Exploding Myths

As the last few days of 2007 dwindle down I thought it might be an opportune time to mention a few popular beliefs and ask whether or not some of us need to clean out our closets full of myths for the new year:

Myth #1:  The 'Illegal Settler Enterprise'

Shmuel Katz, a co-founder of the Herut party (with Menachem Begin) and a member of Israel's first Knesset, wrote an essay this past week that should be required reading for anyone who thinks that the construction/existence of settlements in Judea and Samaria - and the very settler enterprise - is illegal under international law.   I'm sick of hearing and reading uninformed idiots make reference to the Geneva Convention and international law in reference to what can and can't be done with Israel's conquered land.  Please read the whole thing, but here's the money quote that explodes this myth quite nicely:

"... the last defining document that underwrites the legality [of the post-Six Day War settler movement] was the Geneva Convention of 1949. It dealt with occupied territories. Its second clause, stating its scope, makes it clear that it does not apply to the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria - because Jordan was not a sovereign possessor but an illegal invader, and similarly was Egypt an illegal invader of Gaza. Israel liberated both areas, restoring them to the territory of the Palestine Mandate of 1922." [emphasis added]

Myth # 2:  Our Moderate Palestinian Peace Partners

Throughout the Oslo War (and even before) Israel was subjected to the Palestinian version of 'Good Cop - Bad Cop'.  Simply put, the 'moderate leadership' would claim to be pursuing peace while privately encouraging/funding terror (something their charter still refers to as 'resistance').  After each atrocity, no matter how depraved or vicious, the Pali spokespeople would condemn the carnage in the strongest terms and add a standard statement such as "the group that carried out the attack seeks to sabotage peace negotiations and undermine the Palestinian Authority's plan to increase security in the Palestinian territories." 

Sound familiar?  It should, since that's the statement given by the PA Prime Minister last night in reference to the murder of two young Israeli hikers near Hevron.  Yet miraculously, the group that claimed credit for the attack reports directly to the Prime Minister's party; Fatah!  Anyone have a problem with finally exploding this myth? 

Good... next.

Myth # 3: Those Downtrodden Palestinians

Sure it's humiliating for Palestinians to wait in endless lines at checkpoints and be searched and questioned on a daily basis.  But so what?  We all have to go through the same treatment every time we want to get on a plane (thanks to the Palestinians!).  And every single day these checkpoints turn up bombs, knives, guns and grenades!  Moreover, Israeli Jews my seem to breeze through the checkpoints a little faster than our Arab neighbors, but we suffer attacks with stones, Molotov cocktails, knives, guns, bombs and rockets on a daily basis!  Is there anything more humiliating than having Palestinians try to main / kill you... and all too often succeeding... every single day?!

In Annapolis Condoliza Rice drew a shameful comparison between the daily humiliations that the Palestinians suffer under Israeli rule and her recollections of segregation in the south when she was a child.  Not only did she gloss over the fact that (to my knowledge) southern blacks weren't trying to kill southern whites on a daily basis, but she also somehow forgot all about the shame of separate drinking fountains and entrances when she forced the Israeli delegation at Annapolis to enter the hall through the kitchen because the Saudi delegation refused to use the same doorway as Jews!

Myth # 4:  Those Evil Settlers

A while back a settler woman in Hevron was filmed cursing at her Arab neighbor and it became big news among the Tel Aviv anti-settler set.  One useful-idiot-blogger even went so far as to say how emotionally devastating it was to witness such open animosity.  At the time I left a comment asking why it wasn't emotionally devastating for her to contemplate the entire Hevron community having been wiped out in a pogrom and have their murderers move into their houses?  Not only that but the Jews who have moved back to Hevron have been subjected to nearly daily physical attacks!  What of that???  I'm still waiting for an answer.

Now here we are a year later and three settlers were attacked by Palestinian terrorists while out hiking in the hills near Hevron this past Friday.  Two men were killed in the attack and a woman who was with them was wounded.  These young settlers - both lifelong residents of Kiryat Arba - were on a weekend furlough from their army units.  Not only were these evil settlers serving their country in combat units, but they had managed to gain entry into two of the most elite units in the IDF; the Navy's Shayetet 13 and the Air Force's Shaldag. 

While the children of our leaders move to Europe and the US in record numbers, the children of settlers stay put and reclaim the land that Israelis fought and died for in 67.  While teens from Tel Aviv and its environs continue to evade the draft in record numbers by faking mental illness and/or physical injury to lower their medical profile, or by claiming pacifist status, the children of evil religious settlers fight to gain entry to the most challenging and dangerous jobs the Israeli army has to offer, and are represented out of all proportion to their actual numbers amongst IDF's officers. 

While taking a tour of the lefty Israeli blogosphere to see if anyone had seen fit to mention Friday's double murder (none had as of early Sunday morning), I stumbled upon a post written by a blogger who recently accused me of hating her and of having anger management issues.  While it wasn't true when she wrote those things, I imagine this response to her most recent post will probably prove her right.

In her post she wrote about a recent trip she took with some of her lefty liberal friends to help some poor downtrodden Palestinians pick olives outside of Hevron.  Incredibly, this blogger seems to be trying to repackage herself as a centrist because in her post, she would have us believe these lefty liberals are even more lefty and liberal than she.  Reading her post with Friday's murder victim just hours in their graves offered a bit of gruesome symmetry... especially as I read how one of the organizers of the trip stood up on the bus and announced, "We’re almost there... So I just wanted to warn you all: if you have a camera or a mobile phone, keep it close to you at all times because The Settlers have been known to grab them." 

While in her post the blogger made a joking aside about that announcement, she apparently made no attempt to openly challenge such an idiotic statement or set the record straight with the Israeli and European do-gooders aboard the bus.  I bet that if someone had said something similar about the poor downtrodden Palestinians she would have stood up and challenged them. 

I couldn't care less if a bunch of bleeding hearts want to spend their weekends providing free labor to Palestinian olive growers.  But from the sounds of it, these trips are spent vilifying/demonizing settlers to the point that our lives are considered forfeit for simply daring to live on land that is legally ours. 

If this is the case, then perhaps it's time the IDF finally gives in to the Machsom Watch hags and does away with the humiliating roadblocks!  My guess is that it would be a matter of a few days or a week at most before the mythical terrorists start blowing themselves up in Tel Aviv cafes again. 

Sadly, I've arrived at the point where that is one myth I wouldn't mind seeing exploded once and for all.

[Update:  The PA Foreign Minister and Chief of Police are now on record as saying that the two off-duty soldiers were killed in a "business dispute" and not out of nationalistic motives.  Will someone please explain to me why Israel is still bank-rolling this bunch of murdering dirt-bags???!]