Israel confronts the radical Islamist/leftist Axis of Evil

By Charles A. Morse
web posted May 6, 2002

In his memoirs, written in the final months of his life, General
Ulysses S. Grant reflected on General Robert E. Lee's surrender
of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox,
April 9, 1865. He described his mood at the time "I felt like
anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had
fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a
cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for
which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the
least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the
great mass of those who were opposed to us."

Like the American Civil War, where two opposing factions
fought for the same country, Israel has been gripped by a Civil
War between two opposing Palestinian factions, one Jewish and
one Muslim. President Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided
cannot stand." This maxim could also be applied to the Israel-
Palestinian Arab conflict.

Palestinian Arabs believe that they're entitled to a state west of
the Jordan and I respect this. I am also aggrieved over the
suffering they've endured. My contention is that Israel's recent
military action on the west bank of the Jordan resulted from an
intransigent position held by the Palestinian Authority and a
substantial segment of the Palestinian Arab population, a position
supported by many Arab and Muslim nations. While many
Palestinian Arabs long for a sovereign state existing peacefully
alongside Israel, The Palestinian Authority, based on evidence
and actions over the last 18 months, clearly has conspired,
through both negotiating tactics and terror, to destroy Israel.
They are responsible for visiting disaster upon their own people
and are responsible for unleashing unspeakable terror to Israeli
families. They have forfeited a golden opportunity to achieve
statehood and have frittered away a chance for the average hard
working Palestinian Arab to live in peace within his own borders.

Israel, like any sovereign state, and according to universally
accepted norms of international law and custom, has the right to
defend the lives of its citizens. During a time when The
Palestinian Authority controlled most Arab population centers in
the West Bank and Gaza and when Israel was negotiating in
good faith on borders for a Palestinian State, evidence and
actions suggest that the Palestinian Authority, in violation of the
Oslo Accords, was smuggling in heavy munitions, building bomb
factories, and turning a blind eye while Islamist militias, such as
Hamas and Hezbollah, and leftist militias such as the PFLP,
attacked Israel from territory they controlled. The Palestinian
Authority is responsible for these acts of war in the same way
and for the same reason as the Taliban of Afghanistan was
responsible for the al-Qaida attack on the World Trade Center.
How can the Palestinians now ask Israel, or the rest of the
world, to recognize its sovereignty under these conditions? The
Palestinian Authority declared war on Israel, de facto, and Israel
responded in kind. In war, people get killed, and things get
broken. Rather than trading war stories, the salient question we
should confront is how to stop the war and how to stop the
killing.

Ulysses Grant spoke of "unconditional surrender" in order to
save the Union. President Franklin D. Roosevelt also spoke of
"unconditional surrender" in the War against fascism as the only
means of saving the free world. President Ronald Reagan spoke
of the "evil empire" which led to a policy that saw the collapse of
the Soviet Union. President George W. Bush, in his 2002 State
of the Union Address, spoke of an "Axis of Evil." Like his
predecessors, President Bush drew a clear moral distinction
between the free world and the enemies of freedom.

The Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict hinges on the aspirations of
two Palestinian peoples, the Jews and the Arabs, both claiming
the same tiny land. The Arabs see themselves as oppressed by
an occupying power while Israel views the Arabs as the Trojan
Horse of a vast and oil rich Arab and Islamic world, which seeks
its destruction. The Jewish state is gravely threatened today while
Arabs enjoy sovereignty and security in more than 20 states. The
fact that the average Arab doesn't enjoy the benefits of the vast
oil reserves that lie under his feet is attributable to the backward
authoritarian governments he tolerates. Arab leadership
conveniently and routinely scapegoats Israel for the poverty and
misery they're solely responsible for. The Arabs should wake up,
look at the corruption and oppressive situation they are in, and
put their own considerable houses in order.

