By Vic Rosenthal
Narrative is everything in information warfare.
If you give your enemy the narrative, then the game is tilted in his favor from the start.
Palestinian Arabs constantly repeat the myth that they are an indigenous people and we stole their land. This is an article of faith in Europe, the UK, American campuses, Tel Aviv coffee houses and the White House.
Our officials act as though they believe this. They offer to ‘return’ land to the ‘Palestinians’ in return for security from their terrorism. They feel guilty about ‘Palestinian refugees’ whose ancestors mostly left to escape a war that they and their allies started and who were kept in refugee camps because the Arab states and (later) the PLO wanted them there to be an army against Israel.
The myth is made-up history. They aren’t indigenous. They are mostly Arabs from Syria, Egypt and other places whose ancestors arrived here in the 19th and 20th centuries. And they would have lost nothing if they and their allies hadn’t waged war against us. We don’t owe them anything.
The PLO pretended to want a peaceful state alongside Israel. Our leaders, again, acted as though the believed this. We brought it back from the dead, gave it a base next door to us, armed and funded it. But it is the same terrorist gang that it was in 1972, when it murdered our athletes in Munich. Thousands of Jews (and not a few Arabs) died because of this monumental stupidity.
Two myths — the existence of a wronged “Palestinian people” and the peaceful intentions of the PLO. They are the received wisdom in most of the world. Why shouldn’t they be? We and most of our leaders don’t dispute it!
Even PM Netanyahu, who certainly knows that he can’t trust the PLO, acts as though it is possible to give up land to some kind of ‘demilitarized’ Palestinian entity in return for quiet.
It isn’t. Give them a base and they will fortify it and attack us from it. But more important, give them anything and it legitimizes their always-escalating demands. The so-called “peace process” was nothing but an extortion process.
We need to recover from the mistake of Oslo, to tell the world over and over that we do not recognize the “Palestinian people” as an entity that has the right to demand anything from us, and that we consider the PLO (and Hamas and all the other factions waving their AKs in the air) as terrorists who are guilty of multiple murders and crimes against humanity.
Many people say there is value in cooperating with the PLO against Hamas. They are enemies and the enemy of our enemy, etc. I think it’s not worth it. Our relationship to both the PLO and Hamas should be the same: massively disproportionate response to terrorism.
It is also important to tell the Arab citizens of Israel that we won’t treat them as a national minority. They are an ethnic and religious minority, Arabs and Muslims or Christians, who have civil rights as citizens of the state. They are not “Palestinians” who have special political rights. Unlike virtually all the Arab states, who have treated Jews as a (hated) national minority and expelled them, we will not expel them just for being Arabs. We do require that they don’t try to murder us.
So they feel oppressed living in a Jewish state? Where on earth is the Arab or Muslim state in which Arabs are as free to do as they please as Israel? What kind of rights do they have in Egypt or Saudi Arabia? Is the fact that we sing Hatikva more painful than the real repression in those countries? This shows that it is not a question of wanting to be free of oppression, but rather a desire to be free of Jews.
Finally, we needn’t be ashamed of our own identity as a Jewish state, the state of the Jewish people. Unlike the “Palestinians,” we do have a history. This does not agree with what Natan Sharansky calls the “post-identity” philosophy, but who cares? The Europeans, who are the great proponents of eliminating national identities and becoming world citizens, are watching their formerly great civilization die, both by demographic attrition and the thousand cuts of terrorism, murder and rape.
I am for telling the truth, and negotiating on the basis of the truth. If we don’t do this, who will?
@ bernard ross:
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@ bernard ross:
I was part of the founding Nahal unit that settled Merom Golan. Shortly after the 6 day war it was settled and begun as a military Nahal unit which I was part of. Was called Nahal Golan then.
@ honeybee:
They may not wear 10-gallon hats, but these authentic Israeli cowboys can herd cattle with the best of them.
http://www.israel21c.org/headlines/israels-lonesome-cowboys/?utm_source=Israel21c+Weekly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d38409fec9-2014_11_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a2ed5ed71b-d38409fec9-250435621
@ honeybee:
Where is the catchy tune?
yamit82 Said:
Except for the catchy tune, I didn’t care for your choice.
