Taking On Israel's Critics

...Again, she presents a telling explanation: "By blaming Israel for Arab complaints, liberals anticipate a reasonable, pacific solution to the conflict...

...is a powerful polemic, beautifully crafted, brilliantly argued...

...As for intellectual and political liberals, both gentile and Jewish, Wisse sees a steadily expanding tendency among them to "join in discrediting the Jews to avoid having to come to their defense...

...For the reader committed to Israel's cause, its message is chilling in the extreme...

...She finds it ironic that "the Arabs, who place such value on military prowess, have lost on the battlefield, while the Jews, who take pride in the power of their intellect...

...At a time when so many self-styled "friends of Israel" shy away from a vigorous defense of the Jewish State, Wisse stands ever ready on the front lines, engaging all comers...

...compensates through the vigor of prosecution for the irrationality of its claims...

...Why should any Jew, even the most ardent of Zionists, consecrate his life to the denunciation of Arab imperialism if he wants nothing from the Arabs but peace...

...In its inventory of armaments," she observes, "Jane's does not mention propaganda expenditures and resources as it does military budgets and hardware...

...Here the aim is to transfer Israel's moral capital to the Arabs, and at the same time blame Israel for the hatred directed against it...

...it is much harder to influence the Arabs...

...They launch a ship called the Exodus to draw attention to Arab plight...

...The author is acutely aware of the impediments that stand in the way of an effective campaign aimed at neutralizing the anti-Israel concepts currently in circulation...

...They want recognition and acceptance from the very rulers and people who attack them...

...Wisse shows clearly that the Arabs are intent on Israel's destruction, and how they are effectively employing ideas as well as bullets to achieve their aim...

...With the prospect of Arab hegemony in the Middle East so tantalizingly near, why indeed should they have agreed to share even a speck of land with a people whom civilized Europe had so recently starved, burned, gassed, shot, buried alive, reduced to fertilizer...

...it is, she maintains, simply a rational response to Jewish vulnerability: "The weakness of the Jews had been amply demonstrated by the Germans, our standing in the community of nations even more conclusively...

...Given their perspective, the Arabs would have been fools to accept partition without first trying to destroy the Jewish enemy...

...Wisse may be a five star general, but she largely functions without an army...

...That applies especially to the vile equation of Zionism with racism, labeled "the master stroke of Arab strategy" by Wisse...

...So far has the process gone, Wisse notes, that the Palestinians have become virtual clones of the Jews: "They say they are the Arab diaspora, longing for their homeland...

...comes from a rabbinic source (Chapters of the Fathers 1:14) and implies a sharp indictment of Jewish communal inaction as well...

...not so the Arabs...

...In this scenario Israelis become Nazis, while repeated Arab assaults against the beleaguered Jewish State are transformed into Zionist usurpation of the Arab homeland...

...Thus the inclination of many in the organized Jewish community to stand aside when Israel comes under attack, or worse, to participate in the attacks...

...This reluctance grows out of weariness, a sense of sacrificed dignity and squandered energy that dulls the pleasure of life itself...

...A leading scholar of Yiddish literature who will soon assume a chair in the subject at Harvard, Wisse has developed a second career as a defender of Israel on the intellectual barricades...

...They initiate the United Palestine Appeal, with the map of Israel as its logo...

...Editor, "American Jewish Year Book" In the battle of ideas surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict, Ruth Wisse ranks as a five star general on the pro-Israel side...

...For starters, there is the need to cope with variants of the Big Lie, which "untrue by definition...

...Instead, once unabashedly pro-Israel elements, including growing sectors of the Jewish community, are increasingly lapsing into silence...

...In part, says Wisse, the situation reflects the refusal of educated people to credit the power of propaganda, with the result that "Arab distortion...

...Political pressure can be brought to bear on Israel to force the small Jewish polity to come to terms...

...It is important to note, however, that the title If I Am Not For Myself...

...Although the Arabs have yet to achieve their ultimate goal, Wisse demonstrates that through the force of ideas they have succeeded in turning Israel into a pariah state...

...Nor does she see anything mysterious in this anti-Semitism...

...Anti-Semitism, in short, "sets all kinds of traps for its victims...

...Beyond that, Jews and Arabs in the Middle East are anything but "rivals with a common purpose": "While the Arabs intend to destroy the Jewish state and the idea of Jewish peoplehood, Jews have a disincentive to enter the war of words...

...Only the Israelis can cope with the bullets, of course, but the friends of Israel could contribute significantly to its struggle for survival by taking part in the war of ideas...

...Hoping that the Arabs will turn friendly 'if not tomorrow then the day after,' in the words of a popular Hebrew song, Israel and its supporters are genuinely disinclined to answer the propaganda against them, much less strike back in kind, lest by exacerbating tensions 'they only make things worse.'" Wisse minces no words in contending that Arab hostility to Israel and Zionism is rooted in anti-Semitism, rightly arguing that the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is a distinction without meaning...

...Reviewed by David Singer Director of Research, American Jewish Committee...

...A spokeswoman of the Palestinian Arabs...

...yet the destruction of the image of the Jews has always been the necessary precondition for physical attacks upon them...

...They have every reason, therefore, to believe Israel will one day be eliminated...

...We stand accused," she bitterly points out, "not for what is correctable, but for the fact of our national existence...

...Hers is strictly a policy of slash and burn, with no taking of prisoners...

...Pro-Israel elements have meanwhile been largely quiescent...

...They claim to be suffering a Holocaust at the hands of the Jews...

...One must reasonably expect the organized Jewish community and political liberals to take the lead in countering Arab anti-Semitism...

...The democratic Jewish state is subject to 'rational' persuasion...

...The more determinedly and, by Western standards, irrationally, Arab governments and their agents pursue their anti-Israel compaign, and the more violent and distorting the instruments of their aggression, the more desperately the liberal imagination tries to blame the Jews for incurring Arab displeasure...

...have lost the war of ideas...

...flows into the stream of Western political consciousness as readily as Arab oil flows into Western refineries...

...Because her book's subtitle is The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, reviewers have tended to focus on that aspect of its argument...

...And she offers a provocative explanation: "Faced with a protean anti-Semitism that can combine with so many other political movements, even the sturdiest Jews grow reluctant to resist it, whether on their own behalf or on behalf of fellow Jews...

...She knows full well the lethal potential of the arguments employed as weapons by the Arabs in their war against the Jewish State...

...holds up a picture of a dead Arab girl as the Palestinian 'Anne Frank.'" The Arabs have been nothing short of brilliant in their manipulation of reality...

...In fact, Wisse puts her finger on a striking phenomenon of the current Jewish scene: the reluctance of more and more Jewish organizations and Jewish communal leaders to speak out on behalf of Israel...

...No physical harm the Arabs can ever do to us is as great as this accusation, because the charge justifies all the harm they will ever do us, calls it forth as a holy mission.'' No less bedeviling than the Big Lie is the "inversion of all facts and terms of the Jewish national struggle...

...The PLO writes a 'covenant,' a sacred document like the one in the Torah, that promises the land of Israel to them, the Arabs...

...But the author finds both groups terribly wanting in this regard...