A Place Among Nations
Netanyahu, Benjamin
1 n 1985, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai Al-Am called Benjamin Netanyahu "the enemy's most dangerous agent abroad." ("The enemy," of course, being Israel, not Iraq.) More recently, State Department...
...Pitchers were afraid of Ted Williamsso afraid of giving him something in the bright red .400 zone—that in 1957, when he was already 39 years old, he walked once in every 3.87 at bats, the only player under 4.00 ever...
...Unfortunately, the entire thrust of the peace process, as currently conceived, is directed at undermining Israeli deterrence...
...0 f course, some Israelis believe that if Israel is to be true to its ideals, it must relinquish the West Bank...
...Perhaps it has something to do with his extraordinary effectiveness in presenting Israel's case to the world...
...The PLO's demand for a Palestinian state on the West Bank is in fact a demand for a second Palestinian state—to be used as a springboard for the eventual destruction of Israel, as laid out in the PLO's Phased Plan...
...that Williams was the only .400 hitter in history who did not benefit from the sacrifice-fly rule, and with it would have hit .412 (fourth best of all time...
...It seems disgraceful to me," roared Dave Egan, the legendary Harvard-educated drunk who covered the Sox for the Boston Record, "that a person such as Williams is to be given the keys to the city...
...sure, his manager ribbed him, sure, sure...
...If this is leadership," he crowed, "I'll have strychnine...
...ambassador, deputy foreign minister, and principal spokesman during the Gulf War—that inspires such alarm among Arabs and Arabists alike...
...What is it about Benjamin Netanyahu—Israel's MIT-trained former U.N...
...On the contrary, while Britain fought for its life, Arabs in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine allied themselves with the Nazis, eventually forming an Arab Legion that became part of the'SS...
...What everybody doesn't know, and what Ed Linn points out in this absolutely marvelous book, is that Williams outhit Joe DiMaggio during the latter's record 56-game hitting streak that glorious summer, reaching base 55 times out of 100 to DiMaggio's 44...
...We talk about juvenile delinquency, and fight against it, and then officially honor a man whom we should officially horsewhip...
...Back then, I considered myself a Social Democrat and admired Israel's socialist economy...
...But demilitarizing an entire sovereign state "is something unheard of in the annals of nations...
...Netanyahu, however, is justifiably skeptical: demilitarizing even part of a sovereign state—Germany's Rhineland after World War I, for example—has usually proved impossible over the long run...
...Whatever its name, however, present-day Jordan encompasses 80 percent of the area known after World War I as Mandatory Palestine...
...To secure Arab and Islamic loyalty to the Crown, Britain would have to repudiate the Balfour Declaration and scuttle the Jewish National Home...
...An Israeli demand for a demilitarized West Bank state might have to be accompanied by a pledge to defend such a state against its "legitimate" Syrian rulers...
...He would grant the inhabitants of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron—the great majority of the West Bank's Arab population—control over commerce, religion, education, health, and social welfare...
...the plate was out of whack by a fraction of an inch...
...He also predicted that Israel's military victories would prove hollow if it didn't win the struggle for Western public opinion...
...For if U.S...
...To suggest otherwise—to argue, as Netanyahu does, that for the sake of peace the Arabs, who have waged an unrelenting war of aggression against Israel for nearly fifty years, might have to make territorial concessions of their own—is quite beyond the pale of reasonable discourse...
...0 ne of the most enduring myths about the Middle East is that all the strife in that violent region is related to the Arab-Israeli dispute...
...It was the sort of behavior that could not possibly endear him to the Boston writers of his day, who were hands-down the meanest, cruellest, most vicious and scabrous journalists the world of sports will likely ever see...
...This perception is reinforced by the media, whose focus on Israel borders on the obsessive...
...Whatever Israel's sins of omission or commission, then, it cannot logically be blamed for the crisis of legitimacy afflicting the Arab world and the political pathologies ensuing therefrom...
...His eye was so good that even the umpires would sometimes ask him to make a close call when he was at bat...
...But after years of brainwashing, who does not believe that the principal victims of the Middle East are the Palestinians, a stateless people whose plight mirrors that of the Jews before Israel's establishment...
...King Hussein's grandfather Abdullah wanted to call this state the "Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine," but at the suggestion of his British advisers named it the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" instead...
...You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria...
...Netanyahu—the newly elected leader of Israel's principal opposition party, the Likud—become prime minister...
...to the extent that it undermines Israeli deterrence, he's against, it...
...I met Benjamin Netanyahu while we were both students, nearly two decades ago...
...Sometimes his shortstop would turn around to give him the count, and find he was arguing with someone in 'the stands or, more often, that his back was to the game as he practiced the perfect motion of his swing...
...Netanyahu told me that Israel's Labor leaders were a bunch of economic illiterates whose "Bolshevist" policies were ruining his country...
...Not surprisingly, Netanyahu doesn't think that destroying Israel is a very good idea...
