moment Interviews Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's representative at the United Nations, is at 38 the youngest ambassador in Israel's diplomatic corps. Before that, he served for two years as Israel's deputy ambassador...
...When it comes to the PLO, means and ends are indissol-ubly linked...
...Netanyahu: It shouldn't be demilitarized...
...His brother was the hero of Entebbe...
...Fine...
...I recognize that they are the enemy...
...When that happens, half of that force will become available...
...Hershel Shanks: I vividly remember July 3, 1976...
...And it is important to understand that the multilateral affects the bilateral...
...Israel is boycotted diplomatically by much of the world...
...In many ways, he educated us...
...Netanyahu: Could peace have been made with Hitler...
...Shanks: I don't know...
...That's why, basically, there is a consensus in Israel, with the exception of fringe groups, that whatever arrangements Israel enters into, these must provide for complete military control over this area...
...He understood that this depended on the few who would wield the sword...
...In fact, it's amazingly placid compared to what any one would expect reading the news reports...
...Netanyahu: That reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the PLO...
...There is also some imitating element in terrorism, because if even one attack succeeds, successful terrorism in one place encourages terrorism elsewhere...
...Shanks: I understand you're going to be leaving your present position soon to go into Israeli politics...
...It takes two hours to cross it, traveling slowly with a tank...
...It actually named and condemned the Arab countries who were shipping oil to South Africa...
...When I came here in 1984, I learned that there was an Iranian nuclear reactor that the Iraqis were attacking quite regularly...
...he was always prepared to take up that burden, even though he had so many other things that could fulfill his life...
...This would pose an immediate threat...
...He had a tremendous influence on us...
...The only reason they are not big Hitlers is because they haven't amassed the power...
...But nevertheless, the reason I declined that offer was that I had plenty of things to do here...
...In 1981, Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear bomb factory...
...And within three months, without firing a shot, the international pressure from the Western countries became so intolerable that Czechoslovakia in fact was forced to cede this territory...
...Now if they think this is an aberration, this will be only a momentary respite and they will resume their terrorist activities...
...Shanks: That really isn't responsive to my question...
...The PLO is very specific about it...
...Ben-Gurion used to say "Urn [pronounced oom] shmoom...
...It's very easy to meet the ambassador of a country you don't have relations with...
...That is something new in the history of anti-Semitism...
...On the Arab side of the ledger, I see the Africans focusing more on Arab trade...
...They don't even agree on the nature or size or territorial definition of the Palestinian state that is supposed to emerge after Israel is destroyed...
...I think they [the PLO leadership] agree on nothing else...
...Once this became apparent—it was also publicly exposed in the trials of Syrians in London and in West Berlin, when the Libyans were captured and exposed in Madrid and the Iranians caught by France— then the whole debate concerning terrorism was reshaped...
...Netanyahu: On the contrary...
...I can hardly look at you when I say this, but that day brought a great tragedy to your family...
...When I hear people speak of you, it's very frequently as the younger brother of Yoni Netanyahu...
...Shanks: Would you talk with [President] Assad of Syria if he wanted to negotiate a peace...
...Do people shun you...
...Shanks: That's true...
...Both its inherent goal of destroying Israel and the internal mechanism of mutual terror prevents a real reformation of the PLO...
...Netanyahu: The down side of it is that people who have a susceptibility to PLO propaganda will accept them as a legitimate partner for negotiations...
...It has disappeared because the main forces behind it have suffered devastating blows...
...The traditional wisdom is that no UN resolution, especially an anti-Israel resolution, ever dies...
...He charmed us in a way that captivated us...
...this leopard is not going to change its spots...
...It's the complete rejection of politics and the legitimacy of your opponent...
...Throughout the ages, anti-Semitism always had a geographical center...
...The technique is massacre because the goal is massacre...
...Benjamin Netanyahu: Anything but a burden...
...you're going to run for the Knesset...
...Shanks: Do you see that happening in the case of Israel and the Palestinians...
...Netanyahu: Nevertheless, it made a tremendous impact where it counts— with the African diplomats and with the African governments...
...He must be a beacon for you, a star, an inspiration...
...It was a great occasion...
...It went to 79, to 82, to 85, to 88...
...My wife formally converted to Judaism with Rabbi Yolles in Philadelphia, who's considered among the most respected rabbis...
...But if you are strong, and appear to have strong allies, you can attract other nations...
...Part of the problem in establishing relations with the rest of the world [that doesn't recognize Israel] is the impact of these anti-Israeli resolutions...
...Because the Arabs who would negotiate are afraid of getting shot...
...Shanks: I realize that you can't talk about your political future, but other people can and they do...
...Netanyahu: It's not posturing...
...There's a cumulative weight to this slander...
