{"id":1336,"date":"2011-12-08T18:21:33","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T18:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=1336"},"modified":"2013-03-08T18:25:16","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T18:25:16","slug":"panettas-failure-of-imagination-the-defense-secretary-gives-israel-a-turn-of-the-screw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/panettas-failure-of-imagination-the-defense-secretary-gives-israel-a-turn-of-the-screw\/","title":{"rendered":"Panetta’s Failure of Imagination: The Defense Secretary Gives Israel a ‘Turn of the Screw’"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thronton<\/p>\n

FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta\u2019s \u201cchiding\u201d of Israel, as the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>put it, was a strange performance, so muddled in its ignorance of fact and logic that one wonders if the Secretary was attempting some rhetorical misdirection to lull our enemies into complacency. Unfortunately, the more likely reason for his misguided\u00a0remarks<\/a>\u00a0is the dead hand of foreign policy received wisdom and unexamined ideas.<\/p>\n

The orthodox narrative purporting to explain the Israel-Arab conflict goes like this. The Palestinian people were deprived of their homeland as a result of the creation of Israel, which continues to occupy the territories belonging to Palestinians. Among the Arabs, a radical minority of terrorists, mirrored by a radical minority of Israelis, have fomented violence to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. The goal of \u201ctwo states living side by side in peace and in security,\u201d as Panetta repeated the mantra, has thus for 60 years been blocked by these minorities, who have been abetted by weak, venal, or fanatic politicians on both sides. Instead we have the \u201ccycle of violence\u201d that creates fear among Israelis, and hence oppressive security measures that retard the economic development of the Palestinians and frustrate their daily lives, further radicalizing them and legitimizing more terrorist violence. The solution, according to Panetta, is \u201cfor Israel to take bold action and to move towards a negotiated two-state solution.\u201d Or as Panetta shouted, \u201cJust get to the damn table.\u201d Only then will stability and order flourish in the Middle East, and Israel\u2019s security be assured.<\/p>\n

The only problem with this story is that there is little evidence to support it. Sixty years of history shows that the primary aim of Arabs in the Middle East is the destruction of Israel, not the creation of a Palestinian state coexisting with Israel. Hence the impossible conditions for peace that always appear in the Palestinian list of demands, the worst being the \u201cright to return\u201d for a metastasizing population of Palestinian \u201crefugees,\u201d which would be a demographic WMD for the destruction of Israel. Nor is Panetta\u2019s suggestion that the Israelis have refused to negotiate true to the facts. Most recently, Israel suspended building apartments in East Jerusalem for a year to lure Palestinian President Abbas back to the table, and Abbas did nothing until a month before the moratorium expired, insuring that talks would fail. This has been the pattern of \u201cnegotiations\u201d for decades: start with impossible demands, trumpet a willingness to negotiate for the benefit of gullible Westerners, then sabotage the whole process, confident that the international community will blame Israel. This behavior makes sense if one realizes that negotiations, like terrorist attacks, are a tactic for pursuing the long-term strategy for the destruction of Israel. The Palestinians have followed the method of Konrad Henlein, Hitler\u2019s Nazi stooge in Czechoslovakia, who in 1938 said, \u201cWe must always demand so much that we cannot be satisfied.\u201d Having gone through this process repeatedly, why should the Israelis heed Panetta and once more play a game that furthers the aims of those who want to destroy them?<\/p>\n

Indeed, every Israeli concession to and agreement with the Palestinians has been followed by more\u00a0terrorist violence<\/a>. After the Oslo Agreement of 1993 handed the West Bank over to the Palestinian Authority, 300 Israelis were killed by terrorist attacks. After Arafat was offered virtually everything he had demanded for creating a Palestinian state in 2000, in the following five years 1,100 Israelis were murdered during the Al Aqsa Intifada. After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, another 118 Israelis have been killed, and thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel. The 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon was followed by the creation of a Hezbollah terrorist state armed with 50,000 rockets. Only someone with a penchant for magical thinking could believe that more negotiations and concessions could lead to peace. To paraphrase Goldfinger\u2019s comment to James Bond, the Palestinians don\u2019t expect the Israelis to talk, they expect them to die.<\/p>\n

