Anti-Peace Now

Zionist Left is dead
Israeli leftist camp tends to ignore simple facts, thus digging its own grave

Shaul Rosenfeld

It often transpires that the work of propagandists is done by others, who are sometimes truly convinced of the frankness of their jabber, and at times are even willing to withhold details and tell tales just to serve the idea they wish to propegate.

It is hard to say what to attribute the declaration by Peace Now's Dror Etkes, who argued that "the conflict in this country is between Israelis, most of them the children, grandchildren and great- grandchildren of immigrants, and the Palestinians, who are the natives of this land," in his article titled "Israel's hollow declarations."

Etkes is not the most important thing here, and not even the organization that sent him on his "noble objectives" of monitoring and snitching, Peace Now. Neither he nor his movement has exclusive rights over the claim that "Palestinians are the natives of this land," and they are certainly not the only ones who carry the burden of the robbed Palestinian nativeness tale.

"Historical religious edicts" of this type were present alongside Arab propaganda almost from the very beginning of Zionism – and as we know, such "historical edicts" are superior to steadfast historical facts, particularly if these "edicts" come from old Arab religious schools or the schools of new Jewish historians.

And indeed, why the hell should we be strict with dry archival findings, such as the 1931 Land of Israel census, which showed that the place of birth of non-Jewish Jerusalem district residents spans dozens of countries? And why the hell should we tamper with well-constructed "edicts" and annul them because of trivial archival exhibits, such as the fact that the number of mother tongues of area residents is above 50, and includes among others Afghani, Persian, Kurdish, Bosnian, Sudanese, and Spanish?

And what point is there in paying attention to the point of annulling edicts, to declarations such as the one by the Mandate committee from 1936, which bemoaned the extensive free entry of Trans-Jordanians to Palestine, or the fact that in 1934 alone, 30,000-36,000 Syrians entered from one region alone? After all, even on the Israeli side, Mideastern politics has taught us that lies spread and even have many loyal customers who come back for more.

And after we equip ourselves with the historical-Etkes-ish ruling that all Palestinians are natives and most Jews are immigrants, this should make it easier for us to determine exactly where the line of compromise between us and "the natives of this country " should be drawn.

And so, the exaggeration and fabrication in describing the extent of the robbery of the "natives" by the "Jewish outsiders" are designed to grant substantive moral support to the "historical compromise" proposed by Etkes and his friends. After all, the worthiness of any diplomatic agreement is also measured on the basis of what each party to the conflict lost or gained in light of its initial state. The description of our initial situation as poor immigrants is supposed to provide us with a sense of substantive gain over the Peace Now compromise deal presented to us.

However, when "peace" ventures, withdrawals, and disengagements collapse like a house of cards before the eyes of Etkes and his movement, and when they and their leftist comrades discover that the threshold of Palestinian concessions is increasingly looking like a deceptive horizon, which moves further away as one approaches it, there is no wonder then that the industry of modifications, adaptations, and continued concessions does not rest for a moment.

And so, when it is clear to at least some of them that what was offered in the past, by their camp, is not even close to satisfying the hunger of the Palestinian partner, and when the vision documents recently formulated by Arab Israelis show us the futility of the claims that everything hinges on the question of "occupation" – we slowly begin to see a shift from the Zionist Left to its "post" and "anti" versions.

Perhaps the defiant reality, which is taking over any "good peace prospects" and among other things forces upon some leftists this shift to post-Zionism and anti-Zionism, is also responsible for the death certificate issued to Zionist leftist ideas. It is a pity…but then again perhaps it's not.