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The Oslo Cult
By Steven Plaut
How do we know that "Oslo" is a religious cult and not a political school
of ideology?
The answer is - from the way it was implemented.
Had Oslo been merely a foolish school of political ideology based on
total misunderstanding of the Middle East conflict, it would not have
produced the total disaster and debacle that it has. It would have been
halted and reversed in its earliest stages, before there was any serious
damage.
Suppose in the year 1992, the Israeli Labor Party and its fellow
travelers were serious about implementing Oslo as an attempt to produce a
peaceful settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. What would it have
done?
The answer is - that "Oslo" would have been slowly and cautiously
implemented in small stages, where each stage would be tested thoroughly
before proceeding to the next. The implementers would gauge each stage by
the degree of cooperation from and by the behavior of the PLO. Only if
the PLO were in full compliance and fully cooperating would the
implementers have moved to the next stage. They would have made sure each
testing stage was long enough for the public to be convinced that the
"process" was working and was really producing peaceful relations and
lowered tensions.
A rational Israeli "peace camp" might have turned Gaza City only to
the PLO for a year or so, while insisting that the PLO's "police" and
"security forces" there be totally unarmed, like London bobbies, and while
insisting Arafat stay in Tunis throughout the first stage, just giving his
people orders. The condition for moving on to any further stage might
have been the extradition of all Hamas and Jihad terrorists to Israel as
required under the first Oslo Accord, and the maintenance of total
tranquility not only in Gaza but in all Palestinian towns everywhere.
If
the Palestinians so much as threw rocks at a passing Israeli car or police
van, the deal would be off. No further territory would be turned over
and evacuated by the IDF unless the PLO were preaching nonviolence ten
times a day,
And where: the PLO schools were filled with texts about
Israel's right to exist, publicly and openly endorsed by all PLO officials
everywhere, in Arabic.
And where: the old Gaza City synagogue was renewed
and returned to the Jews,
Where: PLO officials greeted visiting Jewish
worshippers there on each sabbath.
Where: PLO spokesmen everywhere -
especially in the UN and on CNN - agreed that violence was a dead end,
that Israel had the MORAL right to exist,
Where: Jewish civilians were
welcome to live in peace alongside Palestinians everywhere.
A rational Israeli Left would have insisted that the Jewish settlers
and settlements are Israel's mine canary. If the Palestinians demonize
and attack them, then this proves that the Palestinians are not interested
in peace, and so Israel would reconquer Gaza City and expel the PLO. If
the settlers were welcomed by Palestinian officials with garlands and
loaves of kosher challah bread, Israel would consider moving to a second,
third and fourth Oslo stage. The PLO would remain completely unarmed until
the tenth stage or so. If they needed muscle to suppress the Hamas, they
could call in the Israel Defense Forces.
Why was not Oslo implemented in that way? Because Shimon Peres and
the Israeli Lemming Left insisted there was absolutely no reason for
caution and testing. For them, Oslo was a cult and not an idea. People
becoming newly Orthodox generally do not test the
religious waters with their pinkies and enter the pool one inch at a time
- they DIVE in. And that is what the Oslo Cultists insisted.
Peres explicitly ruled out any need for testing PLO intentions because
he and his co-religionist were so convinced that Arafat and the PLO wanted
nothing but Benelux style relations that they saw no reason for delay.
They wanted instant gratification. Like a frustrated teenager on prom
night.
Israeli politicians by definition know everything. There is no reason
for them to deliberate or listen to criticism or doubts. They never read
and do not need to entertain other opinions. They have no patience for
intellectuals, most of whom are leftist anyway, and see no reason why they
should ever stop mouthing and just sit and listen. People who are always
correct have no reason for caution, for testing. Israeli politicians do
not come from academia and seldom speak with any academic types, other
than leftist amen-sayers. That is why they have no notion of testing
ideas and hypotheses, subjecting ideas to testing periods and experiments.
They have no interest in experiments that can possibly prove them wrong.
In short, political ideology for the Israeli Left is not hypotheses and
ideas but rather cult-religion.
And that is why Oslo was implemented with no testing and no caution.
Arafat was installed in the "territories" all at once. His legions of
stormtroopers were imported all at once. They were granted tens of
thousands of Israeli arms all at once. Arafat was granted legitimacy by
Israel all at once.
Peres wanted Israel behind its Green Line as fast as
possible and a Palestinian State declared, preferably all at once.
Israeli concessions were never conditioned on a single test of compliance
by Arafat and the PLO. Indeed the PLO has yet to comply with even a
single plank of the 1993 first Oslo Accord. Ten years later, the PLO is
still demanding unlimited Israeli capitulations in order to agree to the
same ceasefire it committed to in 1993.
And when all this instantaneous implementation of Oslo went afoul, when
it became obvious to all terrestrians that the PLO was seeking war and not
peace, Peres and his flock in the Israeli Left dismissed the
doubts. They insisted there was no need for the PLO to comply with
anything. True believers in cults do not expect their beliefs to be
instantly rewarded with favors from their gods. They persevere on, all on
the basis of faith alone. SO was the case with the Oslo Cult. Peres
and the Left insisted that Oslo be fully implemented because it was the
sacred thing to do, not because it was actually working. It was
irrelevant whether it was "working".
And the result of this was to take the Israel of 1992, with assorted
problems but with unassailable security and a military that gave the Arab
fascists heebie-jeebies, with a healthy economy, a rapidly growing Jewish
population and a flowering culture, and to turn all of this into the 2002
Shadow of the Valley of Death.
Where: the dominant national trait of the
Israeli elites is treason and self-hatred, where the Left is struggling to
castrate the military and foment mutiny.
Where: civilians are afraid to
leave their homes.
Where: the nation is filled with parentless infants and
Oslo widows.
Where: the West Bank is a huge terrorist base for launching
mass murderers and where the Gaza Strip is a large mortar factory.
Where:
Hizbollah terrorism escalates by the day.
Where: the Europeans denounce
Israel as a nation of war criminals and more openly by the day endorse
genocide of Israelis.
Where: the Americans do everything in their power to
prevent Israel from defending its children from the Nazis.
Where: Israeli
Arabs march about openly with Hamas banners and portraits of the heads of
the Hizbollah and scream for Israel's destruction.
Where: the "peace
partners" praise Hitler and claim Jews murder gentile children to make
matzos for Passover.
And...
Where: Shimon Peres is the Number Two person in the Sharon
government.
~~~~~~~
from the April 2002 Edition of the Jewish Magazine
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