@ mar55:
Rabbi Kahane, had a keen sense of what the future would be for Israel if it did not accept its role of being a light unto the nations and to face and tell the truth. He knew that turning our backs on the truth, and ignoring the facts so we could strive to be accepted by the nations, would bring needless suffering to our nation. He would give this parable from the Talmud to warn us what would happen if we chose the foolish path:
honeybee Said:
yamit82 Said:
I think we are on the sane page HB!! 😉
@ yamit82:
I’m all for annexation. The failure to do it after conquering
these lands after the 1967 war would have to be corrected. It has been a constant problem for Israel the failure to do so.
Neither do I . The only viable option the land has to be reconquered. Agree.
yamit82 Said:
Like Sherman took Atlanta !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
honeybee Said:
True in principle but how can you defend what you don’t control and possess????
yamit82 Said:
How can you annex land if it belongs to you??? You defend the land !!!!
@ Roslyn Pine:
If the land is ours then you annex it. Refusal to annex tells the non-Israeli world that the land does not belong to us. After so many years to now attempt to change the commonly believed Arab and even Jewish/Israeli narrative is I believe impossible.
We will have to reconquer Y&S drive the Arabs out and annex it by din of conquest in self defense. Then apply our narrative once we have total and irrevocable control.
I don’t see any other scenario that is viable.
bernard ross Said:
When Israel was founded a sizable element here in then Plaestine were opposed. The vote for declaration of the state was 6 to 4 or 5 I forget but it was close.
Almost to a man or woman most of the German Jews were against they were never Zionists but came as opportunists. They also came with education and skills no one else had. They founded and staffed our universities and founded newspapers, became Jurists and made up the majority of the Jurists and State prosecutors staffing. The also founded most of our then Industry. Yet they were anti Zionist and always sought for Israel to be under the protection of Britain as a protectorate even in the then Commonwealth. Most still harbor similar goals.
Nothing can change much unless their descendents now running the key institutions in Israel are replaced.
Agree with 3 but the issue of leadership…that is the central issue…and I fear you have sold that issue short. Needs to be amplified how where when etc.
Give that your best shot!
Exactly right. As long as the falsehood that Jews have stolen someone else’s land persists, Israel will continue to be vilified & delegitimised.
Netanyahu is a weak leader because he refuses to articulate the basic truth that J/S is under Jewish sovereignty in international law.
The truth that should form the starting point and basis of any negotiation is this:
“JEWISH SETTLEMENT IN YS IS LEGAL AND LEGITIMATE”
the anti zionist left, the anti zionist seculars, the anti zionist haredi….?
So called anti zionist “Jews” belong in the diaspora.
Interestingly the NUMBER 1 MYTH which goes undisputed and is not even mentioned in this article is that “Jewish settlement anywhere in YS is illegal or illegitimate”
How can there be any prideful identity in “a Jewish state” if no one disputes the myth of the illegality or illegitimacy of Jewish settlement in any part of the land of Israel? A jewish state is irrelevant next to this glaring ommission.
This article demonstrates a galring problem in Israel and the world. Nowhere in this article are the rights of Jewish settelemnt even mentioned. The whole article is taken up with a focus of discussing Palestians myths but there is no focus on the Jews. Even the discussion of the Jewish state is conducted in relation to the pals. in my view the whole idea of a Jewish state is absurd when there is no support of Jewish settlement in YS. The whole legal basis for the Palestine mandate and the state of Israel revolved abbout Jewish immigration and settlement and yet this discussion is absent.
They already have the narrative because every discussion revolves around them. When are we going to hear discussions about the Jews, Jewish rights and issues, Jewish solutions, without the pals being part of the discussion?. I dont care what name, or characteristic is given to the state that does not support Jewish settlement in YS but it appears to me that calling it a “Jewish state” is both ludicrous and meaningless if it does not support Jewish settlement in the land of Israel. Naming it a Jewish state will not initiate Jewish settlement in YS….the so called Jewish state will still obstruct Jewish settlement in YS.
Who represents the jewish state and jewish people…. the anti zionist left, the anti zionist latte seculars or the anti zionist Haredi? What is important is what the State of Israel does, not what it calls itself.
What leadership in Israel will state that “Jewish settlement in YS is legal and legitimate”?
This is what the narrative should be about. I dont care what the pals or the world discusses or thinks if Jews are being massively settled in YS.
Great job by Dry Bones.