...But it seems to me that what we should be asking is, "Is it good for Israel or bad for Israel to talk to the PLO...
...The anniversaries included the [1972] massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich, the [1974] massacre of children at Maalot, and no doubt this year's calendar will include the [1986] massacre at the Istanbul synagogue...
...If he said he was willing to do that, then, yes, I would negotiate...
...The PLO is not a government...
...And I waited...
...In this way, we were able to defeat the Syrian resolution to define terrorism...
...Or consider the annual vote on our credentials...
...It's better to be unpopular and alive than to be popular and dead...
...Shanks: Tell me about your relationship with him...
...No longer was it what to do about the Israelis, but what to do about Syria, what to do about Libya, what to do about Iran...
...indeed, they confirmed it...
...Shanks: What's the down side of offering to negotiate with the PLO...
...It's always seemed to me an inadequate explanation to say I won't talk to the PLO because it doesn't recognize Israel or because it's a terrorist organization...
...Shanks: That's a terrific story, but very little known...
...Shanks: Are there any lasting effects...
...When people sometimes ask me, as you just delicately did, is it a problem being Yoni's brother, the answer is no...
...But since you asked, I'm glad I had the opportunity to set the record straight...
...Shanks: You were instrumental in establishing the Jonathan Institute in memory of your fallen brother...
...If it were actual support, our life would be hell and their life would be hell [— day in and day out, not just periodic bursts of violence...
...So we are creating a fissure in this coalition, and in the automatic singling-out of Israel with respect to South Africa...
...Ambassador...
...Very specific...
...This little-known organization was putting out these reports but nobody paid any attention to them...
...Is that official...
...Not the territories, not the refugees and not boundaries...
...And there's a swelling arsenal in Saudi Arabia...
...Why do some talk about all sorts of mechanisms and circumlocutions instead of direct negotiations...
...His legacy is like a compass rather than a weight...
...That's why you have shouting matches or verbal jousts or ballots, not bullets...
...What it lacks is legitimacy in pursuing that goal...
...Shanks: There's a widespread belief that the PLO's withholding of recognition is a negotiating ploy, that at the negotiating table they would obviously have to give that up...
...He had obtained reports from an organization in Rotterdam called the Shipping Research Bureau, which was set up in 1980 to monitor a UN ban on shipping oil to South Africa...
...Netanyahu: I think there would be, if people believed that this was a continuing policy...
...The London Times had an editorial: Why is Czechoslovakia resisting negotiations to give self-determination to the Sudetenland Germans...
...we opened the archives, and this has also increased our standing...
...Netanyahu: I think the PLO's immediate objective is to establish a PLO state in Judea and Samaria...
...Netanyahu: Sure...
...But the most important thing is to have a basis in irrefutable fapts...
...The method of our decapitation...
...Since 1981, the Iraqis have had a resolution passed each year condemning Israel for this attack...
...Admittedly, they have a problem making violent attacks because it is much harder to smuggle weapons into Israel these days...
...He had a tremendous warmth that radiated from him, from his person, from his speech, from his smiles, from his.'humor, sometimes from his completely unguarded laughter...
...Vulnerability and strength are the key to both war and peace in the Middle East...
...Last year, I exhibited in the UN Security Council a PLO calendar marking the dates to celebrate...
...The celebration, the adulation of these massacres and the reaffirmation annually of the larger purpose of our liquidation tells you something...
...Nobody's interested in you...
...For quite some time, people didn't understand the importance of the UN as an anti-Semitic instrument...
...I'm told that your wife is not Jewish, and if that's true, how would that affect your future as a politician in Israel...
...This is not the Sinai...
...Shanks: What's it like when you walk through the halls of the UN...
...That's an enormously prestigious position that most Israeli politicians would leap at...
...Shanks: Unfortunately, that hasn't received very much publicity...
...They want security systems against terrorism...
...As long as the PLO is there, there won't be peace...
...Netanyahu: I think that there's a difference between the rhetorical support they give to the PLO and the actual support...
...This year the report went further...
...These reports described every oil tanker that went to South Africa...
...It's reaffirmed in '65, '75, '85, etc...
...The following interview took place on December 9, 1987, in Netanyahu's New York office, shortly before the rioting began in Gaza and the West Bank...
...We look for the cracks...
...Shanks: Recently The New York Times reported that terrorism in the Middle East was occurring at a steady level...
...We have medical assistance that they want...
...The PLO calls for my destruction...
...If any one of them were to try to deviate from the line of destroying Israel, he would be destroyed...
...20 countries left their side in one year...
...It seeks its goal of destroying Israel by a combination of terror and diplomacy...
...It's like Czechoslovakia...
...Now Iraq is suing for peace because the balance of power has changed...
...I said it, I wrote it and of course I stand by it...
