I started to write this while listening to the news on the radio Tuesday evening. There were three terror attacks in three hours today, two stabbings, one shooting. At least one person is dead, more than ten wounded, half of them seriously. In one case a man pulled the Arab terrorist’s knife out of his own neck and stabbed his assailant to death. Yes, you read that right.
I’m not going to give all the details because this just happened, what’s on the Internet may be wrong, and anyway I’m sick of reading about this stuff. And the details aren’t important.
A just-released Pew survey tells us that 48% of Israeli Jews “strongly agree” or “agree” with the statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.” 46% disagree.
Now, this is an idiotic question. Are they asking about Arab citizens of Israel or Arab residents of the Palestinian Authority areas, or both? Do they mean all Arabs or just those that belong to terror groups? Do they mean ‘expelled by force’ or given compensation to move? Would they go to Jordan, the US, Europe or Gaza? Does Avigdor Lieberman’s plan to require loyalty oaths count?
Those who want to paint Israeli Jews as racist ethnic cleansers are already having a field day (maybe that’s why the question was asked this way). But before you pile on, please note that supporters of the ‘two-state solution’ want to transfer or expel Jews from Judea and Samaria. If you think it’s wrong to transfer Arabs, then explain why it is acceptable to transfer Jews.
This survey was done between October 2014 and May 2015, before the remarkably bloody Third Intifada began. Imagine if they asked the question again today, after almost half a year of daily stabbings, shootings and car ramming attacks!
Israelis overwhelmingly know that leaving Judea and Samaria would make it impossible for Israel to defend herself against terrorism or conventional attack. Two-state deals, no matter what guarantees are made, involve irrevocable concrete Israeli concessions in return for promises that can be reneged upon in a flash.
We must keep Judea and Samaria. But adding the hostile residents of the territories to our population, which is already about 20% Arab, would bring about certain instability and unending terrorism. The nation would fly apart the way Europe is flying apart.
The conclusion is obvious: Israel must assert sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and most of the Arabs must leave.
The necessity of this has been demonstrated since last September, when the Palestinian child soldiers and other terrorists began their daily rampages. There is a cold murderousness in these creatures, who post diagrams on Facebook of where to best stab you so that you will not survive, who hate you so much – and whose society, religion and culture fully validate their hate – that they consider it an honor to die in the process of killing you.
Palestinian leaders could have had all kinds of compromises, various forms of autonomy or coexistence, even a sovereign state, but they rejected them all. They wouldn’t and won’t accept anything but our disappearance. Now it’s too late. When they fashioned their children into the ‘knife generation’ and sent them out to kill, they closed the door on compromise and coexistence. It’s over. We are getting a divorce, and they are the ones moving out.
They have deluded themselves into thinking that we are like the Crusaders or the French colonists in Algeria, and if they make things hard enough we’ll go back where we came from. But where we came from is here. Their strategy has guaranteed that the only solution for us is for them to leave. And we are the stronger party.
So those who are concerned about stopping the wave of murderous terrorism and those who are looking for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have a common answer.
In the words of Meir Kahane, They Must Go. All the rest is implementation.
It is truly tragic to an American outsider to observe that all of the intervening years–, when the outcome you describe was foreknown and unrelieved by any signs of hope for compromise on the other side–were a commitment of Israel to lose its people piecemeal to a ‘Palestinian’ bent for slaughter AS A GOOD FAITH EFFORT for peace. By what right were Jews sacrificed for an idiotic idea without possibility of success. After the divorce, the home will need to have the suitcases packed for all of the persons who made the slaughter possible and abetted it by insisting on more such good faith efforts. They can live with the Palestinians, who will surely welcome them.
Are many people thinking this same thought? Funny you should write this column now. I have had the thought repeatedly lately: they need to go. They have crossed every line. What more can they do? Run up to a pregnant woman and stab her? They’ve done that.
As the Left loses power in the West due to Reality setting in it will become more and more feasible politically to push the Arabs out of Judea and Samaria, and the ones in Israel who are bad citizens will go too. Fantasies of beautiful coexistence evaporate when your partner is a mad dog. The US and EU are responsible for creating a situation where murder is encouraged by funding those who incite terror.
I understand the anger, the impatience, the frustration,the grief, the sense of injustice and unfairness that moves to making this ‘radical solution’to our situation. But I wonder if you have thought this out fully , rationally, realistically. We are talking also about over one million people who are citizens of Israel, who live here and who contribute in various ways to the life, the economy here.
It is both impossible practically and wrong morally to force people out of their homes. It would also be self- destructive in terms of our own situation not only in relation to the outside world but in relation to our own relation with ourselves.
I believe that Israel is not doing enough now to diminish the incitement, and hostility of certain elements of the Arab population i.e. I do not believe that the members of Parliament who openly support Hizbollah, and engage in other activities supporting our enemies should be permitted to be in Parliament. This is a desecration and a violation of our own security, self- interest and dignity.
There are many other ways which should be and are being used to resist Palestinian and other Arab and Islamic hostility.
Unfortunately our lives are such that we must live with imperfection and with realities which are far less than the ideal. In this I believe that crying out for some kind of absolute security is unrealistic and counterproductive. And we must live through and suppress the current wave of terror as we have lived through and overcome greater security challenges in the past.
Throughout history, people have been forced out of their homes. In 1948, both Jews and Arabs were removed by force in our region. The morality of the act depends on what those people were doing. Was it wrong to expel Arab residents of towns along the road who were shooting at convoys trying to supply Jerusalem? I say no. Was it wrong to ethnically cleanse the Jews from the Jewish Quarter or Hebron or Gush Etzion because they were Jews? I say yes.
We need to have the courage to actually make decisions on moral grounds, not to flee from them.
And you know the “outside world” has it in for us no matter what we do, so we might as well survive as commit suicide.
The situation as it exists now is untenable. Like Mr. Freedman, I understand the practical, moral and political difficulty that ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians would cause – and the problems almost surely outweigh the benefits. Almost. While it is true that the Israeli government could do much more to end the incitement and enforce their reasonable laws regarding incitement and treason, history strongly suggests that this would just as likely bring about world condemnation as a more dramatic step. I am not an advocate of wholesale expulsion, but it seems perfectly reasonable for the Israeli government to set whatever borders that it considers essential to its security and then to follow the rule of law within the borders. If potential citizens of this state are not loyal to the state, then it seems that expulsion or some other reasonable and legal punishment should be administered. Those Arabs willing to live in Israel as loyal subjects should be allowed to stay, those who are unwilling, expelled. While this is a hars