Wednesday, July 30, 2014

The Left too shall Sober Up



by Dror Eydar


Last Thursday, an article by analyst Amnon Abramovich entitled "Between Camus and Nir Am" graced the ragged news stands of Brooklyn, on the front page of the very newspaper that forcefully pushed the Gush Katif communities toward destruction, and which today mostly regales us with stories. 

So, one of the tunnels that Hamas dug and reinforced with the humanitarian cement Israel handed over under the pressure of "human rights" groups (not Jewish rights) just about reached Kibbutz Nir Am, which Abramovich's parents helped establish. When it hits close to home, the sense of alarm is greater. 

"Kibbutz Nir Am was founded on rocky soil, upon which no man had ever set foot, and not a single Arab was dispossessed of it." 

Did you hear, dear terrorists, that this land wasn't stolen? Moreover, the land in question is rough terrain, in which you have no interest, but we made it bloom. This is not Judea and Samaria, and these are not settlers. Don't you get it? 

They get it, all right. From the perspective of the Arabs in Gaza, Judea and Samaria or the rest of the crazies in the Middle East, there's no difference between Nir Am and Habima Square in Tel Aviv, Ariel and Talmon. 

"The land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it. We cannot forfeit it or any part of it, give up on it or on any part of it," reads the Hamas charter (Clause 12). Still, we must discuss "a political arrangement." 

Well, here you go: "There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad. The initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility" (Hamas charter, Clause 13). 

"Moderate" Fatah meanwhile, upholds the Palestinian National Covenant (which has never been rescinded), and Clause 20 states: The Jews are not a nation, but rather a religion (unlike the Palestinian nation which has existed since the Big Bang). Religions cannot claim for themselves either land or country. Just this week, we saw how Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' grandson was educated by his father, who said the demand to return to Safed was valid and relevant.

Nevertheless, Abramovich should tell his friends why he has situated himself alongside the Israeli Right (sort of) during the current war. For that reason, he recruited author Albert Camus, who according to Abramovich wrote against French control of Algeria (yet again, the foolish comparison of our home, our lifeblood, with Algeria, which wasn't French at all), though the opposition hid bombs in the buses in which his mother traveled. "If that is justice, then I prefer my mother." 

Come on. If Camus said it, then Abramovich can also be a nationalist, even just for a moment. 

But here is Camus for advanced students, and he is speaking directly about the international and Israeli Left. In Camus' book, "The Plague," the city of Oran in Algeria is overrun by a plague. The city represents global civilization, which was under siege at the time during World War II by an enemy who took advantage of Western naivete, just as Hamas and the rest of the Islamic fundamentalists cannot see anything beyond the total annihilation of those standing in their way and control over the entire region: 

"When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. 

"In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves. In other words they were humanists; they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure, therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogey of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions."

My friends on the levelheaded Left, what else must happen for you to change your conceptions?


Dror Eydar

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=9389

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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