Israel must defeat the Palestinians

There is a recent controversy over Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s comments about ethnic cleansing in regards to the Palestinian leadership process on East Jerusalem and the territories. During the 46 years of my turbulent but interesting life, East Jerusalem was my third-longest residence, after my native city, Lvov, where I was raised, and Los Angeles, to where I immigrated in 1987. I was an international program student on Mount Scopus in Hebrew University living within view of the Wailing Wall and the Dome of Rock. I walked every day in East Jerusalem among Arab villages.

There is no equivalent and parallel in moral philosophy between Arabs and Jews. When Arabs took over East Jerusalem in 1948 they kicked out all the Jews, including those ultra-Orthodox and Sephardic ones, who lived there for centuries before the prophet Muhammad from East Jerusalem. Arabs cut Jewish access to the Jewish holiest sights. For the first time in history, Jews were not allowed to pray at the Wailing Wall, the holiest of holy sights of the Temple. Since Israel liberated Jerusalem in 1967’s preventative war, and up to now, almost half-a-century later, there was, is and will be hundreds of thousands, more than 300,000, to be more specific, of Palestinian Arabs living in the Jewish eternal capital.

In order for Israel to attain peace with the Palestinians, Israel must win and Palestinians must lose, despite the fact that unlike Prime Minister Netanyahu I recognize the existence and history of Palestinian Arabs.  During my visit as part of a Hillel student leadership mission to Israel, in 1990-1991, we met with then-Deputy Prime Minister, rising star in Israeli politics and dynamic English speaker Netanyahu. To my question, “Why cannot we be more humane to Arabs?”  Netanyahu answered by dismissing Arabs having even any basic rights. Arabs came to the land of Milk and Honey only after it was revived by the Zionists to work for the Jews, Bibi said, quoting Mark Twain.

I disagree with Netanyahu. But, Israel wants to survive, Palestinians want to annihilate Her.

Israel in every war against the Arabs was held back before finishing the job by the United States. That allowed Israel’s enemy to claim a victory each time despite their crushing defeats.

There is a change between my earlier position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last year to my latter one articulated now.   In the earlier position I asserted that Israel gave up its trump card for peace by withdrawing from Gaza, in 2005, under Ariel Sharon’s leadership and George W. Bush’s presidency.  I criticized doing it without the framework of direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas.  My more recent position is that the only way for Israel to survive is to win an all-in war against Palestinians.  Thus, withdrawing from Gaza and allowing Hamas terrorists to come into power there, was a move in the right direction, not a mistake. This is an indication of my switch from a more leftist position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a more moderate and even hawkish one.

This change is a reflection of my greater self-awareness of my leadership amongst the Jewish people, and my personal experiences in peace and stability in Israel.  I lived in Jerusalem after Israel defeated the First Palestinian Intifada and before Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yassir Arafat was revived from the dead. Arafat lived in his de facto fiasco exile in Tunis, but was brought forth by the leftist administration of Israeli Prime Minister Izhak Rabin. Rabin was elected in 1992, by Olim Chadashim, the new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, under the pressure from the George Bush Sr./Secretary of State James Baker administration. Bush and Baker were not big friends of Israel or even American Jews. The Republican administration was able to tie the American loan guarantees for Soviet Olim Chadashim resettlement to the re-election of Likud’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Shamir would never recognize PLO as a partner in peace.  Rabin did. The result was the escalation of Palestinian violence against Israel on a much grander scale.

Palestinians I met in Jerusalem in 1991 were friendlier than Israeli Jews.  Palestinians in Jerusalem today are the cornerstone of the anti-Israel struggle to establish a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, the latest manifestation of this being the yearlong stabbing attacks and rein of terror.

My stronger pro-Israel stance necessitates a more pragmatic, even if less humanistic, approach toward Palestinians.  In order for Israel to survive, Palestinians, as a power, have to be defeated, as long as Palestinians’ true objective is the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel. From the terrorist aspiration of driving all Jews into the sea, to their  “moderate” position of bringing millions of Palestinian refugees back to Israel, Palestinian leadership does not recognize the Jewish nature of the State of Israel.

Only after crushing defeat would Palestine accept Israel as the majority Jewish State with its capital in Jerusalem.

A former Refusenik (Soviet Dissident), Eliyahu Abramson came to Los Angeles to pursue creative writing and a career in the Jewish community.