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In Reply to Scott McConnell
by David Horowitz
FrontPageMag.com
January 16, 2002
Dear Scott,
Thank you for a civilized and intelligent response to my article. I
am recovering from a surgery and have large responsibilities as the
immigration conference approaches and am therefore not able to answer
your points as fully as I would wish. However, I will make the
attempt to confront the issues that matter.
I am sorry that you felt so anxious in approaching this subject with
me. I don't take it personally, because I know that many people have
hair trigger responses on these matters. In point of fact I became a
critic of Pat Buchanan reluctantly in the Amen corner days. I even
defended him on Demanjuk, until it was revealed that Demanjuk was a
guard in a different camp than the one he had been accused of being a
guard in.
The turning point for me came when despite all the appeals that were made to him by
the editors of National Review and others he couldn't find it in himself to make one
gesture towards those who felt the sting of his word
s, not a word of regret that maybe his formulations might be taken in a way that was
hurtful, not a single effort to build a bridge back across the gulf his remarks had
created. This indicated something else was brewing i
n that pugnacious brain, something unpleasant for me to contemplate.
To your specific point. My remark about Buchanan in the version of my piece published
on Frontpage was about his support for (or tolerance of) the PLO, not his attitudes
towards Israel. On other hand, before I received yo
ur letter, I had already decided to take out the reference in the version I am about
to produce in pamphlet form. I didn't think it fair to pile on Pat. His new book has
many points with which I agree. Unfortunately in th
e first chapters he confuses ideas and principles with ethnicity, and there we part
company. Perhaps I underestimate the importance of actual Anglo-Saxons in sustaining
an Anglo-Saxon political culture that I admire and t
o which I am indebted. Perhaps he over-estimates it. In any case, we disagree.
There are four issues to the matter before us. The first is the legitimacy of the
Jewish state in Palestine. The second is the way the Palestinian leadership has
conducted itself (and therefore how one assesses the very p
ossibility of negotiations). The third is what is to be done about the West Bank. The
fourth is: what is the American interest?
Let's focus on the latter questions first. No Israeli government known to me has ever
claimed the West Bank as a part of Israel. Since the Arab states have been at war with
Israel for fifty years and three attempts have b
een made to destroy the Israeli state, Israel's desire to maintain control of certain
military points should be reasonable to anyone. Since the Barak government offered the
Palestine Authority 95% of the land it demanded,
this issue should also be settled for any reasonable person. The obstacle to peace is
not any Israeli claim on the West Bank. It is the Palestinians' refusal to make a
reasonable peace.
The Palestine Authority is a Middle East Taliban. It is a terrorist entity whose
fundamental interests are anti-American. It is in the American interest to undermine
and dismantle the PLO and either create or allow to be
created an authority for the Palestinians that will serve their interests and
America's interests by making a reasonable peace.
Arafat is America's enemy. He was created by the KGB, and was their agent for decades.
He has murdered American diplomats. He sided with Saddam during the Gulf War. It is in
America's interest that Arafat and his terroris
t apparatus be destroyed.
This brings us to the second issue, which is the PLO � the current instrument of
Palestinian nationalism � and its components which include Hamas, a branch of al-
Qaeda. The PLO was created by the Arab states to destroy I
srael. It is not the expression of Palestinian nationalism. It is the warped creator
of an intolerant, fascistic al-Qaeda mentality which passes for nationalism among
people who have lost their moral bearings. Was Hitler
a nationalist? You bet. Should we have humored his claims to Czechoslovakia and parts
of Poland? That appears to be what you are arguing in this case.
Which brings us to the issue of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. What does it
matter to the answer to this question if Palestinian nationalism came belatedly? Or if
the Jews were more sophisticated, more industrious, e
tc. Is 5% of a desert, bought and paid for, too much to ask for a people that has been
homeless for 2000 years and for that reason saw almost half its global population
exterminated within living memory (and to the applau
se of the Arabs)?