...Number one, let's get the Jews to talk to us about setting up a PLO state in Judea and Samaria...
...They leave these formulations vague, but in Arabic they are quite explicit...
...Even if Egypt were to violate the Sinai agreements, it would take the Egyptian army at least two or three days to cross that distance...
...Netanyahu: In their English pronouncements, they are always vague...
...People even wrote it...
...Netanyahu: Merely that the pressure to concede would increase immeasurably, would be immeasurably stronger...
...That has never happened before...
...I tend to agree with Golda Meir when she said—I'm paraphrasing—it's better to be unpopular and alive than to be popular and dead...
...The United Nations has in fact been used as the instrument for a universal anti-Semitism that didn't exist before...
...Netanyahu: It's not borne out by the statistics...
...Instead of being a campaign against apartheid, it is a campaign against Zionism...
...Another example: The Syrians recently wanted to convene a conference on international terrorism in order to define terrorism...
...This is equal to the power of NATO...
...The indigenous terrorism that people talk about is usually conducted by front organizations that are monitored, organized, sponsored and instructed by the PLO...
...Shanks: Why didn't it pass...
...Netanyahu: In addition to Egypt...
...Netanyahu: Well, I don't think it will have an effect because my wife is Jewish...
...Before that, he served for two years as Israel's deputy ambassador in Washington, D.C...
...We never had any feelings of being encumbered...
...Is that your perceptipn...
...Shanks: There is no way anyone would imagine that Israel would agree to a Palestinian state in Samaria and Judea...
...Shanks: In addition to Egypt...
...It never was and it isn't today...
...Should the Likud party form a government as a result of the election, Netanyahu will almost surely be a member of the cabinet and, some say, may even become prime minister...
...Is there any lasting effect from that trade...
...This tells you something...
...Netanyahu: Because we succeeded in changing the terms of reference on the way terrorism is discussed...
...And I say "What secret...
...The process of our liquidation...
...And I waited...
...With words you can often achieve much more than with bombs...
...Once you begin the course of diplomatic moves, you open the door a crack, and the door will be open for them, because obviously the international forces would support the PLO all the way...
...The PLO, especially Arafat, has understood what some of his colleagues do not understand, that terror coupled with diplomacy is much more potent than terror alone...
...Netanyahu: Actually, terrorism within the Middle East, Arabs against Arabs, is as rampant as ever...
...This gave us a record of every oil tanker that had gone to South Africa since 1980—what was its port of embarkation, its port of deposit and the volume of the ship...
...Shanks: I think that's the generally accepted position throughout the world: If there's going to be peace, that area has to be demilitarized...
...It now passes resolutions intended to delegitimize the Jewish people, the Jewish state...
...The Iraqi resolution turned out to be an exception...
...Unfortunately, the UN does count...
...There are 159 countries in the UN...
...People were discussing the possibility that I'd run for that post...
...Since the American raid on Libya, since the exposure of Syria and the sanctions applied to it, and since the discovery of Iran's involvement [in kidnapings of Western citizens in Lebanon in recent years], they have basically ceased their terrorist activities in the West...
...But if the grievance is your existence, there's nothing to talk about...
...In other words, the United Nothing, it doesn't count...
...This is not what Israel believes in...
...Shanks: Give me an example...
...Normally, this proposal would pass in the UN...
...He's Israel's man at the UN...
...Shanks: There's a general feeling, despite the statistics, that Arab terrorism within Israel and within the West Bank is increasing...
...There has recently been a tremendous increase in these bilateral contacts...
...The fact is that we cannot get people to negotiate with us...
...Netanyahu: One of two things: Either we are forced to cede—and I assume we will resist that—or if we're not forced to cede, our isolation will become much greater...
...Because their objective is the liquidation of the state of Israel...
...Shanks: Mainland China...
...And that is another factor that has changed...
...Netanyahu: That's the usual reporting...
...If we do not have complete military control over the five routes that lead from the Jordan up to the Judea-Samaria mountain range and over the ridge-line itself, then we simply cannot defend ourselves...
...Every year the Arabs and sometimes the Iranians join together to try to expel Israel from the UN...
...In the case of Judea and Samaria, it's a tiny distance, a spitting distance to our population centers...
...And the chief target was, of course, Israel...
...There is a tremendous gulf between what is said and what is done...
...Shanks: Including Arab countries...
...They are complex, they are stubborn, but they are not irreconcilable...
...That would pit the equivalent of the entire power of NATO along the borders of the Jordan River...
...Shanks: What's the down side of talking...
...But essentially, if you eliminate the PLO's access to the territories and if you strike at their headquarters outside [Israel], you will achieve an immeasurable reduction...
...Shanks: But that's what they say...
...Netanyahu: If you think that you cannot do anything, then you will not do anything...
