WAITING FOR PEACE? FORGET IT.
by Victor Sharpe
I've never posted anyone else's essays before, but Victor is an old friend of mine and an excellent writer who has something very important to say. His essays have been on other websites, and he is also an author of a book, Politicide. Nadene
Islam will never accept Israel unless Islam itself undergoes a reformation. But by its very nature it cannot do so and still be called Islam. That said, there is no future for the Jewish state if it keeps on believing that one day the Muslim world will accept it and live in a true and lasting peace as, for example, Holland and Belgium live peacefully side by side.
The only way forward for Israel is to accept the dismal fact that so long as it remains a Jewish and non-Arab state it cannot ever have peaceful neighbors who will not at every opportunity wish to destroy it. That being so, Israel must continue to prosper and thrive as a state in the knowledge that it can never let down its guard. It must ever be on its guard as were the biblical watchmen on the ancient walls of Jerusalem.
But even with such a threat hanging over it like some Arab sword of Damocles, Israel can survive and grow. Even though the Jewish state yearns for peace, as all other civilized societies do, the very external threat can be turned to great advantage militarily, politically, socially and economically. Nothing keeps internal division at bay and concentrates the mind more than when the barbarians are at the gate.
What is remarkable is that since the great Zionist leaders of the likes of Herzl, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Begin and Shamir have passed, there has been a long and depressing parade of weak and incompetent Israeli leaders and politicians who have brought unnecessary disaster down upon the state. The worst ever is the present caretaker prime minister, Ehud Olmert, whose idiocy is simply incomprehensible. Here is a man, deeply flawed and under police investigation for alleged corruption who seems driven by some infernal force to harm his own nation and aid and support her enemies by turning a blind eye to every Palestinian Arab provocation and act of naked aggression.
Along with defense minister, Ehud Barak, who is arguably one of the worst and most incompetent men ever to be entrusted with that vital portfolio, Olmert grovels at the feet of the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas. In response to veiled threats from Abbas that Israel must give to him everything he demands or else, the Israeli premier ignores the suffering of his people under bombardment in Sderot and Ashkelon and, instead, frees 250 Arab thugs who will immediately return to murdering Israeli civilians. Abbas is a miserable Holocaust denier whose very crime should place him beyond the pale for every Israeli leader.
From prime ministers, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu and Sharon down to Olmert and would be prime minister, Tzippi Livni, all have been resistant to accepting the sad but awful truth that even if Israel shrunk to one down town city block in Tel Aviv, the Arab and Muslim world would still not recognize a Jewish state or agree to live with it in peace and harmony. Why not? The answer to that question is Islam itself.
True peace can never be achieved between Muslim and non-Muslim nations. Islam mandates the faithful to spread their religion through territorial conquest or, as in the case of Israel, by reclaiming what Muslims believe they have lost.
Even though the native and indigenous peoples of Israel are the Jews, and even if the Land of Israel was given to the Jewish people in an eternal covenant with God, it does not matter to the Muslim, for wherever the Muslim foot has once trod triumphal, that territory is forever regarded as Islamic. If such territory is lost to Muslims, then the belief is that Allah has been diminished and the land must be retaken, however long it may take.
So Islam cannot and will not accept Israel. After all it is a Jewish state, governed by its Jewish inhabitants, and living in its very own ancestral and biblical homeland. But for the Muslim faithful, every part of it must become Muslim again. Until that time comes it will be considered by Muslim Arabs as within the Dar al Harb, the House of War. Peace then is merely a mirage in the desert sands.
World leaders, essentially those who are secular and western, fail to understand the Muslim mindset. Israeli leaders, who of all people should understand and know better, still fall into the fatal trap of believing that the western model of lasting peace between nation states can equally apply in the Middle East between Muslim and non-Muslim nations. It is a fallacy.
These leaders cling to the notion that the conflict between Israel and the Arabs in general, and between Israel and those who call themselves Palestinians in particular, is territorial. It is not. It is theological. It is, indeed, part of the existential conflict that has existed between Islam and the rest of the world since the 7th century.
Judaism and Christianity are considered by the followers of Islam to be in error. The Muslim belief is that Mohammed was given the final and complete divine revelation and Islam is therefore superior to the earlier two faiths, whose followers it calls the “People of the Book.” So now the Muslim cry is, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet.” Islam, therefore, is considered by the faithful as superior over all other faiths and peoples. It is a theological, “Islam uber alles.” Herein is the fundamental fault line, which may never be bridged.
