Herbert Zweibon

Herbert Zweibon, chairman of Americans for A Safe Israel, completed this editorial shortly before he died on Jan. 20, 2011.

“Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn’t matter what the world says about Israel; the only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers.”  Ben Gurion said this in 1953 to comfort Ariel Sharon who had shortly before, in response to attacks by terrorists (then called Fedayeen) led a raid on Qibya in Jordan producing a worldwide storm of condemnation.
It is time for the Netanyahu government  to follow Ben Gurion’s principle and tell the world it will do whatever  it has to do to secure the country and its citizens.  It is time an Israeli Prime Minister echoed Jabotinsky: “Who are we to justify ourselves before you and who are you to ask us questions?” Paradoxically, acting upon such a policy can only improve Israel’s standing in world opinion, for well-thought out actions change the framework of debate.  Think how the surge changed the debate over Iraq.
The government has taken a small but symbolically important step in (finally!) demolishing the Shepherd’s Hotel in Jerusalem, making way for apartments for twenty Jewish families. Unable to wait until she returned home to address an event of such dire import, Secretary of State Clinton pounced from Abu Dhabi, saying she was “very concerned” about this “disturbing development” that “contradicts the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties on the status of Jerusalem” (translation: is an impediment to dividing the city).  The Baroness Ashton, the EU’s current Foreign Minister, declared: “I strongly condemn this morning’s demolition of the Shepherd Hotel and the planned construction of a new illegal settlement.”  In this curious parlance, as Daniel Greenfield has noted, “the term ‘settlement’  no longer means a new town in an unsettled region, it now simply means a place where Jews live.”
But to change the framework of debate Israel must do more than state, as it has, that the construction is undertaken “in accordance with Israeli law” and “there should be no expectation that the State of Israel will impose a ban on Jews purchasing private property in Jerusalem.”
Israel must emphasize the history of “the Shepherd Hotel”, for its destruction and  replacement by Jewish homes is fraught with high moral symbolism.  Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem, who spent World War II recruiting Muslims to serve in  Hitler’s SS, built it in the 1930s to serve as his private home.   The building has had multiple uses under British, Jordanian and then Israeli control (a military outpost, a hotel, a courthouse). Although it was sold to would-be  developer Irving Moskowitz in 1985, thanks to Israeli government foot-dragging, it has  stood empty and abandoned for the last ten years, an eyesore fenced off by barbed wire.  From Nazi ownership to derelict shell to homes where Jewish children will study and play—the story of this building is in a sense the story of the rebirth of the Jewish people in its homeland.
As Melanie Phillips rightfully says, Israel and its defenders “have been crippled or cowed by the false analysis of the enemy’s narrative” which has turned reality on its head, transforming the pan-Arab war of extermination against Israel into the oppression by Israel of the Palestinian people. Israel and its defenders have  accepted “the demonstrably absurd proposition that a Palestine state would solve the problem,” which has the effect of putting Israel and “settlements” in the dock as the barrier to its achievement.
Israel must stop going along with the damaging diplomatic game it has been playing since Oslo. It needs a spine, a strategy, a willingness to assert and confront the truth that there is no peace process—and to act accordingly, to implement its legitimate rights to its historic land.