...It would tell you whether a tanker came from the Persian Gulf, but it wouldn't say from which port...
...It turns out there are a lot of breaches in this UN wall...
...Otherwise, Israel simply would not be able to defend itself...
...But the kind of international terrorism that attracts our attention—explosions in airports and on airplanes, and so on—has, by and large, disappeared...
...Netanyahu: Arab countries, yes...
...We found the way to do it one day when a researcher on our small staff at the UN mission, Ralph Cwerman, came in and dropped a sheaf of papers on my desk and said, "Look at this...
...Shanks: As Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, you're in an unusual position among this motley crew of countries...
...I think that we have had several opportunities, since then, to demonstrate that this is not our policy, because we have had many threats, including threats against some Israelis who are held captive today in Lebanon...
...What's it like being Yoni's younger brother...
...When the Shah collapsed, Iraq violated the nonaggression pact it had signed with Iran a few years earlier, and proceeded to invade...
...that is true...
...They are one and the same...
...Do you share that view...
...What we were able to do in the 1980s was to turn the tables on the Arabs because we exposed the practitioners of terror...
...Shanks: There's a widely held belief that we're seeing a descent into despair regarding the West Bank...
...The other attitude is just to sit back and wring your hands and say it's terrible, the world is against us but there's not much we can do about it...
...He was a very warm human being...
...Shanks: You've said that Israel should keep the West Bank and Gaza permanently and forever...
...Netanyahu: Well, in my official capacity, I said that military control over Judea, Samaria and Gaza is absolutely vital for Israel's security...
...When we got to the apartment where we were staying, we turned on the radio at 11 o'clock and heard the wonderful news that the hostages in Entebbe had been rescued...
...And then, of course, you have to use rhetoric to combine the irrefutable facts with the powerful arguments...
...Netanyahu: By the detailed listings of oil tankers visiting South African ports...
...This year it reached an all-time high of 88...
...They simply killed it, their own resolution...
...When I first came here, [the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations] Jeane Kirkpatrick told me that she had been to an Independence Day celebration in an African country...
...Finally, the Czechs gave in...
...What they don't say publicly, except when they occasionally slip up—and this is the essence of their strategy—is that in order to achieve their goal, they must have a foothold in diplomatic negotiations...
...Added later by Netanyahu Shanks: If Israel were to announce that it would talk to the PLO, what security danger to Israel would that entail...
...They would like to believe that everyone ultimately can be reformed into the political process...
...If he would say, "I want to destroy Israel, and I seek negotiations merely to achieve that goal," I would say, forget it...
...Many countries in Africa, in Latin America and in Asia view the UN not as shmoom, but as a repository of historical truth and political authority...
...Then it moved to Spain...
...This institute studies terrorism...
...Netanyahu: The PLO will be reasonable because it has, as they tell us, an intermediate objective...
...After his death he left a legacy that endures...
...In the UN, the anti-Semites have found a way to spread their poison through the bloodstream of nations...
...That slander continues today in the attempt to link Israel with South Africa, and Zionism with apartheid...
...That is also true of many African countries...
...Shanks: Let me talk to you about talking to the PLO...
...The issue should be whether it's good for Israel or bad for Israel to talk to the PLO, not whether the PLO recognizes Israel or whether it's a terrorist organization...
...And, by the way, their first conflict is with the Arabs, not with Israel...
...Netanyahu: There is very little indigenous terrorism per se...
...But that war may end very soon...
...Five years ago, ten years ago, such absurdities would have passed...
...But in my present capacity I pan say this: There is now a force of 11,000 tanks on Israel's eastern front...
...It has stopped attacking targets outside the Middle East...
...indeed, many countries are now coming to us...
...In the case of the PLO, in the case of these butchers, we're facing little Hitlers...
...I wonder if it's a burden...
...They talk about "ending Zionist aggression," ending the "occupation of Palestine...
...The American independence celebration and the miraculous Israeli rescue operation coincided...
...And I say "Could you be more specific...
...My wife was born to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother...
...We don't adopt either of these two positions...
...Bascially terrorism is blackmail...
...That is a direct result of the political, economic and military pressures applied on these regimes...
...Each year they lose, but the interesting thing is they lose by a growing margin...
...Shanks: But that's what they say...
...Um is like the acronym of the UN...
...Shanks: You wouldn't, would you...
...Shanks: But, that's not my question...
...We exposed the fact that nearly all international terrorism is the work of governments, which use terror as an instrument of warfare—not only against Israel, but against the Western world...
...We felt that he was unique even in his lifetime...
...They're talkihg quite specifically, in their inner councils, too, about the strategy of liquidation...
...We weren't the only ones who felt that way...
...Through the UN we sent some of our drip-irrigation experts to China...
...From this we could calculate the tonnage of the oil, multiplied by the average price of oil that year...