You are a reasonable fellow Scott. The Arabs in Palestine are not disfranchised and
abused like the blacks in the South. The displaced Palestinian Arabs are dead. Six
hundred thousand Jews lost their ancestral homes in Mi
ddle Eastern states that � unlike Edward Said and his friends � they can't even visit.
Call it a wash. And begin from there.
You are wrong about my position on Oslo. I was against the Oslo peace process from the
start. It was a Munich for the Jews. You cannot make peace with people who want to
destroy you. The Israeli settlements are an excuse
not a cause. There has not been one moment in the last 37 years when Arafat has
abandoned violence. When you blame the settlements for the derailment of Oslo, you are
forgetting the violence and the PLO charter with its c
all for the destruction of Israel. Why do you think it was like pulling teeth to get
Arafat to remove it? Why do you think he repudiated the removal in Arabic right
afterwards? Do you read the Memri translations of offici
al Palestinian, Egyptian and Saudi positions? Do you understand how they hate
Americans, Christians, and democrats generally? Palestinian school children aren't
taught to hate "Zionists" as you write; they are taught to h
ate Jews and to wish them dead.
I am not going to trade atrocity stories with you. You'll notice I avoided them in my
piece because they are only ways of distracting people from the issues that matter.
(But I note that your authority is a magazine of th
e left, which I doubt you would source if the issue were say, Cuba or Vietnam.)
Atrocities will always occur on both sides. My only point was that on the Palestinian
side they are officially committed, officially instigat
ed and officially approved.
This comment of yours, however, is absurd: "When Palestinian women are forced to give
birth in ditches because Israeli checkpoints make it impossible to reach the hospital,
that is not a manufactured grievance but a real
one." The Arabs blow up Jews and then get to have a grievance when the Jews attempt to
protect themselves and this causes the Arabs problems? Why doesn't Arafat use his
billions to build hospitals, for crying out tears? W
hy haven't the Arabs done for their own people what the Jews did for the 600,000
displaced from Arab countries, let alone the hundreds of thousands displaced from
concentration camps? Where is your Christian compassion my
friend?
Arafat and the PLO are the Nazis of the Middle East. They behave like Nazis, they
think like Nazis and even though they are mercifully infinitely weaker than the Nazis,
they are identical when it comes to negotiating a pe
ace. You appear to think that the United States, if not Israel, would be better off
appeasing Arafat and his Islamic terrorists. What on earth could possibly make you
entertain this illusion at this particular point in ti
me? Barak's appeasement led to violence. Bush's B-52 show of force has led to peace
and to increasing reasonableness among such former terrorist states as Yemen. Do you
think we should worry about the starving Iraqi child
ren when dealing with Iraq? Do you think Clinton should have respected the
sensibilities of the Wahhabi Saudis after 19 U.S. servicemen were murdered in the
Khobar Towers? Might we be better off today if the American gove
rnment had done some tough talking and maybe taken some tough measures at the time?
Of course you're posting this on Antiwar.com � a site dedicated to disarming America
in the face of its enemies. I'm curious as to how you square this with your concern
for America's self-interest. Or do you think right-w
ing pacifism will do the trick? Have you fallen for Anne Frank liberalism? Do you
think people like Osama bin Laden or the Taliban zealots who throw homosexuals off
tall buildings and blow adulterous women's heads off wit
h machine guns are really "good at heart" (a sentiment imposed on the text by its
"well-meaning" editors).
But back to the Middle East. I am not � as I said in the article � a Zionist. I see
this issue through American eyes. In terms of American policy the appeasement of
Arafat by Bush pere and Bill Clinton has been an unmitig
ated disaster. The new Bush White House should tell Arafat exactly
what it has told the terrorist government of the Taliban and the
terrorist government of Yemen: behave or you are history. If the
White House does that, there will be peace in the Middle East and
America will be a lot better off.
~ David
PS: Comparing the Jewish remnant that found refuge in Palestine to
the British Empire is not a little stretch; it is a big one.
End<{{{
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