Wednesday, March 30, 2011

RE POST: FEAR AND LOATHING IN ISRAEL

By Simon Fischler

Two days ago Bradley Burston of Haaretz took the time to write an article about how wretched Israel has become.

He painstakingly moved from the Dubai assassination of a murderer, terrorist and weapons smuggler to the treatment of the Turkish ambassador of Israel in the Ayalon affair.

Throughout the whole article Mr. Burston explained why those who hate Israel are essentially right to hate us today because of how disgusting a nation we have become. If we aren’t killing nice Arabs in Dubai, we are embarrassing nice diplomats from Turkey, or offending the great nations of the EU.

The problem is Bradley Burston got it all wrong!

What happened in Dubai is what the Arabs should always expect from Israel. She will go to extremes to protect citizens, to collect on the losses of our boys, a fact made very clearly on several famous occasions. We should not be embarrassed about this at all. We should in no way be embarrassed that Israelis were willing to take upon themselves a mission so dangerous to protect their fellow citizens.

If Dubai wishes to open its doors to people who are smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip from Iran to kill Israelis and the soldiers of the IDF, they now know they may find these people dead the next morning. There is a price to pay for accepting terrorists into your territory.

In fact what is embarrassing is Mr. Burston and how he still thinks Israel will somehow be approved by the world if we just behave ourselves and do what they want us to do. He is suffering from Camp David and Taba amnesia!

When it comes to Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s treatment of Turkish Ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol I am a little amazed at Bradley Burston’s take on it. 

Granted I do not favor the embarrassment of foreign diplomats, but again it seems Mr. Burston is ready to sell the country of Israel out for a wink and a smile from the Turkish government. 

Since Israel’s defensive war in Gaza, the Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been prancing around the world condemning Israel for the same practices his government has carried out against Turkish Kurds for decades. He has on numerous times been blatantly anti-Semitic and then tried to embarrass Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos, Switzerland last year by orally attacking him on stage in front of the international media.

Apparently the behavior of the Turkish government and its leadership towards Israel and Jews is fine with Mr. Burston. They can say and do whatever they wish towards Israel. In his mind it is only Israel that needs to consider her relationship with Turkey, not Turkey and her relations with Israel. 

Israel has, if anything, been too passive in this tense diplomatic period with Turkey. But instead of Mr. Burston seeing how restrained his country has been, he decided to self-loath. 

He also forgets his history, because Turkey condemning Israel for defending herself against Hamas’ continual bombardment of the Negev communities is the apex of hypocrisy. After all it was the Turks who killed more than a million Armenians just for being Armenians. 

This is why the left, which Bradley Burston laments so much in his article, has lost power in Israel. Israelis, especially ones like me who are liberal and favoring peace, are sick and tired of hearing all the whining from the left. We are tired of hearing about how we need to sell out our country for peace. We are tired of hearing about how things would be fine if there weren’t any settlements (there were no settlements before 1967 and things weren’t fine then either). We are tired of blaming ourselves for the mistakes of the Palestinians and the Arab world!  

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