Panetta\u2019s other comments are equally na\u00efve and blind to reality. For example, Panetta advises Israel to \u201creach out and mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability \u2013 countries like Turkey and Egypt, as well as Jordan. This is an important time to be able to develop and restore those key relationships in this crucial area.\u201d This would be the same Turkey that is virtually an Islamist state, one that supported the so-called \u201cfreedom flotilla\u201d patently intended to isolate Israel internationally, one that has threatened to attack Israeli vessels developing natural gas fields in its territorial waters, one whose prime minister joined the genocidal Iranian president Ahmadinejad at the UN in September to slander Israel, expelled Israeli diplomats from his country, and in a speech in Cairo threatened that \u201cIsrael must pay a price for its aggression and crimes.\u201d How do those actions reflect an \u201cinterest in regional stability\u201d?<\/p>\n

As for Egypt, the overthrow of Mubarak has been followed by attacks on Israel from the Sinai, the border with Hamas opened to weapons traffic, the assault on Israel\u2019s embassy in Cairo, and an election in which Islamists sworn to the destruction of Israel won 61% of the vote. How then can Panetta instruct Israel that \u201cthe best way to address these concerns is through increasing communication and cooperation \u2014 increasing communication and cooperation with Egyptian authorities.\u201d What \u201cauthorities\u201d? The Muslim Brothers, whose subsidiary in Gaza, Hamas, has written the destruction of Israel into its charter? But Panetta thinks there is international public relations value in making the attempt anyway: \u201cIf gestures are rebuked, the world will see those rebukes for what they are. That is exactly why Israel should pursue them.\u201d Well, for decades Israeli \u201cgestures\u201d and more tangible concessions have been met with violent \u201crebukes,\u201d and Israel\u2019s international enemies \u2014 and now it seems its most important ally \u2014 still haven\u2019t seen those \u201crebukes for what they are\u201d \u2014 the evidence of a desire to see Israel disappear.<\/p>\n