...They resurrected that resolution the next year and lost another 20 votes...
...For peace to endure, including a paper peace, a contractual peace, Israel must have the ability to enforce that peace...
...The closeness of the relationship between Israel and United States is viewed as one of Israel's important assets...
...They are recorded in foreign offices and in colleges and in universities and are talked about in Rotary Clubs and in magazines and in newspapers...
...The only thing that keeps the peace among the Arabs themselves is their perception of the strength of their adversaries...
...It will veto any peace...
...If, on the other hand, he said, "I recognize the right of Israel to exist and now it's a question of settling some of the grievances between us," that's a different matter...
...we meet them practically every day and we have a full-time person on our staff who does just that...
...You edited an important book on terrorism...
...Shanks: What about the hasbara [public relations] victory for Israel if Israel goes to the negotiating table with the PLO and the PLO is unreasonable...
...The terrorism that the PLO practices reflects the opposite of politics...
...Rather than an instrument to promote peace, it became an instrument for waging political warfare...
...I don't want to describe my brother to you as some sort of granite monument...
...In fact, before the war with Iran, Iraq was beginning to encroach on Kuwait, whose territory it claims in its entirety...
...Her father's family fled from Berlin in the 1930s and settled in Britain, and there her father met her mother...
...The PLO annually reaffirms its desire, as stated in its charter, calling for the destruction of Israel...
...At that point, they are all locked in a circle of blood and none of them can escape...
...It's a different UN, albeit still a very negative one, but less negative because we have been able to find the cracks...
...Kuwait is a stretch of sand that happens to have a lot of oil, and Iraq eyed it and wanted it...
...Netanyahu: The area is too small to be demilitarized...
...the PLO was seen merely as an adjunct of these governments...
...We had this information cross-referenced with Lloyd's registry of shipping...
...Netanyahu: Two days ago I was in the General Assembly, and I spoke out to the Arab delegates...
...Politics, after all, is the nonviolent resolution of conflict...
...Do you still hold to that position...
...Number two, let's destroy both Jordan and Israel...
...You live somewhat in his shadow...
...But, in fact, the PLO is an abject failure in its ability to mobilize the masses...
...I think that the recent deal between the French and the Iranians for hostages in Lebanon was a setback to this policy...
...Shanks: Does what you say mean that the Iran-Iraq war is good for Israel...
...I am authorized to enter negotiations right outside this corridor, in comfortable chairs...
...The Iranians did not dispute this...
...Shanks: What was this quality, this aura, that seemed to inspire him and direct his life...
...One attitude is to just beat your head against the wall and try to break out of this isolation...
...They didn't report how you knew this...
...Israel can be the great unifying cry of a renascent Arab coalition on our eastern front...
...That makes people take you seriously...
...Shanks: Not of your demise, of your ascendancy...
...There are times in the life of civilized nations when they're faced with intractable opponents...
...When these resolutions are passed, they are given the ' 'Good Housekeeping seal of approval" for over 100 nations...
...So there is no question that we have to control that territory...
...Also, I would like to spend as much time as I can in Israel...
...Netanyahu: We were very, very close, a very close family, very close brothers...
...Do you think Israel acted wisely in trading more than a thousand terrorists in Israeli jails for three Israeli soldiers who were held by the Syrians...
...Shanks: Would you do that with the PLO...
...Would you have given him something...
...And that ability cannot be maintained, in my judgment, without Israel's complete military control over the entire territory west of the Jordan...
...Shanks: The Jewish Agency wouldn't have been outside of Israel, would it...
...We decided to try to breach that alliance, to try to fracture this Arab-African coalition that was responsible for so much of the slander against Israel...
...Lo and behold, we now had irrefutable evidence showing that the Arabs had been selling South Africa $2 billion of oil annually...
...When I first came here, a veteran Latin American diplomat took me aside and said, "Benjamin, I will tell you one thing about this body...
...One of the first things I learned as a young soldier in the Israeli army is that there is no fence, no wall that is impregnable...
...Shanks: You wouldn't negotiate before he made that concession...
...Netanyahu: Well, as long as I'm in my diplomatic post, I don't think it's appropriate to discuss my personal plans...
...The point is that the essential thrust of the PLO, its raison d'etre, is the destruction of Israel...
...That is now yery much the position we find ourselves in...
...Now they also have another problem...
...There was a big square and thousands of people were cheering...
...I'm sure there's disaffection on the part of the Palestinian Arabs, although perhaps not as deep as commonly reported...
...Shanks: When will you be leaving...
...He could be Israel's next prime minister...
...I've spent the last five years outside the country...
...It has been used to disseminate anti-Semitic and antiZionist poison—they are the same— throughout the five continents...
