In
November 1969, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban gave an interview to
the German magazine Der Spiegel, and there made a statement that has
gone down in history. Reduced to a sexy sound bite, however, his actual
words have long been forgotten.
According to friend and foe alike, Eban ostensibly referred to the 1967 borders (from which Israel was forced to fight for its survival in the Six-Day War) as the "Auschwitz borders."
The Right regularly refers to
this phrase to illustrate that even someone as dovish as Eban understood
the importance of maintaining control over the territory acquired by
Israel in its victory in the war to annihilate the Jewish state.
The Left accuses the Right of
enlisting Eban for a cynical purpose: to bolster its political
opposition to territorial withdrawals.
And the Arabs claim that the intention of Israelis who invoke Eban is to call the Palestinians Nazis.
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Sunday evening, let us review what Eban actually told his German interviewer nearly 45 years ago:
"We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as on June 4, 1967," he said. "For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz. We
shudder when we think of what would have awaited us in the
circumstances of June 1967 if we had been defeated; with Syrians on the
mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the
sea, with the Egyptians who hold our throat in their hands in Gaza. This
is a situation which will never be repeated in history."
Eban was not equating Israel's
Arab enemies with the Nazis (though the historic bond between them would
have warranted it). Rather, he was stressing the genuine peril
that would have befallen Israel in the event of victory on the part of
those whose express goal was to "push the Jews into the sea."
Decades later, this objective is still the same. The
only difference now is that terrorism against civilians -- coupled with
a concerted campaign to enlist fellow travelers and useful idiots in
the West to delegitimize the entire Zionist enterprise -- has replaced
the conventional battlefield. And a key sponsor of this activity is a nuclearizing Islamic Republic of Iran.
This situation has had a
dire effect on the world. It has muddied the distinction between
victory and defeat; it has obscured the line between truth and deceit;
and it has dimmed the division between good and evil.
It has also blurred the vision of many seemingly sighted people.
These
are the fantasists who have been persuaded that the establishment of a
Palestinian state in the 1967 borders is both the path to peace and the
only way to guarantee Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state.
There is little doubt that if Eban were alive today, he would be among these dreamers. His nephew, Labor party and Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog, certainly is.
On Thursday, when Israel's Diplomatic-Security Cabinet voted to suspend negotiations with the Palestinian Authority due to its impending unity agreement with Hamas,
Herzog responded, "Today I ask the prime minister: Do you think your
decisions help to strengthen Israel's security? Because if we close the
book on a peace agreement, you have to present an alternative for how to
prevent a binational state."
It is not clear which
"book" Herzog thinks Israel is closing, since no peace deal, other than
possibly between the PA and Hamas, is on the table. But there
are two documents he would do well to read before drifting off to la-la
land and dragging any additional patsies with him. One is the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, the charter forged and followed by Hamas. The other is the Palestinian National Covenant, the charter adhered to by the PA, which -- commitments and claims to the contrary -- was never amended.
Here is a taste of the former:
"Israel will exist … until Islam will obliterate it" (preamble).
"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims
fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and
trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Muslim, there is a Jew
hiding behind me, come and kill him'" (Article 7).
"So-called peaceful solutions
and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of
the Islamic Resistance Movement" (Article 13).
The latter, too, has choice morsels:
"It
is a national duty to bring up individual Palestinians in an Arab
revolutionary manner. All means of information and education must be
adopted in order to acquaint the Palestinian with his country. … He must
be prepared for the armed struggle and ready to sacrifice his wealth
and his life in order to win back his homeland and bring about its
liberation" (Article 7).
"Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine" (Article 9).
"Commando
action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation
war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the
mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and
their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution"
(Article 10).
"Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine are two complementary objectives" (Article 13).
"Since
the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist
presence ... the Palestinian people look for the support of all the
progressive and peaceful forces and urge them … to offer the Palestinian
people all aid and support in their just struggle for the liberation of
their homeland" (Article 22).
"The demand of security and
peace, as well as the demand of right and justice, require all states to
consider Zionism an illegitimate movement [and] to outlaw its
existence" (Article 23).
Herein is the root of the
Holocaust parallels. In a declared war against the Jewish state, the
imperative is killing Jews, not living peacefully alongside them. For
Israel to survive the current assault, it must stop participating in
the myth of a border dispute. One need not misquote Abba Eban for this
purpose. The Palestinians articulate their aims quite incontrovertibly.
T/NG
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