Israel Matzav

David Landau, have you no shame?

David Landau, the editor of Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily, looks like an Orthodox Jew, but the way he speaks - in public no less - shows that his mind has joined those of his leftist colleagues in the gutter.

The New York Jewish Week reported yesterday on comments that Landau made at a dinner with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in September. I doubt that Landau made comments like that in Yeshiva (unless he was thrown out), but the bottom line is that he told Rice that the US should 'rape' Israel (and that's the less prurient language in the Jewish Week article) to force it to do whatever is necessary to bring about the creation of a 'Palestinian' state reichlet.

Following Rice’s briefing to the gathered military, academic and media elites at the dinner, the guests offered their views and comments about the Mideast impasse. Landau, who was seated next to Rice, was said to have referred to Israel as a “failed state” politically, one in need of a U.S.-imposed settlement. He was said to have implored Rice to intervene, asserting that the Israeli government wanted “to be raped”....

When contacted this week, Landau said the description was “inaccurate” and “a perversion of what I said.” He said his views had been delivered with “much more sophistication.”

But he added: “I did say that in general, Israel wants to be raped — I did use that word — by the U.S., and I myself have long felt Israel needed more vigorous U.S. intervention in the affairs of the Middle East.”

Some of you may recall that in early November, Landau admitted going 'soft' on Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert so that they could remain in power to advance the 'peace process.' So this is nothing new for him. But in an interview with the New York Sun today, Landau admitted that the quote was accurate:

"'Rape' is a word in the English language," Mr. Landau told The New York Sun yesterday as he reconstructed the event. He said several people, "from the right and from the left," spoke at the dinner, and that when his turn came, he said, "Israel, after 40 years of failing to resolve its problem of occupation," needed a push from America. "Rape it into resolving the problem," he told Ms. Rice.

Some of the participants apparently did not like the comment, Mr. Landau said, and relayed it to one of Israel's leading television reporters, Ehud Yaari, who since then has aired the quote on Israeli TV without attribution, although Mr. Landau said he had never asked that his name be concealed. "I don't go back on what I said," he said, adding that he had published similar sentiments for decades.

Even as a Jerusalem Post cub reporter in the 1970s, he said, he had pleaded with the then-undersecretary of state, Joseph Cisco, to "squeeze" Israel and the rest of the Middle East's warring parties, so they could achieve peace.

At The Augean Stables, Richard Landes points out that the problem with Landau's views is that they are masochistic (Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs):

I’m not even sure that Landau is so naive. I have friends who think that the “occupation” — which I am whitewashing by arguing that the Israelis didn’t shoot Muhammad al Durah — is such a blot on the soul of Israel that it should be ended immediately — including the division of Jerusalem. When I point out that this is likely to lead to even more violent aggression and more devastating forms of warfare, the answer is consistently: “I don’t care. Israel, if it is to be a moral state, cannot endure the corruption of its youth who must do terrible things as a result of occupying, oppressing, and humiliating another people.”

So Landau may be shrewd enough to know that these concessions will not lead to peace, indeed might well lead to war. But on the other hand, he’s almost surely not telling that to Rice, who might think twice about forcing Israel to make concessions that will make the situation worse. Of course, Who could begin to understand the toxic moral perfectionism that drives highly intelligent Israelis to take such suicidal stances? She, enamored of her Palestinian “Martin Luther King Jr.” Abu Mazen, surely thinks this is an exaggerated but well-intentioned effort to achieve peace.

And yet, consider the catastrophic potential of this “self-abnegating” advice. First, the concessions that Landau wants to make are much more likely to whet the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim appetite for destroying Israel than “changing the tide” and heading us all towards a “negotiated solution.” And this is true even if Israel came to that decision all by herself. But if Israel’s foes think that they have now turned the only serious ally Israel has, the USA, against her, then the smell of weakness and failure in their nostrils will arouse even greater hopes of ultimate victory.

The odds that this will lead to war — just as the NIE report increases the likelihood of war — are enormous. And the odds that that war will force the USA into either much more costly engagements in the Middle East, or, even worse, huge losses in this area, make his advice almost as bad for the USA as it does for Israel. The collateral damage of his single-minded opposition to the “morally corrupting” occupation is enormous. Right now the Israelis who oppose the occupation worry about the humiliation of thousands and the killing of dozens of Palestinians. When they trigger the wars their postures will invite — quod absit! — they will have an opportunity to weep over the death of millions of Israelis and Palestinians.

Landes has pegged the left quite accurately. They so believe in the moral inferiority of Israelis other than themselves, that they would be happy to get us all murdered in order to clear their semblance of a conscience and let a 'more moral' Jewish people start all over again. But for the Godless left to act with that kind of reckless disregard for the lives of their fellow Jews is one thing. For someone like David Landau, who calls himself a religious Jew and still claims to cling to the lessons he learned in Yeshiva to do so is a massive Chilul Hashem (desecration of God's name) and a betrayal of Jewish law, tradition and scholarship. Based on that line of thinking, I expect to see Landau next in Tehran kissing Ahmadinejad at a Holocaust denial conference. That would be completely in character for someone who claims to be religious and holds Landau's worldview.

Maybe it's time to start organizing a boycott of Haaretz?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:16 AM