Hero In War And Peace...

[Violet_Crumble]

By Uri Avnery

August 18, 2003:

Sometimes a single sentence is enough to reveal a person’s mental world and intellectual profundity. Such a sentence was uttered by Shaul Mofaz, the Minister of Defense, some days ago during a visit to the Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip.

"With our enemies, it seems, no shortcuts are possible. Egypt made peace with Israel only after it was defeated in the Yom Kippur War. That will happen with the Palestinians, too."


This means that there is no political solution. There is only war, and in this war we must "defeat" the Palestinians. A simple, simplistic, not to say primitive, view.


But the revealing sentence is: " Egypt made peace with Israel only after it was defeated in the Yom Kippur War".


Revealing, because it utterly contradicts the almost unanimous view of all the experts in Israel and around the world -- historians, Arabists and military commentators. These believe that the exact opposite is true: Anwar Sadat was able to lead Egypt towards peace only because he was admired as the commander who had defeated Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Only after the Egyptian people had won back their national pride were they able to consider peace with the enemy (with us).

http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-avnery190803.htm

[rini]

1. chuckle

That was one of the funniest things I have ever read. Of course Egypt won the war, they then totally turned over the Sinai to Israel, dropped their policy of shooting any Palestinian on sight, shared oil revenues (oil fields were after all developed by Israel and they wanted to be fair), and offered them peace. But Israel turned them down and stared a guerrilla war.

Now, if you believe in faeries clapp your hands.

[dfong63]

2. let's put it this way

if Israel had tried to pursue the "iron fist" strategy with Egypt the way it has with the Palestinians, the peace deal would not have happened. of course not. it almost seems that Israel has a conscious policy now that every time the pressure builds to move toward peace, they will assassinate a prominent Palestinian to provoke a terrorist attack, which will in turn justify their own (Israel) intransigience and duplicity.

[QuietStorm]

4. of course they have a conscious policy

along those lines. Are you not familiar with Mofaz's plan. There is an actual plan being exacted here. It is not a new plan either. It was a contingency plan picked up from the sixties and exacted in 2001. Mofaz and Sharon planned on grounding the PA to dirt. The cue for the commencement of the plan was based on the appropriate provocation (just like the PNAC), which seems even for Israel was 9/11, as Mofaz' plan was kicked off the day after 9/11.

Of course this is conscious. Read Benny Morris' book Israel's Secret Wars. This very same method of strategy has been honed throughout the years and practiced over and over again - instigation, provocation, justifiable retailation and the revenge factor. All to make look as if Israel is on the defense when in actuality all the clandestine operations of the various legs of Israeli intelligence (Shai, Palmah (which are now named differently I believe) Mossad - mista'aravim, Shakar (Arab Platoons)) work overtime.

They are stupendous at routing phone calls through a central intelligence point, magnificant wire tappers, guided mis and disinformation campaigns aimed at playing all sides, inflitrating outside communities, villages, other countries, on the ground. And not only to pick up wires on potential attacks against Israel, but to plant seeds of aggression by way of rumours in an effort to instigate hostilities that eventually mushroom to which Israel then responds defensively.

No one the wiser regarding all the underlying aggression that took place for the outward defensive action to occur. At this point it is transparent. The Insurgence that we have seen aimed to smash the PA, concisely planned. Mofaz's plan was on paper prior to 9/11.

[StandWatie]

3. Sadat offered peace in 71

the exact same deal as was eventually accepted but only after the 73 war, draw your own conclusions.

on edit: Uri Avnery does his usual job of buying into Israeli mythology here which believes in the face of absolute fact that Saddat only offered peace after 73.

[bemildred]

5. Mr. Avnery seems to be willing to skip a fact

here and there to make his rhetorical points.
He's certainly not by himself in that.

I have always found the idea that someone won that war
questionable; it was stopped. One can name any number of
wars that, if stopped at various points, could be taken to
be won by either side depending on the stopping point.

It is clear that the Arabs caught the Israelis with their
pants down and gave a good account of themselves. It is also
clear that the ability of the Arab nations to sustain war over
time is greater, based merely on size, against which Israel
balances external support from the USA, a formidable weight.

It would be interesting to know the content of the Israeli military
report on this war that Mr. Mofaz recently ordered "completed".

[StandWatie]

6. eh, maybe..

To me he is just a sad example of the Israeli left. They are much like democrats here who are positive that when Democrats were at the helm America was just and pure. He and Amos Oz are examples of the "beautiful Israel" school of thought that says that Israel under Labour always waged just wars and things only started going downhill when Begin and his unwashed, Oriental constituancy screamed into power.

on edit: More to the point there was an obvious change of thought after 1973 which like most Israeli policies was dictated by Washington in that up to that war there was a theory that "War isn't the Arabs game" and to go with stalemate: No war, no diplomacy. Obviously there was a major retooling of that idea after the war and peace had to be made with Egypt in order to go smash the PLO which was committing the ultimate sin of being more and more reasonable and open to negotiations so Egypt had to be bought off.

[QuietStorm]

7. He doesn't push the envelop far enough

I am not sure he buys into the mythology what it seems to me is that he doesn't push the envelop far enough. In fact few of the peace organizations do including Tikkun. They are willing to debunk a portion of the myths but not necessarily the original sin.

Militarism on the part of the young zionists to a degree is understandable. There is truth there. It came behind years of Jewish persecution which predates the state itself. Since the state was imposed by an outside broker than occupying the land itself and those at the helm of the Zionist Project and movement were mostly Eastern European, they entered into the a quagmire with the same racial leanings, as the anglo saxons.

Rather than to highlight that the hostility of the Arab's for British Authority already existed as a result of their manipulation in battling the Ottoman's, it seems Israeli propagandists come at this from exactly the same anti-arab slant that the anglo saxons were operating under when working with the tribes of Faisal etal. The Arab contribution teritiary to the British self interest and peevishness felt for the lowly Arabs. There was already much rightful Arab distrust of more outsiders when the mandate era began. The spins are now history. The early Israeli leaders just took the supremist baton from the Brits. Hell the Balfourists were Brits.

The Arab hostility has been spun to such a degree by Israeli propaganda campaigns that it has served to blur the root of the Arab hostility and the reason for the hostility. In doing so it also blurs Israeli transgressions lifting from view anything that might cast their actions in poor light going back to their campaign between the 1939 and 1948. Uri never comes close to dissecting through this. So I am in agreement with you. While he is left so it is said, I tend to feel he sits too safely on the fence. I find his stuff more and more to be kind of pseudo-leftist fluff.

However, for many who are conscientious in Israel there must exist within themselves an inner struggle between loyalty to one's state and one's own sense of morality. While I feel Uri plays it a bit too safe and does not necessarily open the can of worms wide enough to see the worms, he has been helpful in debunking myths on a superficial level.

[bemildred]

8. OK.

But half a loaf can be better than none.
I'm way to the left of the late Mr. Wellstone, for instance,
but I appreciated his efforts. The left as a whole has been
most ineffective these last few decades. Sometimes the wind
is against you.

[QuietStorm]

9. half a loaf can be better than none

How nicely you put that and with so few words:thumbsup:.

[bemildred]

10. Greets to you too, Amigo.

:thumbsup:

[drewb]

11. Amigo

:thumbsup: