The Poisoned Dagger in Mid-East Peace Agreements
Peace is a heavenly blessing, and every tyrant will adorn his poisons and weapons with garlands of peace, the better to lull us into somnolescent stupidity.
By
David Gottfried
Of course, it would be wonderful if the hostage crisis in Gaza were resolved. More specifically, it would be beneficial, for all concerned, if the hostages were returned to their homes, if all combatants were to cease fighting, and if Gazans were given provisions to live and to work, along with strict guidelines, and surveillance and unannounced searches and seizures, to prevent the influx of any armaments or ammunition, or anything which can be transformed into armaments or ammunition.
(Israel, you may recall, freed Gaza from Israeli rule in 2005. After 2005, the primary occupation of Gazans has been assembling and amassing weapons to use against their perennial prince of darkness, the Jews.)
Supposedly, all of the Hostages will, eventually, be returned. (Needless to say, none of the newspapers and journals I have seen tell us why they can’t all be released as soon as possible.) Supposedly, all of the fighting will stop. (I have no argument with that). However, there is one jarring, gigantic issue that press reports, so far, are either silent about or are at stark variance with one another.
The issue is this: How many Palestinian prisoners will Israel be compelled to release per this supposedly “amazing” settlement.
This issue historically has given Israel a black eye. Israel deserves a black eye not because it is, supposedly, aggressive, arrogant and irredentist. Rather, Israel deserves condemnation because on this issue she is far too indulgent of her enemies and, quite frankly, downright masochistic. On this issue, she haunts us as a ghost of the “Court Jews” of Germany, slavish, mercantile men who worked night and day to make German noblemen richer, and she behaves as a sickening throwback to Disraeli, a Prime Minister of Great Britain, of Jewish origin, who was beloved by Queen Victoria because, in addition to erasing India’s identify and autonomy, he spat on his Jewish identity by converting to the Church of England.
In hostage negotiations, Israel has behaved like a psychotic lacerating his lungs with a knife.
In some hostage trades, Israel has freed over 1000 Arab terrorists to secure the release of one Israeli. The problem may have started with a castrating Jewish Mother from Hell named Miriam Grof:
“If Jibril served as the inspiration for terrorist organizations, on the Israeli side it was Miriam Grof, the mother of one of Jibril’s Israeli captives, Yosef Grof, who became the model for the families of abductees. Without any experience in dealing with the media, Grof instinctively created strategies that have been used repeatedly by relatives of Israeli P.O.W.’s and M.I.A.’s. She grasped that public pressure on the government is a result of being aggressive and proactive: you make demands, not requests; you focus on what is important to you, not on the good of the country. One former high-ranking member of the I.D.F. recalled her saying that half the country could go up in smoke, just as long as her Yosef came home safe.
“Eitan Haber, a respected military correspondent who later became a senior aide to Rabin, told me: “It is difficult to explain, but only someone who met that woman could understand how she filled everyone with a deep, blood-boiling, paralyzing sense of shame. We are speaking about three very tough men [Rabin, Peres and Yitzhak Shamir, the foreign minister] who had no problems saying no, but simply could not stand up to Mrs. Grof. What tipped the scales was not her tears or screaming or her teeth-grinding — all of which I remember clearly — it was the whole package. There was something menacing about her that threatened that the world was coming to an end. Her aggressiveness was not of this world. She broke them all down.
“In large part it was Miriam Grof’s battle for her son that allowed Jibril to get his deal: 1,150 Palestinian prisoners were freed, one of whom was the wheelchair-bound Sheik Ahmad Yassin, who later founded and led Hamas, the same movement whose suicide attacks exacted an enormous and bloody toll on Israelis, and the group that would one day capture Gilad Shalit.
“In Lebanon, Hezbollah learned from Jibril’s tactics and perfected them. In January 2004, 435 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for the corpses of three Israeli soldiers killed in an ambush on the northern border, as well as one live hostage, Elhanan Tannenbaum.”
