A Durable Peace (58 page)

Astonishingly, some hold the view that Israel should actually give up the battle for public opinion. Thus, an Israeli daily
in the early nineties explained that the Labor government then ruling Israel considered Israeli diplomats to be “discharged
from the burden of aggressive public relations”; the government, it said, is “declaring a unilateral cease-fire in the media
war” and “promises not to be dragged into responding to the provocations of the Arab spokesmen.”
⁷
How effective a strategy this is was demonstrated in December 1992 when the new Labor government deported over four hundred
Hamas Islamic fundamentalist organizers and in-citers to Lebanon—making no provision whatsoever to stave off the public relations
disaster that ensued when the deportees encamped themselves on a hillside near Israel’s border and before the cameras of the
world. Essentially, an Israeli media cease-fire amounts to capitulation: doing away with the presentation of realities and
simply expressing Israel’s peaceful intentions in the hope
that this will suffice to protect the country politically. This view fails to grasp the significance of the ceaseless campaign
of vilification aimed at Israel by the Arab regimes, regardless of which party is in power in Jerusalem. The absence of a
credible effort to explain Israel’s position to the world over the last few decades has led to one political defeat after
another, and as long as only the Arab side is doing the explaining, the situation can only go from bad to worse.

As for Israel’s messengers, its ministers, parliamentarians, and diplomats will have to become adept at communicating with
international audiences. The diplomats, in fact, ought to be chosen in the first instance with these capacities in mind. Israel
will have to recruit the sharpest minds and most eloquent pens to refute the many lies hurled at it and to present the truth.
In the technical sense, this requires an overhaul of the government ministries involved, defining differently, for example,
the job of a diplomat and recruiting candidates accordingly. It also requires a radically different level of staffing and
funding to engage in research, publication, broadcasting, and press relations. Such reforms of Israel’s information apparatus
can take place only with the political reforms that will make available the authority needed to sweep clean the existing information
barns.

Of course, to some Israelis and perhaps to some non-Israeli readers of this book, all this is not necessary. Israel, they believe,
will be coddled by the world when it pursues the
right
policies. Presumably this means getting rid of the hateful “territories,” since, these people believe, all of Israel’s ills
stem from the fateful days in June 1967, when it took possession of these lands. They forget the terrible campaigns of terror
and warfare launched against the Jews and the Jewish state by the Arab world half a century before the Six Day War. They erase
from their minds the peril in which Israel found itself on the eve of that war and the fact that it was from these very mountains
that the attack was launched. They forget, too, that the demands placed on Israel will not end with the evacuation of the
West Bank (as they did not end with the evacuation of the Sinai). After pocketing the territories, the Arabs
could go back to demanding eastern Jerusalem, the “right of return,” autonomy (and later independence) for the Arabs of the
Galilee and the Negev, and more—demands that would place Israel in even greater danger, and against which Israel would still
have to struggle on the world scene to defend itself. The need for waging a worldwide public information campaign is not going
to disappear with changing political circumstances.

In a world that has been conditioned to see Israel as the heavy, every Israeli retreat from positions under dispute with the
Arabs will naturally be applauded. Israel will be patted on the back and congratulated as long as it continues to make unilateral
concessions. But once an Israeli government decides, as it inevitably must, to draw a line beyond which it cannot retreat,
the international applause will cease—and pressure will begin again. Hence the test of Israeli diplomacy is not whether it
can gain short-term sympathy by sacrificing Israel’s vital interests, but whether it can protect these interests while securing
international understanding and support. To yield to pressure for the sake of ephemeral international praise is as tempting
as it is short-sighted. To be firm about vital matters and to earn the respect of nations for this stance is much more difficult,
but ultimately more prudent and responsible. The school of thought that holds that Israel’s public relations problem would
end with the establishment of a Palestinian state is wrong. In such a case Israel would be faced with an existential threat
and
a public relations nightmare, as Arab irreden-tism turns its focus on the Arab population within the remainder of Israel.
Resisting an outcome so reminiscent of 1938 Czechoslovakia, or of Lebanon and the Balkans today, is critical for the continued
existence of the Jewish state. Israel must direct the current of public opinion rather than agree to being swept along by
it toward the political cataract downstream.

