand those Israelis that do not want to accept the facts that for more than 50 years many Palestinians, and other Arabs, want to eliminate Israel and kill as many Jews as they can. If those Israelis accepted these facts it would mean that they are not likely to have peace in their lifetime.

People must have hope to survive emotionally.

The impossibility of any peace is very heavy burden to carry. It is much easier to ignore the facts and continue to live with an illusion. This is a well-known psychological phenomenon of denial. We reject facts that are too overwhelming for us to handle. Take one simple fact, how many of us are willing to live with the reality that one of these days we will die like every one else. We ignore that basic fact and live as if there will always be a tomorrow.

There are American Jews who do not want to accept the reality that the Palestinians want to murder as many Israelis as they can and eliminate Israel as a nation. These good Jews wish that the Israelis, their brothers, would be beyond reproach, and live according to the dreams of Judaism - peace between all nations, the lion shall lie with the lamb. You see, we are most irritated when a family member is immoral, because it reflects on us. We tolerate the immorality in strangers, but we are indignant, angry, if a member of our own family lives an undignified life. And the expectation of many Jews of Israel is completely different from the expectation they have of the Palestinians and other Arabs.

The lion lying with the lamb is a dream of Judaism; it is not reality. In this world, and Israel is part of this world, the most important element is not morality, but power, be it economic, or military power. I wish it were different, but how long can we ignore the facts?

If the Arab nations who started war after war to eliminate Israel had the military power in 1948, in 1967, in 1973 and on other occasions, such as the current rebellion, they would have destroyed Israel and kill many Jews there. They tried and they did kill many Israelis: one percent of the Israelis were killed in the War of Independence, a war imposed on Israel, a war that so many people choose to ignore now. However, Israel had more effective military power, as weak as it was, (I experienced our weakness, one gun and five bullets for five people.)

Israel survived not because it was morally right and the Arab wrong. Each side believed that God was on their side, and each side believed that they had the moral high ground.

Germany and Japan lost W.W.II not because they were murderers and morally corrupt, but because the US was stronger economically and had a huge war production capability, leading to a strong military power.
The same with Saddam Hussein, Iraq, and Desert Storm. The US won in 1991 because we brought in so much military power that it overwhelmed Saddam's Army.

THE CURRENT MINI WAR IN ISRAEL IS NOT ABOUT SETTLEMENTS, HEBRON, THE BORDERS, OR ANY OTHER THING, BUT THE CRAVING AND PLANS OF MOST PALESTINIANS AND MANY ARABS TO ELIMINATE ISRAEL. PERIOD.
EVERY THING ELSE IS AN EXCUSE THAT ANY REALISTIC INDIVIDUAL SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE CLEARLY.

I hear people say: If the Israelis will give up the settlements, or do this or that, the Palestinians will want peace

FOR ISRAEL TO SURVIVE IT MUST BE MILITARILY STRONG, AND NOT GIVE UP ANYTHING TILL THE PALESTINIANS DEMONSTRATES A CLEAR DESIRE FOR PEACE.
* * * *
Written originally 5/25/01

To save your time I will use the technique that Itzhak Rabin used when I saw him in Los Angeles, many years ago. He was brief and to the point; I will try to cut this vast subject to the essentials. If you wish more information log on to the CIA site:
www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ from which the statistical info here was obtained.

The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) controlled the Middle East for hundreds of years until the British conquered it in 1917 during W.W.I. The British took most of it, and gave the French, Lebanon and Syria. The British put puppet regimes in most of the countries they created, (no distinct countries existed earlier). They took direct control of Israel, created Jordan east of the river Jordan, but continue to control and subsidize it, and its commander in chief was a British officer, Glub Pasha, who converted to Islam and was avowed anti-Semitic. British officers, training and weapons were the reasons the Jordanian Army was so effective during Israel war of independence.
(Jordan: monarchy, population 5 million, fifth the size of California, but mostly desert, GDP (gross domestic product) $16 billion, PCI (per capita income) $3,500, one tenth of the US.)

The Arabs who were second class citizens, like any one else under the Turks, are viewing the Middle East as if it was always a Muslim zone because the Turks are mostly Muslim. However, the Turks do not consider themselves Arabs and are offended by this description, as are the Iranians.

The Iranian Shah was a puppet of the US and used draconian measures to control his people. This led to the revolution in 1979 and the continued hatred of the US. It is a significant oil producer, and is controlled by an exceedingly religious leadership.
(Iran has 66 million people, area four times the size of California, GDP of $350 billion, three times of Israel, PCI of $5,500, one sixth of the US.)

Iraq tried to rebel against the British "influence" during W.W.II and to join the Nazis; Israeli agents helped the British to squash this attempt. Also after W.W.II the CIA is rumored to have killed a prime minister who wanted full independence.
(Iraq has 23 million people, the size of California, GDP of $60 billion, 60% of Israel, and PCI of $2,300, one tenth of the US.)

Iran and Iraq are considered dangerous to Israel's survival. Both Rabin and Barak consider them a much more significant danger to Israel then the Palestinians, but both believed that to reduce the desire of both countries to attack Israel a peace is needed with the Palestinians. If the constant agitation of the Muslim's world by the plight of the Palestinians would stop, it would be difficult to justify attacks on Israel. Rabin and Barak stated that the Palestinians can not threaten the survival of Israel, however, the long range, mass destruction weapons that Iran and Iraq are developing could. And that was the main motivating force to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, even at high costs.

