Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Op-Ed: Bibi to World--Swap This!

Jack Engelhard

Israel’s friends and foes seem to be dancing at the same wedding. Those people at AIPAC applauded when President Obama urged a two-state “solution” and even when he proposed a land “swap.” I’m not sure if he used the word “transfer” but it’s on the lips of everybody else. Is anybody listening to these words?
That language goes back to the Wannsee Conference, Jan. 1942. This is where the Holocaust officially began when Hitler’s lieutenants met to formulate a “final solution to the Jewish question.” We’re still talking about this? I sometimes wonder if people forget that we left Auschwitz and arrived in Israel. The best and the brightest Germans knew linguistics. They used code.

The Wannsee Conference was not about ovens. It was about TRAIN SCHEDULES. t was about “transferring” Jews from one place to another.

Sound familiar?

King Solomon said, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”

We serve the cause of our enemies when we use their terminology, and thereby curse ourselves.

Let’s try THREE WORDS that are so in vogue and find out if they apply to anyone – anyone besides Israel.

SWAP: What other country is asked to swap? Name one.
People swap baseball cards and even baseball players in Fantasy Baseball and if I recall correctly, people swap places in the game of Monopoly but NOBODY swaps land for “peace” or for anything else. I am not familiar with Fantasy Geography, like – “I’ll give you Texas for Mexico.”

I met an Egyptian general the month that Israel gave away the Sinai. I asked him – I said, “Would Egypt ever reciprocate?”

He said, “You mean swap any part of our land? Are you insane? Land is holy.”


Bibi (calling on Congress as well), came near to saying that in his emotional rebuttal to Obama’s “To your tents, O Israel.” In that moment, Bibi found his inner Jabotinsky, and found some of it again Monday night when he told AIPAC that those Arab uprisings well outside Israel prove that “the problems in the region are not rooted in Israel.”

Still coming on strong – and sending a hint to Obama -- Bibi told the AIPAC gathering, “It’s time to stop blaming Israel for all the region’s problems. Israel is not what’s wrong with the Middle East. Israel is what’s right with the Middle East.” He reminded the audience that America and Israel are united through the ethics brought forth by the Jews, as found in the words of Torah, and as inscribed on the Liberty Bell from Leviticus: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

Obama’s sucker punch seems to have invigorated Bibi. He knows that he’s in a fight and he’s come out swinging.

TRANSFER: This happens when people have no army, no navy, no air force. Israel has all that (big time!), so how does this language even apply. For more on TRANSFER, see above under WANNSEE. (No trains, but mostly buses were used to “transfer” Jews from Gush Katif.)

SOLUTION: Why is this word always used when it comes to the Jews? Pharaoh used it, Hitler used it, and now everybody uses it -- Obama, yes, plus, enemies of Israel and even friends of Israel. People insist on finding a “solution” to the Jewish “problem” – still! What other people get this kind of talk? Name any other people that are a problem in need of a solution? Name one.

Einstein managed to escape the solution and Kafka didn’t make it that far, but his sisters died in the camps, as did Freud’s. Well, that “problem” was “solved.”

We’re supposed to be the People of the Book. A Jewish king, David, wrote the divine book of Psalms. We should know the elements of style.

Like this, from our prophet Isaiah: “For G-d will have redeemed Jacob -- and He will glorify Himself in Israel.”

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