A Teachable Moment

Editorial of The New York Sun | May 16, 2011

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/a-teachable-moment-in-the-middle-east/87346/

“As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders whose watchword is ‘Never!’ And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions.”

hose sentences are from one of the most important political essays of the 20th century, “The Iron Wall,” written by the Zionist prophet Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1923. As violence erupts on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, we find ourselves wondering whether Jabotinsky’s words will be cited by Prime Minister Netanyahu when, on May 24, he addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. Surely it is a teachable moment. All around Israel the Arabs are rising up against their dictatorial regimes. Certainly there is the danger that the uprisings will fall into the hands of movements even worse than the dictatorships that are being challenged and, in some cases, toppled. But there is also the possibility that, as Jabotinsky foresaw, leadership will pass to modern groups, who will approach Israel with proposals for mutual concessions.

It is a moment to remember that it is precisely the dovish instinct that invites the violence that has been marshaled against Israel in the decades since the independence of the Jewish state was declared. What Jabotinsky warned of in the “Iron Wall” was that “our peace-mongers” want to “persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine , in return for cultural and economic advantages.” He himself had more respect for the Arabs, understanding that they were committed to their ideals, which, he argued, was precisely the need Israel and her supporters to be steadfast.

The idea of marking what the protesters swarming Israel’s borders like to call the “nabka,” or catastrophe of Israel’s founding, has its ironies. The catastrophe was self-inflicted, after all, caused by the Arabs’ own declaration of war in 1948 against a Jewish state that had been prepared to accept the United Nations’ plan of partition as a starting point for two nations to live in Palestine. It was a bargain Jabotinsky made clear in the “Iron Wall” that he himself was prepared to accept. The logic of his ideas has only grown with time. And it has never been more clear than this week, when the need for unswerving commitment to Israel’s right to exist and to live in peace is at such a premium. Trying to rush the peace the way the Obama administration in Washington seems intent on doing is exactly the wrong move. For, as Jabotinsky put it in his famous essay, “the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present.”