...But while Eban, who began his career in the mainstream of Israel's Labor Party, has moved steadily to the left over the past twenty years, the 43year-old Netanyahu—whose brother, Jonathan, was killed leading the 1976 Entebbe rescue mission—is a staunch partisan of the "Revisionist" right...
...So afraid because, when he was on, he could make the decision whether or not to swing during the last sixteen feet the ball traveled, and could see the rotation of the seams, and actually see the bat make contact with the ball...
...But sending boatloads of Jewish "illegal immigrants" back to Europe—and certain death—failed to win Arab affections or guarantee Arab loyalty...
...and that Williams's on-base percentage that year, and over his career, are also both major-league records...
...But if Israel is to avoid destruction, he thinks it must control the West Bank...
...Once he disappeared through the left field scoreboard in Fenway to nip across the street for a sandwich...
...Harold Kaese of the Boston Evening...
...and the United Nations, which managed for years to avoid even discussing the Iran-Iraq war, but regularly bashes Israel in the Security Council, the General Assembly, and countless Committees...
...Netanyahu has relatively little to say about the current "peace process...
...But already in the 1930s, British Arabists argued that Zionism was responsible for all their troubles in the Middle East...
...He had movie-star looks, and once when a reporter in the locker room asked about the women who adored him, he grabbed his crotch and snarled, "All they want is what I've got right here...
...And that, alas, is unthinkable...
...Fittingly, then, A Place Among Nations contains a stinging indictment of Israel's economic policies—both "Bolshevist" (Labor) and "Peronist" (Likud)—and describes Israel's failings at propaganda...
...The result was a "white paper," adopted by the Chamberlain government four months before the outbreak of World War II, that placed sharp restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine (Arab immigration to Palestine, of course, went unimpeded), and was strictly enforced by British authorities throughout World War II...
...Williams insisted, and to humor him Cronin had the field surveyed...
...illiams was also an iconoclast and screwball, in the finest baseball tradition...
...policy-makers ever took Netanyahu's arguments seriously, they might have to entertain the possibility of bringing sustained pressure to bear on the Arabs...
...Netanyahu writes: There is something uncanny about the world's capacity to focus on the Arab-Israeli dispute (with total casualties estimated at 70,000 dead over five decades) in the face of the carnage of the other Middle Eastern conflicts, such as the Egyptian invasion of Yemen (250,000 dead), the Algerian civil war (1,000,000 dead), the Lebanese civil war (150,000 dead), the Libyan incursion into Chad (100,000 dead), the Sudanese civil war (at least 500,000 dead), and the Iran-Iraq war (over 1,000,000 dead...
...At his first batting practice after serving two years in the Korean War, he returned to the dugout and told Joe Cronin that home plate was out of line...
...Netanyahu calls this plan, somewhat grandiosely, "the largestscale experiment with democracy ever conducted in the Arab world...
...There is no such thing asa Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria...
...Especially after the Gulf War (at least 100,000 dead, and possibly many more), no fair-minded person can accept the pretense that the turbulent conflicts raging everywhere in the Middle East can be forced into the Palestinian straitjacket...
...Netanyahu's insistence on Israeli control of the West Bank does not mean that he is insensitive to the plight of West Bank Palestinians...
...What he strongly rejects is the notion that Arab-Israeli peace depends on the peace process...
...This equation of Palestinian and Jewish suffering would make slightly more sense if Palestinians were in fact stateless...
...In Netanyahu's view, it depends, first and foremost on Israel's strength...
...He was right on both counts...
...When American officials speak of "land for peace," it's understood that only Israel will be surrendering land...
...Indeed, the PLO's officials and Jordan's rulers have been the first to admit this...
...If Bobby Bonilla thinks he's got it rough, he might find some solace in the saga of the Kid...
...There is no way to escape the reality," writes former President Jimmy Carter, "of how intimately intertwined are the history, the aspirations and the fate of the two long-suffering peoples, the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs...
...Never forget this one point," Syria's Hafez Assad once told Yasser Arafat...
...More recently, State Department officials, according to Evans and Novak, have warned of "a potential tragedy" should Mr...
...All they would demand of the rulers of a second Palestinian state is a pledge that this state be demilitarized...
...So afraid that he holds the record for the most intentional walks with the bases loaded...
...As Israel's advocate, he merits comparison with the brilliant Abba Eban...
...Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people...
...In Netanyahu's words: It is absurd to pretend that an Arab in eastern Palestine ("Jordan") who shares language, culture and religion with another Arab some ten miles away in western Palestine (the "West Bank"), an Arab who is often his close relative if not literally his own brother, is a member of a different people...
...But his approach can, I think, be summarized as follows: to the extent that the peace process reinforces Israel's capacity to deter Arab attacks, he's for it...
...But they have a state...
...Moreover, Palestinians might argue, a demilitarized state would be vulnerable to Arab predators...
Vol. 26 • July 1993 • No. 7
