FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Nobody knows the Mideast better than Bernard Lewis. Today’s Jerusalem Post has a long interview, which I found fascinating. For example:

If you go back to the Egyptian peace process, Sadat didn’t decide to make peace because he was suddenly convinced of the merits of the Zionist case. Sadat decided to make peace because he realized that Egypt was becoming a Soviet colony.

The process was very visible. There were whole areas of Soviet bases and no Egyptian was admitted. Sadat, I think, realized that on the best estimate of Israel’s power and the worst estimate of Israel’s intentions, Israel was not a threat to Egypt in the way that the Soviet Union was.

So he took the very courageous step of ordering the Soviet specialists out of Egypt, facing the danger they might do what they did in Czechoslovakia or Hungary. They didn’t, fortunately. Then he hoped that Washington would help him, instead of which Washington produced the Vance-Gromyko Agreement, a sort of diplomatic carve up, in effect giving Egypt back to the Soviets. That was [former president Jimmy] Carter’s real contribution to the peace process. All the rest of it is imaginary; imaginary is the polite word. [My emphasis — ed.]

That persuaded Sadat that he had to go to the Israelis.

The controversy about the campus organization UPZ and its sponsorship of ‘Breaking the Silence’ apparently isn’t over. If you don’t know by now,

Breaking the Silence … is a group of former IDF combat soldiers, many of whom continue to do reserve duty, who give personal testimony of purported human rights violations perpetrated by the IDF in Judea and Samaria.

“We try to explain to audiences on college campuses what it feels like to stand for hours at a checkpoint in the territories telling someone twice our age that he cannot go where he wants to because of a decision by some high-ranking official,” said Mikhael Manekin, administrative director of Breaking the Silence. “Or what an IDF soldier feels after breaking in to a Palestinian family’s house in the middle of the night and arresting the father while his children scream and cry.”

Manekin, 27, an IDF lieutenant who still does reserve duty in Judea and Samaria, said that he has testimony from 400 soldiers who have served in Judea and Samaria. “All of them talk of the ethical and moral dilemmas they faced while on duty.”

What nobody seems to know is that there’s a Palestinian counterpart to ‘Breaking the Silence’: a group of former terrorists militants who still murder Jews Resist the Occupation from time to time. They too struggle with the duties they are required to perform:

“You have to understand that we face difficult moral issues in our work. Think about what it must be like to drive around all day looking for a Zionist to shoot; and then, when we shoot one, he turns out to be an Arab! Arafat himself had to apologize for that one.”

“Consider how it feels, for example, to break down the door of a Jewish home and machine-gun a mother and her children in their beds — only to find that the father was away at Zionist reserve duty that night! Let me tell you, you are not the only ones with ethical concerns.”

We at FresnoZionism had no idea that the other side was as morally conflicted as we are. Therefore, I propose that we send them on a campus tour as well, so that American students can see the thoughtful, tender and poetic nature of the Palestinian Freedom Fighters for themselves.

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