OCCUPATION Vs GENOCIDE

An Israeli journalist, a friend of mine, was recently invited on an American radio program to debate the Middle East situation with a colleague, an Arab-American. Like many such debates, this one was a lost cause for the Jewish side. All the facts on terrorism, on the monstrous hate-the-Jew propaganda in Palestinian schools, media, and mosques, all the numbers and stats and quotes were reduced to rubble with one word from his opponent: “occupation”. And the audience agreed: terror is horrible, but it is caused by this nasty occupation.

Thousands of anti-Israel propaganda makers have learned well the recipe developed by the KGB and picked on by the European and American PR firms with PLO for clients: for the West, the word “occupation” is an absolute negative, and can be used (with accompanying phrases like “right to self-determination” and “struggle for independence”) to trump any facts.

Can defenders of Israel find a magical word that would trump “occupation”? It would have to be one word — a word of truth to defeat legions of lies.

There is such a word. It is “genocide”.

In 1948, five Arab armies tried to choke Israel state in embryo. Days before invasion, Azzam Pasha, the General Secretary of the Arab League, announced, “This will be a war of extermination, a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades”.

In 1967, Nasser declared a few days before the war, “Our main task is to destroy Israel.” Syria’s Assad echoed, “It is time to embark on a war of annyhilation.” The same sentiments were voiced in 1973.

Only the fear of yet another resounding defeat or being snuffed out by Israel’s nuclear weapons have since held back Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Syria from new attempts.

Yet the Satanic obsession with “destroying the name of Israel” in Islam keeps growing. Arab maps still do not have Israel, and after the 55 years of de-humanization and demonization of the Jews in Arab propaganda and education system, the psychological grounds are laid for the new genocide.

The clear and present danger of a new Jewish Holocaust — not just the teethless condemnation of terrorism — should be the subject of Israeli delegation’s presentation at the all the world’s Genocide Conferences.

Only due to Israel’s military deterrent capability this new genocide has not come to pass. The key to this capability is maintaining full military control over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, minimal territorial depth to mobilize the reserves in the case of an attack and to prevent the Palestinians from striking straight into the heart of Israel.

Back in 1967, the American Chiefs of Staff have concluded: the moment the Islam world believes that Israel’s containment capability is gone, they will launch an attack.

Thus Israel must have permanent military control over the tiny land of Israel (0.12% of the total Middle East land mass) in order to prevent a new Holocaust.

Any person with any vestiges of Western Judeo-Christian morality has to admit that Jewish military presence in Judea and Samaria is an acceptable cost of preventing a Holocaust.

If you choose to call it occupation, feel free to do so. Occupation is an acceptable cost of preventing a Holocaust.

Occupation saves the lives of 5 million Jews. Moreover, it saves the lives of 4 million Arabs living on the Land of Israel who will perish, too, if Islamic hordes again try to destroy Israel. (The Arab world doesn’t care: as Anwar Sadat, the late Nobel Prize winner, used to say, Any Islamic leader can sacrifice a few million of his subjects to erase Israel off the face of the planet.)

Moreover, occupation serves to save the entire mankind from a nuclear Armageddon, because this is what will happen, should Islamic leaders armed with WMDs attempt to destroy the Jewish state.

From the Pharaoh to Hitler, the Jews have been through Holocausts. And we will not let Arafat, Mubarak, or the ayatollahs, the pleasure of continuing that line.

Only the occupation of Germany stopped Hitler’s genocide. The whole world accepted it as the only way to salvation. Few anti-Semites would be so shameless as to claim that a genocide should always precede an occupation.

So let us remember: genocide is the word.

Checkpoints prevent genocide.

Israeli soldiers in Arab villages prevent genocide.

“Racist separation wall” prevents genocide.

If Europeans whose parents participated or abetted in the Holocaust are so concerned with the Palestinians’ welfare, here’s another truth: occupation is their only hope for a normal life. Until Arafat’s return from Tunis, all the vital statistics of the Palestinians languishing under Israeli occupation — lifespan, infant mortality, education, income, free press — were incomparably higher than they are now after 10 years under the Palestinian Authority.

Moreover, the occupation is the Islamic world’s only chance to rid itself of the occupation by the unholy forces that took over the Islam theology and its everyday life. If Palestinians become enlightened by Israel, they will become agents of change in the Islamic world; if they don’t, they will remain the strike force of jihad, leading to destroy the civilization and themselves.

But it is us the Israelis — not the Europeans — who must do the main reckoning. We have to admit we are standing in the gate of Auschwitz and we’re refusing to be pushed inside. They call our will to live “occupation”. Let them. Never again shall we concede to their will to kill. Nor shall we concede to the will of our own masochists to have the peace of a grave, or to the Europeans’ will to be a concubine in an Islamic harem. We shall counter-attack and we shall prevail, because our God is the God of the living who will spread the “occupation” of his light throughout the world. The crucial upturn in this war will take place here in the heart of Israel. It will start with the change in our hearts — when we no longer ask for “peace” for which we have to pay with our land; when we take responsibility for this land and for the people whom God allowed to stay here — the Palestinians — from the real occupation whose diabolical mission is the destruction of the Jews. The writer, former correspondent for Moscow Radio, is now the head of the JERUSALEM SUMMIT