Many of those Israelis who believe that influencing public opinion is unimportant do so because they have adopted a significant
portion of the Arabs’ revision of the truth: They have come to accept that the reason Israel has been attacked by the Arab
world since 1967 is because of its victory in the Six Day War. This is the ultimate in siege mentality: If I am besieged,
I must have done something wrong. And if my enemy tells me to lower the drawbridge or else he will continue the siege, I must
surely do as he says and relieve myself of the burden of his disapproval. (There are various rationalizations for this course
of action: The enemy is not an enemy, the siege is not a siege, the protecting wall does not protect, and so on.) Moreover,
argue the rationalizers, the situation on the outside has dramatically changed. Has not the world transformed itself, with
old enemies becoming new friends everywhere? Why should Israel be the sad exception to this happy rule? Let us lower our defenses,
embrace our adversaries, and live in everlasting tranquillity with one another.

The fact that many parts of the world may indeed be changing for the better does not mean that Israel’s immediate vicinity
is doing the same. Despite the good news that a regime such as Syria has been brought to the negotiating table as a result
of the collapse of its Soviet sponsor, the fact remains that in many ways the neighborhood has been changing for the worse.
It has certainly not improved. Has Saddam really changed for the better? Has Qaddafi? Is there an Iraqi Lech Walesa in the
wings? An Iranian Vaclav Havel? The Middle East’s numerous predator regimes remain unreformed, Arab arms purchases from West
and East continue to escalate, and there is no longer a need to look for Soviet approval before embarking on the next adventure.
Worse, Islamic fundamentalism continues to gather momentum. Worse still, the development of nuclear weapons by Arab states
and Iran continues at a feverish pace. Yet none of this seems to matter to those who readily dismiss these problems as nitpicking,
spoiling the picture they so desperately want to see outside the wall.

Sometimes these same Israelis offer a variation on their recipe for despair. What’s the use of resisting Arab demands, they
ask, if the United States and the other powers of the world are irredeemably committed to supporting those demands? How will
Israel ever secure American favor if it does not comply with American conditions?
It does not cross the minds of these advocates of capitulation that the task of Israel’s leaders is to try to
convince
the American government that it is in the interest of the United States to follow policies that cohere with Israeli interests,
not vice versa. This, after all, is the basic purpose of foreign policy for any country—to pursue one’s own interests, not
those of others.

Curiously, the advocates of this submissive posture fail to recognize that the United States is a vibrant democracy in which
various forces affect the shaping of policy: the administration, the Congress, and especially popular opinion. Each of these
audiences is
eager
to hear a variety of viewpoints and is very much open to persuasion. American policy toward Israel is ultimately determined
by the synthesis of all these forces, and Israel has every fair opportunity to try to convince each of them of the justice
of its case. Even those who have
no
case make this effort, and Israel cannot afford not to. As in the 1930s, when the Jews were paralyzed and did not make the
case against the aspects of British policy so inimical to their interests and had forgone the attempts to appeal to a public
and a parliament still very much favorable to them, so today there exists in Israel and in parts of the Jewish world elsewhere
a faction that abhors the idea of an activist opposition to the policies dangerous to Israel that may come out of Washington,
in the belief that such opposition would itself endanger Israel’s relationship with the United States.

This is preposterously circular reasoning. It is not to Israel’s advantage to sacrifice its most vital interests for a relationship
that is meant to
safeguard
those interests in the first place. Furthermore, this thinking does not take into account the appreciation in Washington,
as in many other places, of a sound argument cogently made and powerfully backed by resolute will. The weak and timid may
do well for a while, but not for very long. In international politics, in fact in domestic politics too, strength attracts
and weakness ultimately repels.

