| Talkback | |
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Title: | Think Again: Prisoner of `the fanatacism of reason | |||
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| Name: | Joseph E . | | |||
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| City: | Givatayim | State: | Israel | | |
| continuation... Even if the Abbas who, as late as Israel Independence Day of 2001, declared Israel`s creation to be "an unprecedented crime" and vowed never to "accept this injustice" has changed his spots, what does it matter if he cannot say so without signing his own death warrant ? It is the Palestinians with whom we would have to live in peace, not just their amiable president. Israeli intelligence reports daily that, were it not for the IDF`s presence, the West Bank would also fall to Hamas, which can never accept Israel`s existence. ASKED WHETHER the Palestinians share his urgent desire for peace, Olmert replied that it`s not his job "to worry for the Palestinians." Well, it most certainly is his job to worry about Palestinian intentions. In his focus on the treaty as the thing, he calls to mind Shimon Peres in the heady days of Oslo. Within days of the signing of the Oslo Accords, Arafat, addressing an Arab audience, compared the accords to the treaty Muhammad entered into with the Quraysh tribe near Mecca, prior to wiping them out two years later. Confronted with the evidence, Peres maintained his serious mien and responded: "I don`t care what the Palestinians say, only what`s in the treaties." The same results await us today if we again ignore Palestinian and Arab intentions and what they say, including undiminished incitement against Israel and Jews. Olmert waxes lyrical about the suffering of Palestinian refugees, and even charges Israel with the responsibility for finding a "mechanism" to end their indignity. But he never mentions that the Palestinians have been treated differently from all 12 million other refugees since 1948, and that UNRWA exists not to solve the Palestinian refugee problem but to perpetuate it. Were the refugee camps not being maintained as a perpetual strike force against Israel, Saudi petro-billions would long ago have turned them into upscale housing projects. (That would be the same Saudis whose "peace plan" is said to augur a peaceful future, but who could not bring themselves to sit in the same room with Israelis at Annapolis or allow an Israeli reporter into a press conference.) At the end of his Post interview, Olmert indicts himself. He quotes the response of President Bush (truly a friend of Israel`s) to those who fear that Annapolis will further endanger Israel: "That`s not what I hear from the people who represent Israel." Therein lies the problem. Just as Ehud Barak dragged a reluctant President Clinton to Camp David to save his faltering government, so does Olmert push Annapolis because the only thing he ultimately believes in is Ehud Olmert. Jonathan Rosenblum, director of Jewish Media Resources, |
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