The Lobby. Waging Peace
Israel has waged peace. Why does it have to continuously prove that it’s willing to make peace when it’s already shown its willingness to do so time and time and time again?
It arrived at a difficult peace deal with Egypt in the late 1970s where it gave back the equivalent Israel’s landmass along the 1949 armistice line three times over. It traded away a good deal of oil and gas deposits which would have allowed for relative energy independence.
This inconvenient fact must thoroughly disconcert those who allege that all Western military actions are the result of a bloody-minded colonialist scramble for resources. Or it would, if they bothered to read up on the actual history.
Israel waged peace again with Jordan in 1994. It continued along those lines with the Palestinians in the Oslo Peace Process of the 1990s and early 2000s, only to be rebuffed with a violent intifada which killed innocent Israelis into the thousands.<
Yet it did not stop there: in 2000, Israel pulled out of a two kilometer buffer zone in South Lebanon in hopes that tensions would be reduced. The long-term result was the Lebanon war of 2008 instigated by relentless attacks by Hezbollah.
Undeterred, Israel continued to wage peace. Israel disengaged from its occupation of Gaza in 2005.
The response? More violence. Ultimately, a war against Hamas and allied groups that fired over fifteen thousand rockets into Israel over several years.
How can these anti-Israel activists, and the public in general be so blind to these efforts?
It is historically and logically perplexing— indeed, there is no exact historical analogy to illustrate such a disconnect between reality and perception of reality.
That disconnect between reality and fantasy is at the heart of criticism of the Israeli Lobby. If the goal is truth, the Lobby is much more honest and truthful than anything coming from the other side.
Those who advocate against Israel -- if they are serious about the language they employ -- have some deep soul-searching to do
This is Part 6 in a six-part series of essays in The Propagandist confronting critics of the Israel Lobby. Daniel Schloss is a contributing writer and former Israel lobby insider.
- Read the previous essay, The Lobby, Part 5. Convenient Lies
