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SaveTheWest.com contributor writer Erez Winner spent 25 years in the Israel Defense Forces, and retired as a colonel.
Mr. Trump’s presidential election in the US signifies the end of the political correctness era. It is the end of an era in which we learned to wash words carefully: sequential terrorist attacks were called “the peace process”; murdered in acts of terrorism were “victims of peace”; murderers who kill randomly in cold-blood children and families were called “mentally unstable.”
Some say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the burning problem in the Middle East. If only we stop building more settlements, and establish a terrorist state in our country, the whole world of trouble will end. Yet this conflict has no relationship to the other numerous conflicts in the region. Syria has already lost count of its dead, but it probably approaches 1 million. Yemen is stuck in a bloody war, and 100 tribes are slaughtering each other in Libya.
Ten thousand Jews were expelled from their homes in Gaza in order to bring peace (or prevent the investigation of the prime minister), and the Israeli government called it by the name of “disengagement.” Yet in response, we got a terror entity that built rockets and tunnels in less than a year, then instigated three wars against us.
Now that the era of politically correctness is over, it is possible and desirable to terminate the declared agreements that brought Israel only waves of incessant terror attacks. A brief review for those who may not be familiar with the reality of Israel’s recent history:
The “disengagement” created the Hamas state in Gaza (as an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood), and allowed them to continuously re-arm, and become a threat to the safety of Israeli citizens, while these terrorists become millionaires, and billionaires.
The 1993 Oslo Accords that allowed a small group of members of the Palestine Liberation Organization to become billionaires, thanks to their stolen donations from all over the world, and rule over Judea and Samaria as the Palestinian Authority (PA), under the auspices of the IDF, that protected them from Hamas.
Since the Oslo Accords were signed, it brought us rivers of blood and allowed our enemies to arm and re-arm, and sometimes even get from us directly thousands of weapons in Judea and Samaria — not to mention missiles, rocket launchers, anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons in the Gaza Strip. While many military experts said, “Don’t give them rifles!,” the media was busy portraying PM Rabin in Nazi uniform, which was later discovered as a provocation created by the “Eyal” organization, led by Avishai Raviv — or “shampanya” as called by his operators in the central Security Service.
When military leaders then warned that withdrawal from Gush Katif would bring missiles on Ashkelon (we did not dare to think of worse), we were a target of ridicule, and accused of creating hysteria and attempts to intimidate.
The Oslo Accords brought Israel only grief and terror. I served as a soldier and a commander in Judea and Samaria and Gaza Strip, from the beginning of the First Intifada in December, 1987 to the Oslo Accords – buffeted by the stones, burning tires and Molotov cocktails. If there were shooting incidents, they were sporadic, and the finding a firearm was considered an event of the month.
Then, just after we eradicated this terrorist wave, when Arafat was disgraced by his support of Saddam Hussein and his organization was on the verge of bankruptcy, we gave him artificial respiration in the form of the Oslo Accords, and brought him triumphantly to Gaza and Jericho.
My opinion is that former president Peres and his friends were not traitors. I would argue that they were wrong, and like any compulsive gambler, were convinced that if only they increase the stakes a bit more, everything would change, and peace would emerge.
Over the years, there were those that fell in love with the peace process. They arranged flights to countless conferences and meetings and of course there were those on both sides who have earned a nice livelihood from the process. No wonder some call it the “Peace business” instead of the “Peace process”.
The Israeli left wing, which actually wanted to hope that you can fulfill a dream and maybe, on the way to return to leadership, adopted the “Peace Now Theory,” with neither care nor concerns for the practical consequences.
Now, under the impact of two major events that the media dealt with in the past weeks, Prime Minister’s Netanyahu response to Ilana Dayan’s investigation against his wife, and the election of Donald Trump as the U.S. president, the time has come to declare “war” against the politically correct phenomenon and talk in a clear and understandable language.
- There will be no place for the division of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. All such experience will produce more terror and more trouble, such as is happening in the Gaza Strip today.
- There is no such thing as “Palestinian people,” and there never was. Those Arabs who chose not to flee during the 1948 War of Independence and remain in their homes, are today the group of Arabs that enjoy better living conditions than in all the Arab world — politically, religiously and economically.
- There is, therefore, no need to invent a state for a people who never existed, especially as one would immediately become a terrorist incubator similar to the Gaza Strip, or ISIS in Syria/Iraq. We must work to keep that fiction from propagating.
- Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, enjoy better living conditions than their neighbors in Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, not to mention Syria. The solution for them is similar to what they enjoy today – self-governing and managing of their civilian affairs.
- The only real solution that can improve the situation in Gaza is across the border in Rafah in the empty Sinai desert. Billions spilled in the sands of Gaza can and should be used to improve the quality of life for Gazans and Bedouins in Sinai. These people can also help fight ISIS in Sinai.
“Peace Knights” will jump and shout that it will not work and the world will never agree, but the rules have changed. In America now, there is another President, and he is not Barack Hussein Obama. In Russia sits a President that is not the Knight of Political Correctness.
Arab countries are busy with problems that are more serious than Israel, which has suddenly become a friend instead of an enemy, or at least a possible partner facing a common enemy. Europe, that old lady, is ebbing away, as the same issues grow more and more acute. The Libyan coast and the border with Turkey trouble Europe more than Ramallah and Jerusalem. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict never mattered to the Far East countries, nor to Africa.
The time has come to stop playing around, and begin to speak in clear and understandable language:
- Radical Islam exists. It is sometimes called political Islam. Whatever we call it, it always uses terrorism, intimidation and subversion as a means to achieve its underlying goal of creating a global caliphate, ruled by the strictest, most repressive interpretations of shariah law.
- Israel was and will always remain a democratic Jewish state. Arab residents of Judea and Samaria will be given ongoing autonomy, as they receive now.
And to the “knights” of human rights, I say two things:
- There are many examples of similar arrangements around the world (Puerto Rico, Washington DC).
- Today the situation of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is quite respectable in aspects of economy, civil rights, access to education and excellent healthcare relative to neighboring Arab countries.
The rules have clearly changed, and we now need to say it loud and clear, that we are cancelling the Oslo Accords (which the PA never implemented), and deleting the crazy idea of a Palestinian state. This change will foster the beginning of the solution to all our problems (and our Arab neighbors as well).
And the sooner the better.
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