Panetta\u2019s inability to see the real motives of Israel\u2019s enemies is also evident in perhaps his most laughably na\u00efve statement: \u201cEgypt\u2019s current leaders, along with Jordan, have made very clear to me privately and publicly that they are committed to their peace treaties with Israel.\u201d Why should Israel worry about the threats to her security if a nation of 85 million on its southern border is dominated by a religious ideology that wants to destroy her? Mr. Panetta has been assured that the peace treaty will be respected. I am reminded of Churchill\u2019s comment about delusional British and Americans who took seriously Hitler\u2019s claims that \u201cGermany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria,\u201d or that Sudeten Czechoslovakia was his \u201clast territorial claim I have to make in Europe\u201d: \u201cOne can hardly find a more perfect specimen of humbug and hypocrisy for British and American benefit . . . What is astounding is that it should have been regarded with anything but scorn by men and women of intelligence in any free country.\u201d One wonders what Churchill would have made of 40 years of Westerners swallowing the \u201chumbug and hypocrisy\u201d of Palestinian leaders assuring them that all they wanted was to live in \u201cpeace and security\u201d with Israel in their own state. Panetta should remember the Biblical wisdom: \u201cBy their fruits ye shall know them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panetta\u2019s failure of imagination, his inability (whether real or feigned) to imagine that there might be peoples who have aims different from and hostile to our own, is most obviously manifested in his delusional expectations for the \u201cArab Awakening\u201d: \u201cI recognize that there is a view that this is not the time to pursue peace and that the Arab awakening further imperils the dream of a safe and secure, Jewish and democratic Israel. But I disagree with that view. I believe Israel will ultimately be safer when other Middle Eastern states adopt governments that respond to their people, promote equal rights, promote free and fair elections, uphold their international commitments, and join the community of free and democratic nations.\u201d Panetta has no evidence whatsoever that the sort of genuine liberal democracy he describes is likely to appear in Tunisia, Libya, or Egypt; and he is silent on the considerable evidence that Islamist regimes shaped by Sharia law, with all the intolerance and hostility to \u201cinfidels\u201d that it implies, are quickly arising in those countries. Such wishful thinking is the worst basis for foreign policy one can imagine.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s predicament continually reminds me of Czechoslovakia\u2019s in 1938. Particularly similar is the despicable pressure that Israel\u2019s ally has been applying to a country whose very existence is at stake. As Hitler\u2019s aggression against Czechoslovakia relentlessly intensified with each new demand, that beleaguered country\u2019s allies grew more and more impatient with the desperate attempts of the Czechs to save their country. The French warned them that if they were \u201cunreasonable,\u201d\u00a0France \u201cconsidered herself released from her bond\u201d\u00a0to guarantee Czechoslovakia\u2019s security. And the British thought the solution to the crisis was \u201cfor Prague to get a real twist of the screw.\u201d\u00a0Meanwhile Hitler wrote in his attack plan, \u201cIt is my unalterable decision to destroy Czechoslovakia by military action in the foreseeable future.\u201d
\nUnder Obama Israel has been subjected to the same pressure from her ally, and she would be well advised not to rely overmuch on this administration\u2019s protestations of commitment to her security.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92011 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thronton FrontPage Magazine Defense Secretary Leon Panetta\u2019s \u201cchiding\u201d of Israel, as the\u00a0Washington Postput it, was a strange performance, so muddled in its ignorance of fact and logic that one wonders if the Secretary was attempting some rhetorical misdirection to lull our enemies into complacency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[97,22],"tags":[255,455,1034,141,1027,459,1043,1046,1060,162,1016,1037,478,76],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-ly","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7190,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/israels-worst-enemy-lies-and-myths\/","url_meta":{"origin":1336,"position":0},"title":"Israel’s Worst Enemy: Lies and Myths","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0reports that some members of Secretary of State John Kerry\u2019s senior staff think it\u2019s time to say \u201cenough\u201d of Kerry\u2019s futile and delusional attempts to broker peace between the Israelis and Arabs and implement the \u201ctwo- state solution.\u201d That\u2019s a revelation one would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5468,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/murder-in-gaza-why-israel-and-not-fatah-is-demonized\/","url_meta":{"origin":1336,"position":1},"title":"Murder in Gaza: Why Israel and not Fatah is Demonized","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers In Gaza the fighting between Fatah and Hamas has escalated to the point of all-out civil war, replete with dead women and children, kneecapping, and handcuffed prisoners thrown from roofs. Meanwhile in Lebanon, the Lebanese army continues to shell a Palestinian refugee camp, with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3052,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/corrupt-language-breeds-bad-history-and-bad-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1336,"position":2},"title":"Corrupt Language Breeds Bad History and Bad Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society As the history of communism and fascism both illustrate, modern political tyranny has relied on fabricated history to legitimize its claims and actions, and such history in turn relies on the debasement of language. Nowhere is this axiom more evident than in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1327,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/newt-challenges-the-myth-of-palestinian-nationalism\/","url_meta":{"origin":1336,"position":3},"title":"Newt Challenges the Myth of Palestinian Nationalism","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Newt Gingrich touched off a mini-firestorm when he told a Jewish television channel that the Palestinians are an \u201cinvented\u201d people \u201cwho are in fact Arabs,\u201d and \u201cwho were historically part of the Arab community.\u201d This simple statement of historical fact was of course met\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Palestine"","block_context":{"text":"Palestine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/palestine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":984,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-final-countdown-israel-vs-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":1336,"position":4},"title":"The Final Countdown: Israel vs. Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The 33-year farce of Western appeasement of Iran may be reaching its denouement. For the last few months, the pace of events have quickened as the West sanctions and threatens, and Iran blusters about closing the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil to Europe,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3357,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/memo-to-the-general-free-speech-doesnt-kill-people-jihadists-kill-people\/","url_meta":{"origin":1336,"position":5},"title":"Memo to the General: Free Speech Doesn’t Kill People, Jihadists Kill People","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society Citizen control of the military is one of the most important foundations of political freedom. Rather than an instrument of a powerful autocrat or king, the army in a republic serves the collective interests, security, and policies of the state as determined\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1338,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions\/1338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}