...Shanks: How many nations do not recognize Israel and how many do recognize her...
...It turns out there are a lot of breaches and cracks in this wall...
...Shanks: Aren't there a lot of Arabs on the West Bank who look to the PLO for leadership, but who really aren't dedicated to the destruction of Israel...
...Shanks: Many people feel that the position you take casts Israel in the role of the party who is hindering, resisting negotiations...
...One of the first things I learned as a young soldier in the Israeli army is that there is no fence, no wall that is impregnable...
...All this force may one day, with surprising rapidity, amass on our eastern front...
...Although in this interview he declines to describe his political future because of the diplomatic post he now holds, it is widely recognized that he will soon return to Israel, where he will be elected to the Knesset on the Likud list...
...Netanyahu: I'll give you several...
...Netanyahu: Anything but a burden, neither in his life nor after his fall...
...We did the same thing the following year...
...Shanks: You don't have to agree to that...
...But the biggest banners were not "Vive la r'epublique," but "Zionism equals racism...
...They said they had passed the resolution against countries exporting oil to South Africa...
...this is what is done to Arab leaders today who want to negotiate...
...In the 1970s, the Arabs were able to make a lot of headway against us by claiming that international terrorism was exploding all around the world as a result of Israel's policies and the "Palestinian problem...
...The West asked them, "Why don't you [Czechoslovakia] speak to the Nazis...
...And I waited...
...Netanyahu: I think if you do the job properly you have to spend a very good portion of your time outside the country...
...Netanyahu: We have many, many contacts in the UN with most of these countries...
...No resolution ever dies here...
...If they think that this is a lasting policy, led by the United States, followed by the allies of the United States, then they will cease and desist...
...Netanyahu: Especially with them...
...And shmoom—meaning nonsense...
...In diplomacy, if you're weak and isolated, you are a liability...
...Finally, last year the Africans actually passed a resolution against the oil-producing Arabs...
...Then it moved to the Ukraine and then it moved to Russia and then, in this century, it moved to Germany...
...Peace is made with enemies, not friends, so if it...
...What's it like, representing Israel in this sea of hatred...
...That turns out not to be the case...
...If we fight back and score some visible victories, then the climate, the attitude toward Israel changes, and this helps us in our bilateral contacts...
...Well, they didn't quite name the Arabs...
...Part of the problem with fighting terrorism is to establish the principle of no surrender...
...The minute you legitimize them, the minute you give them a foot in the door, the minute you give them the intermediate stage of that PLO state that they seek, it's a prelude to the destruction of the Jewish state...
...There is absolutely nothing irresolvable or irreconcilable in the Arab-Israeli conflicts...
...I'm sure there's disaffection on the part of the Palestinian Arabs, although perhaps not as deep as commonly reported...
...And they say, ' 'You know, tell us how we can get to the Americans...
...Netanyahu: Well, it's not exactly an easy forum for an Israeli diplomat...
...Resolutions are manufactured by something called the Special Committee on Apartheid...
...And quite explicit...
...If you look long enough you will always find a place where the water has burrowed underneath or where some stone has become dislodged...
...Netanyahu: Well, I'll say this: Obviously when these two predators are locked in a grip of death with each other, they cannot threaten others...
...Netanyahu: I would ask him whether he wanted to relinquish the claim of destroying Israel...
...In fact, the actual number of incidents has been declining quite substantially...
...Shanks: Why did you turn down the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization...
...In fact, that's what you're seeing...
...Netanyahu: About half of the members of the UN recognize us...
...In the heart of Africa...
...The intermediate objective is to get a foothold from which they could explode both Jordan and Israel...
...Netanyahu: This was widely viewed as a mistake across the Israeli political spectrum, and I share that view...
...When we presented this information to the UN in 1984, it made a tremendous impact...
...Typically, these are student organizations, including high school students...
...We're not going to allow that crack in the door, that will open the door, that will lead to the achievement of their objectives...
...Netanyahu: No, no...
...We are obviously cutting into the countries of the middle ground...
...But doesn't everyone really recognize that this aim of destroying Israel is posturing, and if you get down to serious negotiations, they know they can't get that...
...Facts must then be coupled with powerful arguments...
...Libya has not carried out a single terrorist attack in the West since the raid on Tripoli, Syria has practically called off all terror operations in Western Europe...
...All these are examples where this wall of obstruction and indifference and hostility has been breached...
...Netanyahu: You're asking a question that I didn't get into in my official statements, but I'll be happy to do so once I leave this office...
...Rather than lick our wounds, we look for those breaches and then concentrate our power to widen the breach, to break through...
...If there are five members of a terrorist group, and four of them are convinced that the fifth is a dissenter in their pact of terror and anarchy, they will murder him...
...This is what they say...
...Shanks: Including with the countries that don't recognize you...
