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Ärende: "Israel's folly"
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Friday, January 20, 2006
Israel's folly
Posted: January 20, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Ilana Mercer
+ 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Israel doesn't lack problems. Iran's Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust never
happened, but promises to remedy that by razing Israel to the ground. Or
relocating her. He then accelerated Iran's nuclear-weapons program (all
unrelated, he assures us).

A Kassam rocket away from Israel's main population centers, Hamas is preparing
to transform itself in the upcoming democratic elections from the de facto
leader of the Palestinians to their leader de jure. Washington and Jerusalem
had agreed in secret, and for different reasons, to allow the terrorist outfit
to take its natural place in Palestinian society. (Abu Mazen would be retained
as a figurehead.)

Boobus Bush's premise: He believes a stake in the Palestinian government will
transform Hamas from a terror group into a political party (namely, a legalized
band of terrorists). Sharon harbored no such illusions. He was cognizant of
history ? and of the region's peculiarities. Did a stake in the Lebanese
government do anything to change Hezbollah's vocation? Hardly. The shrewd
Sharon simply surmised that a Hamas victory would prove conclusively that
Israel has no genuine partner in peace.

What else? There's the agreement between the PA, Israel and Egypt concerning
the policing of the crossings between the three. Rammed through by Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, it has further eroded what remains of Israeli
sovereignty, national security and the war on terror. (Blame lies with Israel's
leaders, of course, for acquiescing to all of Rice's requirements.)

These days the neocons are very into uniformly imposing power transfers ? from
war-weary American soldiers to hapless Iraqis; from Russians to Chechen
assassins; from Israelis to lawless Palestinians. Henceforth, the Palestinians,
aided by their E.U. patrons and the Egyptians, will be trusted to prevent the
smuggling of weapons, explosives and terrorists from Egypt into Gaza at the
Rafah crossing. (Remember, the Muslim Brotherhood is the unofficial
representative of the Egyptian people; and Hamas a rib from the Brotherhood's
rib cage). Israel's security has thus been turned over to the Egyptians and the
Palestinians (who now, naturally, revere Rice.)

It gets worse. In the case of a terrorist threat ? a daily reality in that
country ? Israel is not permitted to shut down the crossing from Gaza into
Israel, located on its territory. Instead, it must wait for Washington's
authorization. Not even Jack Bauer, hero of "24," and the Houdini of
Counterterrorism, could save the day under such constraints.

The Palestinians will also be performing customs inspections at Israel's Kerem
Shalom terminal. Remember the Middle Eastern airport screeners at Dulles
airport who looked the other way as two of the 9-11 hijackers set off the metal
detectors? No, I suppose you don't.

To top it all, the stretch separating Gaza and the West Bank ? also Israeli
territory ? is now terra incognita to Israelis, but not to terrorists. They are
allowed to move freely between Gaza and the West bank, because Israel is no
longer permitted to stop them, search their vehicles, or arrest them.

How has Israel responded to these developments? Why, by turning the arrows in
its quiver on one of its few remaining friends, Pat Robertson. Interim Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert's first act of statesmanship was not a resolution on Iran
or Hamas, but a decision to have no truck with the evangelical leader.
(Olmert's Tourism Minister suspended a joint business venture to construct a
Christian Heritage Center in the Galilee.)

Robertson, you recall, had said that God "has enmity against those who divide
[His] land," hinting that the moribund Israeli leader's brain hemorrhage and
his evacuation of Jews from Gaza were not random events.

Sharon was burdened by age, weight and worry. I happen to think those realities
caught up with him. Robertson disagrees. Like them or not, his theological
beliefs include the idea that one will reap God's wrath if one defies His
wishes, as Robertson construes them. So what?

For Israel to have fussed so over the man was hardly an example of savoir-faire
or smarts. A perusal of the brutal attacks on Sharon bedecking assorted
hard-Left websites confirms just how petty Israel was being.

The Counterpunch cranks, for example, set the tone with an article titled
"Stroke of Luck? Political Hemorrhage in Israel." An expatriate Israeli (far
and away the most vicious anti-Israel-cum-anti-Semitic tracts are penned by
Jews) exploded in pixelated glee with a column titled "Sharon Meets His Maker."
"The Hole Where the Heart Should Be," by U.N. correspondent Ian Williams,
complemented Juan Cole's "Sharon as Jailer." This dog's-breakfast of an essay
calls terrorists who lob rockets into Israel "militants with a bad aim" [my
emphasis].

And the list goes on.

The Robertson episode demonstrates that Israel doesn't respond appropriately to
its friends or to its enemies. Against the backdrop of Iranian incitement to
genocide, with the hard-Left joining that seething cesspool of a Palestinian
Street to rejoice in Sharon's fate; at the dawn of the Age of Hamas and
insecure borders, and in the context of a world that has de-legitimized the
Jewish state and defined it in much the same terms as Ahmadinejad has
("criminal Zionist entity, colonial occupier") ? Israel still doesn't know
Shiite from Shinola.

Ilana Mercer is the author of "Broad Sides: One Woman's Clash With A Corrupt
Culture." She is also an analyst and blogger-at-large for Free-Market News
Network. To learn more about her work, and to contribute to Barely A Blog,
visit IlanaMercer.com.

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