FREEMAN CENTER BLOG

DANGEROUS MYTHS THAT REMAIN
by David Basch
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
April 27, 2011


"How anyone can conclude that carving out an Arab nation
from the unalloted lands of the Mandate of Palestine that Israel
today controls is a recipe for peace is every bit as nonsensical
as the other theory that Palestine is the core problem of the
Middle East region...."

"Who in his right mind thinks that surrendering nationhood to the
Palestinian Arabs would end the many decades of Arab strife? "

"I do not know what Dr. Asa Kasher smokes but, if we analyze his
view, he has no basis for concluding that the Arabs that Israel
confronted in 1948 have a right to a state...."

SATIRE - PEACE AT LAST
by Steven Plaut
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
April 28, 2011

It was in the year 2013. The Israelis at long last gave up their
attempts to resist the pressures of the world. Their newly elected
national unity government approved the plan. The Palestinians, led by
a coalition of the PLO and the Hamas, had already earlier announced
the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel’s Left had been holding
weekly protests in support of Palestinian statehood. When the UN had
officially and unanimously called for such a state, even the United
States of Barack Obama voted in favor.

The national unity government of Israel announced that Israel was
willing to accept the unanimous UN proposal for peace, supported by
every single country in the world. Israel would return to its
pre-1967 borders, remove all Jewish settlements from the territories
of the new state of Palestine, recognize Palestine, and grant
Palestine all of East Jerusalem, that is, all of the city located east
of a line running north-south through Zion Square, renamed Martyrs’
Square.

FATEFUL DECISION COMING
by David Basch
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
April 24, 2011

"The question is whether PM Netanyahu's next proposal
will mark a new direction in negotiation -- one that
walks Israel back from earlier surrender agreements that
should be declared nul and void on grounds of the perfidious
performance of the Arab enemy."

It has been PM Netanyahu's unhappy lot that he has been the one called
on to make fateful decisions for Israel and the Jewish people. Maybe
that statment should be corrected that it is Israel and the Jewish
people's unhappy lot that it is he that is called on to decide these
issues for them. Reflecting on what has happened, he has not done well
for them.

One need only recall that in his first term as PM, elected to stand
fast on behalf of Israel against the Oslo process that was delivering
Israel into the hands of those that sought to destroy the nation, he
failed to stop it in its tracks and even expanded it by contributing
the early surrender of additional large portions of Hebron to the
Arabs. A decade later, after running on another right wing program, he
became the first Israeli leader to subscibe to a Palestinian State.
Leading up to this, he was also for the surrender of Gaza, the very
surrender that brought Israel's southern cities under Arab
bombardment.

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth... ...Plato
"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see." ... Ayn Rand
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TWO ARTICLES: DEFENSE VS. OFFENSE

DM EHUD BARAK VS. BERNARD J. SHAPIRO

Barak has raised the idea of a separation between the PA and Israel. It is not a new idea and as far back as 1995 I explained why it won't work. Here is that article. Today in 2011 his big "idea" is missile shields. They won't work either. Anit-missiles systems are very expensive and the terrorists can keep producing thousands of cheap missiles to overwhelm them.

SEPARATION & SECURITY FENCES

The Primary Fallacy
By Bernard J. Shapiro (1995)
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
The Maccabean Online


The idea of separation has much appeal to an Israeli population feeling threat0ened daily by hostile Arabs. The Israeli government recently advanced an elaborate plan to construct hi-tech fences and new military checkpoints between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank in an effort to reduce the risk of militant violence. Israeli security officials brought the plan before the Knesset a day after Islamic extremists opened fire on an Israeli bus near the West Bank town of Hebron, killing two Jewish settlers and wounding five. The separation plan involves building extensive fences, other barriers and restricting Palestinian access into Israel through eight to ten crossings points.

The border would be heavily patrolled by Israeli soldiers and police. Cost estimates range from $300 million to $500 million. An economic report on the draft plan said the cost would be too high and separation would lead to political and economic instability in the PLO areas, perhaps intensifying the danger of attacks from opponents of the Israeli-PLO peace process. Analysts such as Dore Gold, Emanuel Winston and Ze'ev Schiff have discussed many of the reasons why it simply won't work.

For another reason why it is the wrong approach to security, it is worth repeating a story I wrote, which appeared in an article entitled, DETERRENCE OR DHIMMIZATION (THE MACCABEAN, January 1995): Back in 1965, in a small meeting room in Tel Aviv, former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan gave a pep talk to a group of RAFI (Rishimat Poalai Israel) volunteers, myself included. At that time, RAFI, a breakaway faction of the Mapai Party, included such notables as former Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and former Defense Minister Shimon Peres. Peres and Dayan had been considered the "hawks" of Mapai and it was no accident that in the 1965 election they supported a strong defense and security policy.