Prof. Paul Eidelberg

If you make a make candid survey of the punctuated negotiations that have taken place between Jews and Arabs during the past twenty-three years, that is, since the enfolding and conclusion of the OSLO or Israel-PLO Agreement of September 13, 1993, a disturbing conclusion strikes you.

Those negotiations, which engaged the minds of six Israeli Prime Ministers, specifically, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon, and again Benjamin Netanyahu – those negotiations, yield an obvious conclusion:  opposite these Jews, the Arabs win hands down. Indeed, they make the ostensibly better educated Jews of Israel look like fools, to put it mildly!

Since OSLO, it’s clearly demonstrable that the Arabs have advanced, while the Jews, despite their vaunted military power, have retreated.  Why? This brief essay provides an indispensable part of the explanation.

We are discussing the Arabs who constitute the Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO), renamed the Palestinian Authority (PA) since Oslo. These Arabs – really Muslim Arabs – have progressed from a welter of terrorist groups dispersed in the Middle East and North Africa into a formidable multi-faceted organization with offices in Israel, the United States, and in the various capitals of Europe.

Since Oslo, these Muslims have obtained the Gaza strip and swaths of Jewish land in Judea and Samaria – even in the ancient Jewish capital of Hebron. These Jew-killing Arabs of the PA have acquired the prestige and influence of representation in the United Nations, even though their terrorist activities violate the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!

Although the PA is not state actor, and even though Hamas, one of its two major factions, is the Palestinian wing of the notorious Muslim Brotherhood, the PA’s influence in the United Nations exceeds that of Israel – proof enough that the Arabs excel the Jews in international diplomacy. To clinch the argument, the PA, despite its despotic character, receives annual grants of hundreds of millions of dollars from democratic America as well as innumerable financial subsidies from the European Union.

Of course, our Middle East experts will attribute this bizarre state of affairs to the influence of Arab oil and petrodollars, as if nothing more need be said of this theater of the grotesque. After all, as every school boy knows, Muslims are enormously more numerous than Jews. And since the disciples of Muhammad occupy one-fifth of the world’s land surface, their geo-political standing vis-à-vis minuscule Israel is pathetically obvious.

Nevertheless, history records that minuscule Rome, a city on seven hills, overawed nations and armies on three continents, and did so not only by virtue of Rome’s superior military power, but also because of Rome’s bold and brilliant statesmanship and efficient system of government.

Does this mean that Israel’s political and military leaders are inferior to those of Rome? Does it mean that the Israelis lack the practical wisdom or expertise as well as the stamina and daring of their Roman counterparts? Does it mean that the structure of Israel’s government hinders the art of statecraft, or that the mentality of Israeli leaders undermines the application of military science, whether derived from Carl von Clausewitz or Sun Tzu?

But don’t Israel’s political leaders benefit from academic think tanks and the professional advice of university-trained political scientists?  Don’t these auxiliaries of modern government and warfare augment the practical wisdom of Israeli decision makers? And by so doing, don’t these auxiliaries bolster Israel’s self-confidence and fighting spirit? Don’t they heighten Israel’s ability and determination to defeat her enemy – indeed, to disarm and emasculate the enemy and thus make its leaders shudder at the thought of waging another war with the killing machine of the Jewish State – notwithstanding the promised delights of Islam’s paradise?

On the other hand, perhaps the education I have in mind, the education that should shape the hearts and minds of Israel’s political and military echelons, exists in another universe of discourse. Aside from their studying military hardware and topography, one gets the impression that Israel’s war college  –  if one may use such politically incorrect language – is more concerned with sociology and “conflict resolution” than with the inherent relentless bellicosity and relentless global ambition of authentic Islam and Islamic theology.

Judging from my experience at Bar-Ilan University, where I taught some Israeli officers, and judging also from my meetings with high-ranking Israeli officials, and supplementing this knowledge with the critical comments of some astute Israeli journalists, I have the impression that Israel’s democratically distracted political and military leaders have not seriously studied the biographies and memoirs of the great warriors and wartime leaders of history.

I know of one prominent general, in fact an Israeli prime minister, who publicly declared that self-restraint vis-à-vis Arab terrorists is a form of strength –  which of course may be true if we stop with the Ethics of the Fathers and ignore the exploits and Psalms of King David.

By the way, the general I just alluded to not only orchestrated Israel’s retreat from Gaza. He is also on record of having said that his son taught him “not to think in terms of black-and-white” – even though Jews were being reduced to body parts!

That anemic doctrine has been purveyed at Israel’s Command-and-Staff College, who’s one-time Director, the Middle East specialist that helped craft the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement, was a self-professed moral relativist! Small wonder that when Jews negotiate with Arabs, the sons of Ishmael win hands down!