Let's outline a brief history of the conflict. Conventional wisdom
has it that in the area called Palestine, the Arabs were there first
while the Jews arrived later. This is actually not the case. The
area the British called Palestine, resurrecting the name the
Emperor Hadrian gave to the Roman Province of Judea, had
been ruled for over 400 years by the Ottoman Turks as the
southern part of Turkish Syria. It should be noted that Turkey
today maintains relatively normal diplomatic and trade relations
with Israel.

Nineteenth century travelers to the region, such as Mark Twain,
described the region as a virtually empty land of deserts and
swamps. Indigenous Arabs, Jews, Christians, Bedouins, Druses,
Turks, Circassians, and Europeans lived in a few walled towns
such as Jerusalem and Hebron. Jews always and continuously
lived in and immigrated to Palestine.

Jewish immigration picked up steam in the mid part of the
nineteenth century, reaching a high water mark in 1881, after a
Russian pogrom against the Jews of Kichniev, and continued
steadily afterward. That this major immigration occurred 20
years before the first Zionist Congress headed by Theodore
Hertzl is an indication of the organic and spontaneous nature of
Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Arabs also began to immigrate to Palestine, en masse, from other
regions of the Arab world, around the same time period in order
to enjoy the economic benefits created by the culturally
European Jews. Both emerging Palestinian populations, Jewish
and Arab, immigrated around the same time. The British
established their Mandate in 1919, after they defeated the
Ottoman Turks in World War I.

In 1923, Britain split the Palestine Mandate into eastern and
western sectors giving eastern Palestine to the Hashemite King
Abdullah as a reward for his support during World War I.
Eastern Palestine, which the British designated as Arab Palestine,
is presently ruled by Abdullah's great grandson of the same name
and is now called Jordan. Jordan is, in fact, Arab Palestine for
the same reason that Israel is Jewish Palestine. Palestinian Arabs
have achieved political, national and cultural rights in Jordan.

In 1947, the United Nations passed Security Council Resolution
181, dividing west Palestine into a Jewish, and an Arab state
with the UN itself retaining Jerusalem. The Jewish State
consisted of a coastal strip, two non-contiguous swaths of the
Galilee, and the Negev Desert. Israel accepted these borders
and sued for peace with its Arab neighbors who responded by
invading the new Jewish state with the combined forces, under
the command of the Arab League, of five Arab states. The
invading Arab League general at the time stated, "This will be a
war of extermination and will be remembered like the Mongol
invasions or the Crusades."

In the course of that war, many Arabs fled the advancing Jewish
army. Jews were also, during the same time period, driven out of
the West Bank and many Arab States. The Arab leadership,
starting in the 1920's with Nazi war criminal Haj Amin al-
Husseini, the British appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, up until
recent years, have stated in clear and unequivocal terms, their
intention to drive the Jews into the sea. The 1949 armistice lines,
lines that Israel is now being asked to withdraw to over 50 years
later, were never recognized by a single Arab state.

After the 1967 Six Day War, the UN passed Security Council
Resolution 242, calling for Israel to withdraw from newly
acquired territories in order to establish "peace within secure and
recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
Resolution 242 does not call for Israel to withdraw from all these
territories. The authors of 242 stated, on many public occasions,
that the 1949-1967 Armistice lines were not considered to be
"secure boundaries" but rather borders that would serve as
invitations to war. Israel, in fact, withdrew from about 80 per
cent of these territories when the Sinai was returned to Egypt in
exchange for a peace treaty. Abba Eban, Israeli Foreign
Minister, accurately referred to the 1949-1967 armistice lines as
"Auschwitz lines."