...I think that, by and large, their actions speak a lot louder than their words...
...The number of countries that support us has gone up steadily...
...This is what the Mufti [Hajj Amin al-Hussein, Jerusalem's Islamic leader] did in the 1920s and 1930s to those who wanted to negotiate...
...For the last millennium, it had such a center whose location changed with each century—it was originally in England, then France and then Germany...
...he may be wrong but he may still be reasonable in believing that it may be possible to negotiate something with the PLO that would provide for Israel's security and its existence...
...Netanyahu: I will be leaving before the next General Assembly in late September...
...The grievances themselves are not impossible to resolve...
...The story said that Israel claimed that 95 percent of the oil shipped to South Africa came from the Arabs, and then in the second paragraph, to be even-handed, the Times said that Saudi Arabia denied the charge, claiming it strictly enforced the boycott against shipping oil to South Africa...
...The Chinese now send people to Israel...
...After a year and a half of struggle we won...
...That represents a complete shift in the terms of reference of the debate...
...I came to New York with my wife and a friend to see the tall ships that were going to sail past the Statue of Liberty the next day, on the 200th anniversary of the United States' Declaration of Independence...
...Your brother, Yonatan, led that rescue mission—and he fell...
...Their actions are quite different from the common reporting...
...I have a simple proposal to any Arab ambassador...
...Everyone was wildly happy...
...You know, the UN has accused Israel of many things, but it hasn't yet accused us of shipping oil to South Africa...
...For most of this decade, the Arab world has been split, largely because of the Iran-Iraq war...
...The end of the war might even be facilitated by focusing on a common enemy—Israel...
...Netanyahu: I'm trying to respond in that direction precisely, because what the PLO is seeking is the destruction of Israel...
...At the United Nations, Israel is almost constantly vilified, the object of a barrage of vituperation...
...I think that lays the matter to rest...
...on the contrary, we felt we were almost especially singled out to have a brother like Yoni...
...What I will do then I haven't decided...
...Those who genuinely want to negotiate with us and accept our legitimacy are afraid they will be shot if they come forward and say they want peace with Israel...
...I am authorized to sit with you right now, with any representative from any Arab state...
...The forces behind it are essentially a League of Terrorist Nations...
...And invariably they want one other thing: They always say "Give us your secret...
...Netanyahu: First of all, who told you I was offered the chairmanship...
...Shanks: Ninety-five percent of South Africa's oil...
...He didn't have to die to become a legend...
...And when you breach it people take notice...
...They want our agricultural help...
...But then it thought it had a much riper plum ready for plunder, the oil fields across the Shat el-Arab in Iran...
...For them, they carry the weight of truth...
...That's important to understand, because what it tells you is that the whole Middle East is littered with treaties that have been violated...
...Shanks: What about the nations that don't recognize Israel...
...So reports of my demise are premature and exaggerated...
...From the perspective of the United Nations, you represent a pariah nation...
...Why are you so resistant...
...Did you ever hear of the UN passing a resolution against the Arabs...
...It may not count for very much on the positive side of the ledger, but it counts a great deal on the negative side...
...The next year they simply neglected to bring the resolution up...
...I said, "You all talk about Israel refusing to negotiate...
...I'd like to go back and spend all my time in Israel itself...
...If Israel is made vulnerable in exchange for paper agreements, then the peace will not be kept...
...It wasn't increasing or decreasing...
...Shanks: How do you operate in this situation...
...And I stood there and folded my arms...
...Shanks: What about the indigenous terrorism...
...Netanyahu: Ninety-five percent of their oil...
...Will anyone come forth...
...You haven't decided whether you're going to run for the Knesset...
...with its constant repetition and elaboration and refinement, it becomes "truth...
...It's important to understand the significance of the UN in this negative aspect...
...They have simply stopped...
...Now it's back in Russia...
...I had to finish my job here...
...In other words, in addition to the multilateral diplomacy that takes place here, there is a lot of bilateral diplomacy...
...That is true of the PLO...
...They do so by trying to deny our credentials as a prelude to our expulsion...
...Netanyahu: You understand that I will be leaving my post...
...I asked something beyond that...
...Would it have any effect...
...The important thing to understand is this: Israel has relations with about half the countries, which means it doesn't have relations with the other half...
...Netanyahu: The argument that peace is made with enemies is true if the enemy is not dedicated, in the very foundation of his being, to your destruction...
...They want our agricultural experts, for one thing...
...Netanyahu: What should we negotiate with an enemy that seeks our destruction...
...A few years ago it was 72...
...A final example is the battle over the UN's Nazi archives...
...If we are seen in the multilateral arena as isolated, weak, a pariah, a leper, then that's what we become...
...Shanks: You want your military hardware there...
