A very insightful article on 'Rehab for an 'all-consuming peace addiction'. I highly recommend it

Ruthie Blum interviews Daniel Gordis of the Shalem Center in her latest article in the Jerusalem Post .

As one can understand from the article, Daniel Gordis once very much supported the peace process as well as the expulsion of Jews from Gaza (aka - the disengagement). However today he thinks differently.

As far as disengagement is concerned, in retrospect, there's no question that it was a mistake, in terms of Israel's security and defense. But I hesitate to call it an out-and-out mistake - without in any way minimizing the horrible human cost to the families who were uprooted - because I think we learned something we could only have learned by doing it. What no one can reasonably deny now is that the Right was right.

As someone who used to be left of center, I always believed that the Palestinians wanted the same things we did - that they sought two states for two peoples; that they wanted a country just like we did; that they wished for their children and grandchildren to flourish, just like we did. Disengagement proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was wrong - tragically wrong, but wrong nonetheless. Because what they had was an opportunity to begin to build some sort of autonomy. And it became clear that this is not what they had, or have, in mind. They are much more intent on destroying us than they are on building themselves. They're much more committed to our not having a future than to their having one.

First of all, it is rare to come upon a thinker of Mr.Gordis' stature and standing to admit what he does. It is not an easy step at and for this I take my hat off to him.

From another persepctive, however, I'm still very uneasy about these thoughts because I knew back in 1992 that the oslo "peace accords" were a huge mistake for Israel and I wasn't the only one who thought so. We protested furiously against the Israeli acceptance of the Oslo process. Yet our calls went unheeded and most of world Jewry got swept away with euphoria on how peace was around the corner, we just must understand that there is a price for peace, that any terrorist act is our sacrifice for peace - and the Jewish world bought it! 

So inside I'm so distraught that 16 years and thousands of innocent Israeli deaths have to pass for somany intellectual people to realize what Mr. Gordis expresses in the Jpost article.

On the other hand, I must admit that reality is reality and Mr. Gordis does a good job allowing us to understand that the Jewish psyche of hope and liberalism allows many Jews to dismiss the facts on the ground and put much time and effort into making their hopes and dreams for peace come true. Hence the willingness to put up with terrorism on the side of our "peace" partners for years and still march on the facade of a peace process and only waking up to what me and others knew all along, that the peace process has been a facade, after it has been finally proven to them - that the Arabs in Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza (because there is no such thing as a palestinian people, just ask Golda Meir) want to destroy the State of Israel and not live side-by-side with it in peace.

I have always said that this peace process would fail and that in the end Jews will live in all of Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza (yes, and Gaza) because the Arabs won't stop trying to destroy our nation and homeland and in the end it will be because of realism and not ideology that we will be settled throughout our Holy land. Their not letting up will just prove to more and more Jews and Israelis that they really have no intent on living side by side in peace with us. Too bad it just takes so long for so many Israelis and Jews so long to realize this lesson because in the meantime we are paying the price with our own lives for their stubborness to hold on to their hope and liberal attitudes that charges them to continue trying to make peace at all costs.

In the end, I must say thank you to Mr. Gordis for his intellectual honesty and I wish that many other of our brethren in Israel and abroad would follow his example and begin to be honest with themselves and reality that peace is just not attainable with people who want to destroy you. So what's the solution to have quiet. I much prefer doing what is necessary so that we can attain quiet instead of signing peace agreements that our just pieces of paper with signatures.

How do we attain quiet? That's for other posts.