The religious aspect of the conflict is rarely discussed publicly yet
Judaism and Islam under gird the thinking and actions of even
secular segments of the respective populations. Jews have
maintained a connection to the land between the Jordan and the
Mediterranean for approximately 6,000 years. The Torah, the
Prophets, and the Writings, collectively known as the Tenach,
or, to Christians, the Old Testament, describe the history of this
connection, from Abraham, who purchased a burial plot in
Hebron, to the wanderings in the Sinai, where G-d promised a
very specific land to the Israelites, to Joshua's conquest, to the
Judges, Kings Saul, David and Solomon, the division into Israel
and Judah, the Assyrian captivity of Israel, the Babylonian
captivity of Judah, the return of the Jews from Babylonian
captivity, under the leadership of Ezra and with written
permission from the Persian King Cyrus, the establishment of the
second commonwealth under the Macabees after a war with the
Syrian/Greek King Antiochus, the erosion of sovereignty under
the Romans leading to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD,
and the quelling of Bar Kochba's rebellion by the Romans at
Masada in 138-140 AD which effectively ended Jewish
sovereignty.

Jews remained after the victorious Roman Emperor Hadrian
mockingly re-named Judea Palestine after the Jews ancient
enemy the Philistines. Hadrian, while re-naming Jerusalem Alia
Capitalina, arrogantly asserted that the Jews would never rise
again. In subsequent centuries, the Jews of Palestine would
maintain a Sanhedrin; write the "Palestinian Talmud," and in the
15th century the Shulkhan Aruch. Religious Jews continue to
face Jerusalem from the Diaspora, three times a day in prayer,
and the land that the King of the Universe, blessed be he,
commanded the children of Israel to take possession of remains
the centerpiece of the Jewish covenant with G-d.

Islam views Palestine as an integral part of the "Ummah," or
motherland, which consists of any portion of the world that has
ever been militarily controlled by Islamic forces. The Koran and
the Hadith command the believer to engage in Jihad against the
Dar es Harb, or the world of war, which is the portion of the
planet that has yet to submit to Islam, which, in translation,
means submission. Radical Muslims view the world as divided
into two spheres, the Dar es Harb, or the world of war, the
portion of the world that has not submitted to Islam, and the Dar
es Salaam, or the world of peace, which is the portion of the
world that has. Muslims are generally expected, in varying
degrees, to submit to "Sharia" or Islamic law when living in
Islamic countries. This is true in clerical States such as Iran but
also true in secular Bath Socialist states such as Syria, Iraq, and
Libya.

While Jews are commanded by the Torah to seek sovereignty
only in tiny Israel, Radical Muslims are commanded by their faith
to dominate the world with the belief that a world submitted to
Islam will give birth to a utopian world of Dar el-Islam. In this
regard, Radical Islam is similar to the world-order movements of
Communism and Nazism. Christianity stopped its militant world
order pretensions, for the most part, after the Protestant
Reformation when it returned, albeit imperfectly, to its original
doctrine of advocating a voluntary acceptance of Jesus.

Radical Islam is now on the move, fighting for sovereignty,
seeking dominance, and engaging in terror. In Europe, Muslims
have achieved sovereignty in Bosnia and Kosovo, and have
engaged in violent action in Serbia and Macedonia. In central
Asia, Muslims are seeking sovereignty in Abkazia, Chechnia,
and Dagastan, and have engaged in violent action in China's
Sinkiang Province. Radical Muslims are fighting in the Philippine
island of Mindanao. Radical Muslims recently machine gunned
the Indian Parliament and blew up a bus in India containing 58
Hindus. Radical Muslims are murdering Christians in Indonesia
and in Catholic East Timor. Radical Islamist Sudan is committing
genocide against Black Christians in its south and radical
Muslims are ratcheting up violence along the rim of sub-Saharan
Africa. Lebanese, Egyptian, and Turkish Christians live in fear.
Non-Muslims, living in the authoritarian Muslim world, live as
Dhimmis or second-class citizens.

The existence of Israel as a Jewish state is a particular offence to
the Islamic conception of Ummah because it is a Jewish state.
The Koran and Hadith contain specific language that calls for the
killing of Jews who refuse to submit. Many Muslims blame Israel
for every type of problem in the Islamic world, even for their
own personal problems. If only Israel could be exterminated,
peace and utopia would break out. Muslim children are being
taught these doctrines today in Saudi financed Madrassas.