This is true not only in the battle for public opinion (in which a powerful presentation attracts support and a weak one does
not) but also in enhancing the possibility of obtaining the support of governments even before the factor of public opinion
is introduced. There is a tendency to forget that substantial foreign aid to Israel was not forthcoming between 1948 and 1967,
when Israel was perceived as being fragile and endangered. The dramatic rise of American support for Israel began only
after
the Six Day War, when Israel resoundingly defeated the Arabs, captured the territories against terrific odds, and proved beyond
a doubt that it was the preeminent military power in the Middle East—an assumption that was confirmed in September 1970, when
Israeli power was used to prevent a Syrian takeover of Jordan. Those who constantly plead for a return to the eggshell borders
of pre-1967 never seem to take these facts into account, ironically claiming that possession of the territories will jeopardize
American aid. In fact, nothing is more likely to jeopardize American support for Israel than the return of Israel to a condition
of chronic vulnerability. No nation in the world will choose to ally itself with Israel because it has returned to parading
the virtue of Jewish powerlessness.

The same applies to economic powerlessness. An economically weak Israel inspires no desire for alliances, either economic
or political. But an Israel that shakes off the political and bureaucratic manacles that have shackled its economy is being
quickly transformed into a significant economic power that others would seek to join, much as Taiwan and South Korea were
able to overcome their political isolation by demonstrating substantial economic strength. Moreover, since American aid to
Israel is in any case going to be greatly reduced in the coming years due to domestic forces unrelated to the Middle East,
Israel’s economic focus should be on attracting American investments rather than American philanthropy. The result would be
an increased American interest in Israel, even greater than the one that existed during the years of American-Soviet rivalry.
This is the policy that I embarked on, for the first time actually reducing Israel’s dependence on American financial support,
while rigorously privatizing and liberalizing Israel’s economy.

Some believe that the fact that the Soviet Union has collapsed and poses no more threat to American and Western interests
in the region has irrevocably altered Israel’s importance to the United States and to the West. I do not share this view.
The collapse of the Soviets has merely replaced one type of threat with another. The Soviets were very careful to control
the aggressive impulses of their clients, and they always knew when to pull back from an engagement that might escalate into
a direct confrontation with American military power. Further, they were exceptionally careful not to allow any Soviet nuclear
technology to reach the regimes allied with them, perhaps because they were fully acquainted with the terrible dangers that
such technology in such hands might pose. But this is precisely the danger that the world faces today. Iraq, Iran, and Syria
are now all vying to develop nuclear weapons and the missile systems to deliver them. The demise of the Soviet Union has enabled
the unrestrained growth of the militant regimes in the Middle East, with no one in the region to continually check either
their ambitions or their obsessive plans for armament—no one, that is, other than Israel, which is both willing and able to
act in its own defense and thereby safeguard the broader interest of peace. The international community is not likely to station
a permanent countervailing military force in the region anytime soon, even if the Arabs were to allow it, and the need for
such a force is not going to disappear. In many ways Israel serves this purpose. Were it not for Israel, Jordan certainly
would have been swallowed by its neighbors in short order, and the radical regimes of Syria and Iraq would now have little
to obstruct their advance—unless the United States is prepared to reprise its performance in the Gulf War every few years.

A strong Israel introduces a measure of stability into an ultimately unstable region. A weak Israel does not. Consumed at
every moment by the need to devote all its resources to protect its own fragile borders, it will not be able to contribute
its part to deterring armed attacks from radical states in the region, or to reducing their capacity to launch international
terrorism or interdict
the sea lanes. These are real dangers that have not passed from the world with the disappearance of Soviet power; in fact,
they may actually increase in the coming years. Israel shares a common interest with many other countries to ward off these
threats, and such common ground can be the basis of important political alliances that can be formed in the future.