...Much more difficult problems have been resolved in this century, involving much more difficult territorial divisions, borders disputed and tens of millions of refugees...
...Another 1,500 tanks in Jordan...
...This beast is not going to change...
...In Kuwaiti newspapers, for example, PLO leaders quite recently discussed the strategy of liquidation...
...Take the continuation and extension of the "Zionism is racism" campaign...
...Initially, we faced a united international opposition to opening up these archives...
...Shanks: Tell me about it...
...that's when you don't shoot him...
...Others begin to think of us as a leper, and eventually we will think of ourselves as a leper...
...But since the establishment of the UN, there is something new, because anti-Semitism now has a universal instrument, a universal apparatus for global dissemination...
...There are basically two common attitudes that one can adopt with regard to Israel and the UN...
...Shanks: Thank you very much, Mr...
...You can talk to an adversary if you're talking about a resolvable grievance...
...Well it failed abjectly, completely...
...Netanyahu: I would expect that concession to be inherent in any statement that he would make on negotiating with Israel...
...When I read the story in the Times, I wondered how you could prove your claim that 95 percent of South Africa's oil was being supplied by the Arabs...
...It's the house of immortal life...
...But the information was only partial...
...Shanks: Imagine someone who reasonably disagrees with you...
...Netanyahu: I agree with you...
...This is true of all terrorist organizations, as Dostoyevski understood 100 years ago...
...What do they want from us...
...He was already a legend in his lifetime...
...In that case, why place yourself in an impossible position...
...But after 11 years, he's still an identification for you...
...Shanks: It's nothing new that Arabs talk out of both sides of their mouths...
...Netanyahu: Well, you're getting onto a course that is very difficult to stop...
...Netanyahu: That's not the point...
...Another 5,000 tanks are in Syria...
...We're on the way toward completely eliminating the African resolutions against us...
...Would you have negotiated with Hitler...
...When you look at what has been holding up the reconciliation of Arab and Jew since the 1920s, it is the fact that we cannot get people to negotiate with us...
...Netanyahu: No, I wouldn't do that with the PLO...
...Once you begin to march down the path of capitulation, it's very difficult to stop...
...Netanyahu: It was a wholeness, a composite of ideals and personality that made him a complete human being, a young Jew who devoted his life to the resurrection of the Jewish people and the Jewish state...
...For Israel to survive, it must maintain military control over this territory—not so much over its population, that is not the issue, but over the strategic passes and the electronic surveillance platforms that are so necessary for Israel's defense in the coming decade and in the coming century...
...There is absolutely nothing irresolvable or irreconcilable in the Arab-Israeli conflicts...
...I wish that were true...
...That committee has traditionally been used by the Arabs to harness the Africans to the Arab cause...
...When you ask about the PLO's reformability, basically people would like to believe that "everybody's like us...
...And they say, "You know the secret...
...If a bomb exploded in Tokyo or in Rome or in London, this was because of the "Palestinian problem...
...The New York Times reported it—in a two-inch story on an inside page...
...Do you sense that, that we must do something to stem the desperation both on the part of Palestinians living there and on the part of Israelis...
...It was a great privilege, a privilege both my younger brother [Iddo] and I valued even while Yoni was alive...
...First Jordan, in my judgment, and second Israel...
...You'd never do that...
...As a result, this year the language in the traditional resolutions condemning Israel was suddenly toned down...
...He set an example for us...
...Everything that he did had an unrestrained, an unlimited wholeness about it...
...We have to anticipate that the Iran-Iraq war will end...
...the number of countries that support them remains fixed at about 40...
...That is the extension of the "Zionism is racism" campaign...
...But it must include the acceptance of the basic legitimacy of your adversary...
...We don't just attack and beat ourselves against this obstacle indiscriminately, nor do we say there's nothing we can do about it...
...Shortly afterwards, Czechoslovakia was conquered by the Nazis...
...Netanyahu: Well...
...So that year, the Iraqis lost 20 votes on the resolution condemning Israel for its attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor...
...Actions speak a lot louder than words, and the PLO's actions speak a lot louder than their words (although their words are quite interesting, too, especially in Arabic...
...This territory dominates and controls the 80 percent of our population that lives in a slender banana-shaped piece of land from Jerusalem through Tel Aviv to Haifa...
...If you want to move toward peace, the best thing to do is to keep the PLO outside...
...There is no spontaneous mobilization of people to go against the Israeli presence...
...You have to understand what the UN has become...
...For a country that doesn't have an embassy in Israel, the UN becomes the universal embassy...
...He is an authentic hero...
...One thing is important—to have irrefutable facts...
...What can you do...
...So the only way to handle a blackmailer—the only way to handle a terrorist—is to refuse to surrender...
...It's passed in '55...
Vol. 13 • March 1988 • No. 1