Syria is very weak economically, some consider it a third world country, and is somewhat weak militarily. Syria has some 30,000 troops in Lebanon for almost two decades and for all practical purpose controls Lebanon's politics and Hezbollah who attacks Israel for some years now. Iran also supports Hezbollah, with training, weapons and money. Syria and Iran used to view Iraq as a common enemy, being on the two sides of Iraq, however, more recently there are some breaks in their negative relationship with Iraq. Syria demands the return of the full Golan Heights that Israel took during the 1967 war initiated by Syria and Egypt. Israel had again to secure the Golan from an enormous military tank attacks in 1973, with tremendous heroism and sacrifice.
(Syria population 16 million, is 40 % the size of California, GDP of $43 billion, 40% of Israel, PCI of $2,500, 7% of the US.)

Turkey has immense supplies of fresh water and controls the sources of the main rivers of Syria and Iraq, therefore, these countries rarely express any opposition to Turkey. In the last few years Turkey developed good military ties with Israel because Israel modernizes its advanced weapons more economically than other countries, and can not be a threat to Turkey. One of the hopes from peace in this very arid region is that Turkey could supply Jordan, Israel and Palestine with fresh water via pipes crossing Syria. All these countries have extreme shortage of fresh water. Some expect that this shortage would be one of the most difficult long-term problems in the region whose population is increasing and the water supply diminishing. Currently Israel brings some water from Turkey via refurbished old oil tankers.

There are also a number of small independent countries governed by oil rulers near Kuwait, which have no military significance, but are useful contributors to the world oil supply. England tries to be their patron when called for.

Saudi Arabia, the largest oil producer in the world, has also the largest oil reserves. It tries to stabilize oil prices and is generally considered the moderate part of OPEC. The cost of extracting oil there is minimal because of the geology. It is one of the richest per capita countries in the Arab world after Kuwait and the sparsely populated oil kingdoms mentions earlier. Saudi is tightly controlled with iron hands by a monarchy and its extended family, with no political freedom. They cut the hands of thieves, and still have slaves, but it is declining. No Jews are allowed in the country, and women and Jews in US military units are not allowed to leave their camps. The two most important Islamic sites in the world, the cities of Medina and Mecca, are there. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims take pilgrimage, Hadj, to Mecca to elevate their religious experience and get a special title, Hadji, for being there.

Saudi Arabia is not militarily strong and depends completely on the US to supply it with modern weapons, which Israel considers a danger to itself since these weapons can be easily transferred to other Arab countries who could attack Israel. A possible revolution in Saudi Arabia is a major fear in the Western world, especially Europe, since it depends on the reliable supply of Saudi oil. The danger to Saudi Arabia' stability and independence was the main reason for the Gulf War, not the independence of Kuwait, (since Saddam Hussein would have continue to sell Kuwaiti an oil to Europe).
(Saudi: Population 22 million, including 5 million foreign workers, 20% the size of the US, but almost all desert, GDP $190 billion, PCI $9,000, a quarter of US, all from oil export.)

Egypt has the strongest military of all the Arab countries, however, it is quite weak economically. Its population is increasing rapidly, and it is quite backward in infrastructure and technology. It is a large flat country without rain, and its only source of fresh water is the mighty Nile River, near which most of its population is located, creating large population concentrations.
(Population 68 million, area twice the size of California, but mostly desert, GDP $200 billion, twice Israel's, PCI $3,000, one tenth of the US.)

Some additional points:
* Mecca and Medina were mentioned often in past religious Muslim literature. Jerusalem never.
* During W.W.I some 35 % of the people of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, were Jews, some of them very influential, but most of low income. Jews lived there for more than two thousands years, way before the Arabs, and considered themselves true Iraqis. In 1950, just 15% of Baghdad were Jews, and after the creation of Israel there was a small agitation by Jewish youth to immigrate to Israel. Influential Jewish leaders convinced the Prime minister to open the gate for one year to allow any Jew who wanted to immigrate to Israel to go. The expectation was that a small number, and the agitators, will leave and the Jewish community would continue to live in harmony there. But nine years earlier, in June 1941, a three days pogrom took place in Baghdad, with murders and looting of Jews that shook the Jewish community, and was remembered under the surface. When the gates were open in 1950, over 95% of the Jews, some 124,000, left Iraq to Israel. It was a major surprise to the local Jewish community, and Israel, who was not prepared for this influx. The economic impact on Iraq was noticeable and long term.

* Relating to the above information, it is important to note that, Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab countries, who are usually called Sepharadim, are the most suspicious of peace with the Palestinians and Arabs in general. Sepharadim generally believe that the Arabs can not be trusted, and claim that this is based on their experience of living with them for hundreds of years. The most vocal peace activists in Israel were Ashkenasim, Jews and their descendents, who came from Europe and never lived previously with Arabs.

The Palestinians are not trusted by any Arab country, and therefore supported Saddam Hussein. They were greatly hated in Kuwait and many were killed after the Gulf war. Only Jordan accepted them in large numbers, about 70% of the Jordanians have been Palestinians. Egypt refused to take over the Gaza strip, which borders on their Sinai desert, because of the volatility of its refugees camps, and the bad experience they had there when managing it prior to the 1967 war.
West Bank: population 2 million, land 6,000 sq. km, 30% if Israel, GDP $3.3 billion, mostly agriculture, PCI of only $2,000, great poverty.
Gaza: population 1.1 million, land 360 sq. km. very high population density, GDP $1.2 billion, PCI just $1,000, half of the West Bank's, and only 5% of Israel's.

Israel is the only democracy in the region. It has 5 million Jews, just 2.5% of the 200 million Muslim in the region, and also one million Muslims. Israel is twenty times SMALLER than California, LESS THAN ONE HALF PERCENT THE SIZE OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES, GDP of $105 billion, half of Egypt, PCI of $19,000, half of the US.
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(Originally written 5/8/01)