Much of the Islamic world now feels empowered, as perhaps, never before, and seeks global domination with renewed vigor. This is the tangible and growing threat to the world; not global warming.
There are many Muslims who remain faithful adherents to Islam but who have rejected the jihadist call for Islamic supremacy throughout the world. Hopefully the West will find some Muslim nations who have learned to accept a “live and let live” policy with their non-Muslim neighbors. But the overwhelming strength of the jihadists may be too much for them to overcome and it seems a bleak and remote possibility that true moderates within Islam will one day prevail.
That may come in time, but for Israel that time is still far, far away. Tolerance and pluralism must remain a goal but it can only be achieved by world leaders understanding finally that Israel has yet to find within the Arab and Muslim world a true and genuine peace partner.
The policies of the Jewish state must be ordered within the recognition of that reality; somber and depressing as it may be. But only when world leaders understand the nature of Islam’s theological rejection of a genuine and irrevocable peace with Israel, and Israeli leaders realize the uselessness of trading tangible and ancestral land for a delusional “land for peace,” will a long and overdue reality finally enter the conflict.
I firmly believe that the majority of Israelis yearn for a valiant, honorable and stalwart leader, versed in his people’s history and faith, who will arise to tell those Arabs and Islamists who remain wedded to violent jihad against Israel that they will now find a new Israeli resolve to concede not one inch to their implacable aggression, enmity and deceit. Nor will the groveling that has characterized too many Israeli leaders in the past continue.
Dhimmitude, the humiliating condition that Muslims historically imposed upon both their Jewish and Christian subjects, must not ever again be tolerated in any future relationships between Israelis and their Arab enemies.
What we witness today is Israeli caretaker Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, bending the knee constantly and making endless concession to the deceitful leader of the Palestinian Authority, the Holocaust denying Mahmoud Abbas.
This Arab leader is not interested in peace with Israel. He is interested only in taking what ever he can from the foolish Olmert and giving nothing, absolutely nothing, in return. And that is because as a Muslim he is not permitted to make peace with a non-Muslim. Yet the terminally obtuse Olmert, and so many liberal and leftwing Jews inside and outside of Israel, remain infuriatingly blind to these simple facts.
Israeli leaders of the future must understand that the frigid cold peace that exists between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, is no more than an armistice. They must realize once and for all the historical fact that Islam does not and cannot make a permanent peace with a non-Muslim neighbor.
Islam mandates that only when the non-Muslim enemy is stronger and cannot at the time be defeated, can a ceasefire (dressed up as a peace treaty) be accepted for the good of the umma (Islamic community).
But as soon as the enemy is considered weak and foolish through making, for example, pointless peaceful overtures and concessions, then war is an obligation demanded by the Quran. For this reason, the Arab and Muslim world launched its many wars against the Jewish state. Only by God’s grace did Israel survive but at a terrible cost in Jewish blood.
Such new Israeli leaders must look to the Torah and into their own people’s biblical history. They must see again the nature of their enemies as spelled out in crystal clarity by the Almighty through the words of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah:
“They dress the wound of my People as though it we’re not serious saying, Peace, peace, but there is no peace. We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!”
I think of the disasters that Israeli leaders like Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin brought upon the Jewish state. They were the architects of the Oslo Accords, which we now more accurately call the Oslo War.
The premise of those failed accords, which have inflicted terrible suffering on so many Israelis, was for Israel to accept that its ancestral and biblical lands can be given away to implacable enemies in order to make them peaceful and accept what was left of the Jewish state. It predictably failed for all the reasons stated above.
The Midrash teaches that we are like a sheep among seventy wolves. Only the great Shepherd (God Almighty) can protect us from all of our enemies. We are instructed to do what we can to defend ourselves. But at this time it seems that no recent Israeli government has been able to face the task of protecting the residents of Israel. Look how the communities of southern Israel groan under the Arab missile blitz from the Gaza Strip while the Israeli Government of Ehud Olmert remains ever timid to the point of national humiliation. We must pray to God, the true guardian of Israel, to protect us.
In this I am mindful of the Jewish prophet, Joel, who reminded the ancient Jews that the covenanted land must never be given away, for as he said:
“In those days and at that time when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will enter into judgement against them concerning My inheritance, My people Israel, for they scattered My people among the nations and divided up My land: Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.”
Joel, speaking God’s words, then proclaimed: “The Lord will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the Lord God will be a refuge for His people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.”
Copyright © Victor Sharpe 2008
Victor Sharpe is the author of the highly acclaimed book: Politicide – The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
