Through the Looking-Glass

The trauma of disengagement has left all of us with mixed emotions. Anger at the government's trampling of the democratic process and the human rights of Israeli citizens. Deep sadness for our brothers and sisters many of whom are still displaced in refugee camps living on handouts. And yet, above all else, immense pride in the humanity of our extraordinary and well-chosen people. But, of all the sights and sounds of disengagement, it is its fiery finalé that will remain etched on our collective memory for decades to come. The Kristallnacht of Katif provided a stark and compelling preview of what awaits us at the end of the Road Map and whatever follows it in the so-called peace process. It is of course possible that Palestinian Arabs may genuinely wish for peaceful co-existence with Israel. But such sentiments will be irrelevant so long as the aim of their controllers in Saudi Arabia and Iran is nothing less than the total erasure of the Jewish state. They will not rest so long as a single synagogue stands on - what bin Laden likes to call - ‘Mohammed’s Peninsula’. In leaving them synagogues to burn in the Gush, we enabled our enemies to touch something they had previously only dreamed of. After Barak retreated from Lebanon in the middle of the night, they started to believe they could actually defeat the army of Israel. Now they see the IDF as useful allies in the ethnic cleansing of Jews within their own homeland. And who needs to develop longer-range Kassams when the Jews will happily draw the border closer to Ashkelon? Sadly the gift of empowerment was not limited to our Arab enemies. Worse still was Sharon’s empowerment of the Left and the resuscitation of a pipe-dreaming “Peace Now” movement that Oslo had almost totally killed off. These elements act like an auto-immune virus eating away at its own host. Together with their soulmates in the Supreme Court, the Ugandan Zionists of the Left seem happy to give up anything short of Haifa and Ramat Aviv to ingratiate themselves with the European Union and will support any proposal that empowers Arab rights at the expense of Jewish national aspirations. We shall only be able to stop this rot through the ballot box. But next time our campaign must be headed by a Likud leader who will hand his defeated opponent a spade instead of a Vice Premiership ●