Israel Matzav

Sever Plocker's mea culpa and the Syrian uprising

YNet columnist Sever Plocker wrote on Friday that it was a mistake for him to have called three times in the last three years for Israel to make peace with the Nazi of Damascus.

Would Israel’s current situation be worse with an Israeli embassy in Damascus and the Golan Heights mostly under Syrian sovereignty? I believe so. In that case, the Syrian rebellion would have taken a radical anti-Israel shape. The oppression and massacre by Assad’s troops against his own citizens would have been perceived as a means to enforce the peace deal. A new regime – and after all, such regime will eventually rise in Damascus – would have annulled such treaty at once.

In this respect, we should be looking at Egypt. Even though Mubarak was not toppled because of his (weak) hold on the peace treaty with Israel, and while peace did not play a key role in the revolutionary discourse, the belligerent attitude to Israel on the part of some of Egypt’s free media has been reinforced ever since democracy won. As result of the incitement, only about half of Egyptians support the peace treaty in public opinion polls.

A peace treaty with Assad would have fully collapsed a day after the Assad regime collapsed.

I am not writing on behalf of Israel’s leftist camp. I was not authorized to do so. I am writing on behalf of myself: I need to engage in some self-reflection. I need to remind myself and not forget, as I did indeed forget, the following principle: A dictator is a dictator is a dictator, and peace with him would always be handicapped, flawed, and unstable. Peace with such tyrant is immoral, undesirable and dangerous for Israel.

A few points that Plocker and others on the Left ought to consider. First, would Arab democracy mean that the Arab world accepts Israel? Plocker dismisses last week's Pew poll that found that more than 30 years after Camp David, 54% of Egyptians want to annul their treaty with Israel, while only 36% want to keep it. Plocker attributes that to 'incitement.' Is that really the case? Who did the inciting? Was there inciting before the Mubarak government fell? I would argue that a free-voting Arab democracy would not accept Israel.

Second, if we shouldn't be making peace with dictators, why do Plocker and others in his camp support negotiations with the likes of 'Mahmoud Abbas' (Abu Mazen) who is now in office more than two years after his term expired? What expectations for peace do they have from King Abdullah of Jordan (who would love an excuse to be rid of his father's treaty) or from Mubarak's successors in Egypt?

Third, shouldn't we give time - a lot of time - to develop trusting relationships with our Arab neighbors before we consider turning our strategic assets over to them? Why then do Plocker and his friends on the Left insist on giving everything away as quickly as possible?

Plocker inspired Syrian anti-government blogger Farid Ghadry, who has finally figured out that the reason the West is protecting Assad is because he's so good at tormenting Israelis. Ghadry wants Israel to join the fight against Assad.

What can Israel do? Fight back by fighting on behalf of the Syrian people.

Today, Erdogan has lost all credibility in Syria because he is oscillating between the people and Assad and Syrians smell a rat. Ahmadinejad is dispatching his IRGC killers and Hezbollah murderers to kill Syrians. They know it. Saudi Arabia is numb and dumb, at the leadership level that is. Egypt is busy with its own Revolution. And those scoundrels Hamas and the MB, after failing to get a deal with Assad to rule with him with Erdogan’s help, just yesterday supported the Revolution in Syria. Only seven weeks late, that’s all. Hamas is being kicked out of Syria because they did not agree to Assad’s terms. [Hamas denies this. CiJ]

If Benjamin Netanyahu comes out in support of the Syrian people, vocally and publicly, he will be our hero. Not Assad, not Erdogan, and not the dead beats in the Gulf. Impossible you say? Show me a loss column then. There is a huge vacuum in Syria today because they feel the world has left them. BB, fill the vacuum.

This will be a PR of gargantuan proportions. Already Syrians are calling from inside Dara’a and Latakya for Israel to save them. Would it not be something if Israelis share their fate with that of the Syrians to stop our torture by a leftist conspiracy in the US and Europe?

I'll tell you what. I'm happy to see Bibi come out in favor of the Syrian revolutionaries. But I want to know what's going to happen when the revolution is over. I blogged the Iranian uprising in 2009 and I blogged the Egyptian uprising a few months ago, and each time I asked bloggers in those countries whether - if they won - they'd have normal relations with Israel when it was over, I was told that it was irrelevant and that we could talk about it afterward.

Well, it's not irrelevant. Too many times, we Israelis have sent humanitarian and other aid to countries that wouldn't even acknowledge our existence. And we pack up and leave and they forget that we exist again. But at least in those cases, no one shoots at us. Netanyahu coming out in favor of the Syrian rebels runs the risk that Assad starts shooting chemical weapons at us. In fact, it might be just what he needs to unify the people of Syria behind him. And that's without even considering the idea (which may be what Ghadry has in mind) of having Israel risk our troops' lives to overthrow Assad.

So will Israel coming out on the side of the rebels - whether with humanitarian assistance or with troops - going to mean that the Syrians unit behind Assad? Or will Israel coming out on the side of the rebels mean that we can have a real peace - or at least real negotiations for peace without preconditions?

Ball's in your court Farid. What happens the day after the war ends?

Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Binyamin Netanyahu, Syrian uprising

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:41 AM