“Gilad Shalit and the Rising Price of an Israeli Life,” by Ronen Bergman, The New York Times Magazine, November 9, 2012.
Later on, Israel surrendered in excess of 1000 Arab terrorists to secure the release of one Jewish Soldier, Gilad Shalit. Israel’s habit, of giving up so many Arab terrorists to free its hostages, has told Arabs how they can destroy the Jewish state: Just keep seizing Israelis and other Jews and threaten to kill them unless Israel frees thousands of Arab killers.
Because of this dreadful, sickening practice, which invites terrorists to seize more hostages, I want to know – and every friend of Israel should want to know – how many Arab prisoners is Israel going to give up per this allegedly miraculous Gaza deal.
Many News Outlets have not even addressed this issue. Some people think that peace agreements should always be welcomed no matter what their terms, but of course a very high proportion of the common dunces never heard of Chamberlian, Munich and the Sudetenland. Peace is a sacred and heavenly blessing, and that’s why every tyrant will adorn his poisons and weapons with garlands advertising peace, the better to lull us into somnolescent stupidity.
Examine the News Reports: When news outlets do discuss the issue of how many prisoners Israeli will be compelled to surrender, the numbers are all over the place.
The New York Times reported that Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, would not say how many prisoners Israel would be compelled to yield.
The Mid-East Eye said that Israel would be compelled to give up 250 Arab prisoners.
NBC reports that Israel will release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who were not involved in the Oct. 7 attacks, and an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners will also be released abroad or in Gaza.
The Times of Israel reported that for each of the 5 female Israeli soldiers who will be released, Israel must surrender 50 Arab terrorists.
The Jewish Press reports that Israel will be forced to yield custody over 3000 Arab invaders and infiltrators.
An Agreement to Agree is Not an Agreement
It might be easier to reach a peace agreement when some of the particulars are vague or ill-defined, but it won’t be easy to keep the peace if the opposing sides rely on different versions of the agreement. In Law School, we were taught that an agreement to agree is not an agreement. NBC’s report seems to seriously undermine the validity of the agreement. NBC said the agreement provided that 1000 Arab prisoners who did not participate in the Oct 7 invasion, plus an unspecified number of additional Arabs, must be freed by Israel. How many prisoners are an unspecified number of prisoners ? As a contract, the agreement, as described by NBC, is plainly void for vagueness.
With regard to the middle east, all too many accords, of the very few accords that have ever been reached, have been consummated because different words are given different interpretations and because agreements have been translated differently into different languages.
Indeed, UN Resolution 242, which was passed shortly after the Six Day War, was worded differently in different languages.
In Arabic, Russian and French, the resolution said that Israel would give up territory from “The” occupied territories, i.e., the article “the” was included, and by use of the word the, the reader is given the impression that Israel must withdraw from all of the occupied territories.
By contrast, in English and Hebrew, the article “the” is not included. The absence of the article “the” creates the understanding that Israel is only compelled to give up a portion of the occupied territories.
How Jimmy Carter Exploited the Varying Versions of Security Council Resolution 242 to Bash Zionism
Jimmy Carter did an excellent job in giving millions of voters the notion that he was an innocent country bumpkin along the lines of our most mentally challenged Southerners in the history of Television sit coms. (He also conned them into believing he was a saint.) With his tendency to utter trite, down-home truisms, he seemed like Gomer Pyle, as soft as a Southern flower pinned to a Church lady’s hat. When he pronounced Italian “eye talion,” he seemed as dumb as “Goober.” However, he was slyer than the most conniving businessmen in the anti-Semitic imagination of so many of his brethren.
To condemn Israel, he quoted UN Resolution as if it were written only in Russian, French or Arabic, carefully inserting the article “the” so his listeners received the notion that Israel was legally obligated to give up all of the occupied territories. Of course, he didn’t bother to tell his audiences that the resolution read very differently in Hebrew and English.