By all accounts it was something like his umpteenth stop of the
day — after the Senate, the National Press Club, the Washington
Times, and who knows how many smaller and/or private meetings with
politicians and journalists, not to mention whatever television
would come before and after — but during his 90-minute session at
the American Enterprise Institute late yesterday afternoon Benjamin
Netanyahu appeared as fresh and relaxed and sharp as if he’d just
returned from a nice vacation in the Caribbean.
He’s what the new age types would describe as a man at peace
with himself. So why is it that those same types hate him so much?
They already loathe Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — yet
their one real fear is that Netanyahu will replace Sharon as P.M.
if the current situation deteriorates still further.
We all know why he’s hated and feared: He doesn’t beat around
the bush, but speaks and thinks with clarity, and he wants U.S.
policy to reflect that same clearmindness, however unpleasant the
consequences. In introducing him, Kenneth Weinstein of the Hudson
Institute, which co-hosted the event, stressed that clarity is
needed above all in understanding that the U.S. and Israel are
fighting the same war of terrorism against the same enemy. Those
who would destroy one would destroy the other. War clarifies
thinking, AEI President Christopher DeMuth added in his
introductory remarks. Against this common enemy, Israel has the
same right to self-defense as the U.S. does. The one concern, as
Netanyahu observed, is that the U.S. seems to be moving from the
clarity of purpose laid out by President Bush on September 20 to
selective application of its arguments.
In demanding the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank
and expressing a desire to meet with Yassir Arafat, the Bush
administration is responding to pressure from international and
media opinion. Netanyahu ignores it. When the U.N.’s leading
accommodationist Kofi Annan asks, “Can it be that the entire world
is wrong?” Netanyahu replies: “You bet.” Several times he mentioned
Israel’s preemptive takeout of the Iraqi nuclear reactor 21 years
ago, world opinion be damned. But everyone knows the world is safer
today because Israel then what had to be done.
Today the issue is Arafat. Europe and Colin Powell for the
umpteenth time are willing to accept his signature on agreements he
will never live up to in the slightest. Netanyahu — and one senses
Israel generally — will never again join in this charade. Arafat
sponsors suicide terror, he seeks Israel’s destruction, he is
terrorist and terror regime rolled into one. Pointedly, Netanyahu
noted that during his tenure as prime minister Palestinian terror
against Israel was at its lowest ebb precisely because Arafat knew
Netanyahu would “bring him down” if he tried anything. Again one
senses that as far as Israel is concerned, Arafat is gone. For
good. The matter is no longer open to discussion.
As he has throughout his trip, Netanyahu described Europe’s
current hostility to Israel as “shameful” behavior by a continent
that stood by as 6 million Jews were slaughtered. Who are the
Europeans to play moral one-upsmanship with Israel? An honorary
European of sorts yesterday was the National Journal’s Jonathan
Rauch, who during the question period asked Netanyahu if Israel is
doing what it should to prevent civilian casualties among the
Palestinians. Perhaps Rauch is hard of hearing, but earlier in his
remarks Netanyahu had addressed just that issue when he noted
Israel was not using air power for that very reason, even though
that meant risking far greater losses of its own.
In an effort to understand Europe’s thinking, Netanyahu noted
that its perceptions are colored by its own experience with
overseas colonialism and assumption that Israel represents a last
example of European-style colonial rule over an indigenous people.
Never mind that Zionism represented a return to ancestral lands or
that the Holy Land little more than an empty wasteland (as Mark
Twain and others noticed) that didn’t attract Arab migration until
after Jewish settlers brought prosperity and opportunity. But try
making that argument today in polite company.
In Netanyahu’s view, Israel has much more in common with the
U.S. and its history of nation-building. Which also explains why
U.S. public opinion is so strongly supportive of the current
Israeli campaign and right to self-defense. As Netanyahu noted, you
don’t have to be from the South Side of Chicago to have political
common sense.
He raised countless other important points, particularly
regarding the need to plant the seeds of pluralism in the Islamic
world. If Turkey could have moved to create a more reasonable
society, the cause isn’t hopeless, he suggested. (Though as a
Turkish journalist in the audience noted, that hasn’t kept the
current Turkish prime minister from calling Israel’s actions in the
West Bank “genocide.”)
But more significant was his understanding of the logic of our
own war on terrorism. A showdown with Iraq is looming, and he urged
the U.S. to put the Republican Guards on notice. If they want to
live they should lay down their arms. Otherwise they’ll die. Such
bluntness was a reminder that the U.S. is hardly ready to take this
next step. It could just be that official U.S. policy is urging
Israel to pull back because we ourselves are hardly ready to
display Israel’s resolve.