The Islamists have won the international propaganda war against
Israel by shrewdly aligning themselves with the anti-Western
anti-Democratic International Left. Leftist intellectuals, power
brokers, and media mandarins have turned the tables by
portraying a coordinated and well-financed Islamist agenda to
wipe out Israel, into the portrayal of Israel as a big bad
aggressor. The way it works is that whenever Israel defends the
lives and property of its citizens they are committing atrocities
while Arab atrocities against Jews are justified and defended.
This type of coverage has contributed to a deliberate fanning of
the flames of international anti-Semitism. The left assisted the
Islamists in their attempt to have Zionism declared as racist at a
UN Conference in Durban, South Africa. I think it's more than a
coincidence that just three days after the US walked out of that
conference, passenger planes crashed into the World Trade
Center.

Leftism and Islam have much in common politically and
ideologically. Both are authoritarian faiths, one claiming to derive
its authority from Allah, the other from Science. Both adhere to
the principle of absolute rule, one claiming to operate in the
interest of Allah, the other the interest of the downtrodden. Both
believe in a utopian one-world system and both hold individual
rights and self-rule in contempt.

Israel gave the two state solution a try and it failed. In the White
House Rose Garden, September 13, 1993; Yasser Arafat was
offered a state in exchange for nothing more than a renunciation
of the use of terror as a negotiating tactic. Israel proceeded to
re-habilitate Arafat, finance a Palestinian Authority, train and arm
its police force, and begin withdrawing from the West Bank and
Gaza. In the fall of 2,000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak,
met in Camp David with Palestinian Authority President Arafat
and U.S. President Bill Clinton. Barak offered a virtual
withdrawal to the 1949-1967 armistice lines and to establish a
Palestinian Arab Vatican-like condominium in Jerusalem. My
contention is that Barak went the distance, further than I thought
he should have gone, regarding the creation of a Palestinian state.
Arafat answered Barak's offer with a planned campaign of mass
murder against Jews.

Arafat delivered a revealing speech to Arab diplomats in
Stockholm, Sweden, January 30th, 1996 that was quoted and
written about in the fall 2001 issue of the respected scholarly
journal "The National Interest," in an article entitled "The
Impending Total Collapse of Israel." It should be noted that this
speech was delivered in 1996, while the Oslo Accords were
being implemented and Israel was withdrawing. Arafat stated the
following:

"We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of
Jerusalem . . . All the rich Jews who will get compensation will
travel to America . . . We of the PLO will now concentrate all
our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps.
Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living in
the West Bank and in Jerusalem.... You understand that we plan
to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian
State . . . I have no use for Jews; they are and remain Jews. We
now need all the help we can get from you in our battle for a
united Palestine under total Arab-Muslim domination!"

The National Interest article comments: 

"Arafat laid out his vision of undoing the Jewish majority even
within pre-1967 Israel. By overwhelming the land with refugees
and expropriating water and other resources as well as turning a
blind eye to ongoing Palestinian terrorism, Arafat would ensure
that a large part of the Israeli middle class would emigrate in
despair to the West. The remaining Jews would be so
disoriented and demoralized by the departure of Israel's most
talented citizens that the state would eventually collapse from
within."

During this years Passover season, about 100 Jews, mostly
elderly and children, were blown up. Children were sent on a
satanic mission to kill as many Jews as possible by those who
seek to wipe out Israel. Within 48 hours after Israel, under
pressure from the White House, withdrew from the Palestinian
Arab city of Tulkarem, a mass murderer traveled from there into
Israel and killed at least 8 Jews. The White House responded
with the following statement: "The morning suicide bombing near
Haifa, which killed 8 Israelis, reinforced the need for Israel to
withdraw." This statement, reflecting a point of view that seems
to be applied solely and uniquely to Israel, and held as a matter
of routine by much of the world's establishment, is completely
and totally insane.

Chuck Morse (http://www.chuckmorse.com/) is a talk show
host on Salem Radio/WROL Boston. This is the text of a speech
Mr. Morse is expected to give at the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst on May 7.

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