By: Gerald A. Honigman
President Bush spent the New Year holiday hunting quail with George Sr. and James Baker, a close family friend. Chances are pretty good that they traveled farther to do this than the State of Israel is in width. Now I have nothing against hunting per se, as long as it's done in a sustainable way to put food on the table.
Only vegetarians have a right to protest this, and I'm not there yet. Furthermore, while I voted for the other guy, I'm no Bush-basher either...although I have problems with the family's oil ties and related worrisome environmental record. But I'll probably vote for Dubya the next time around anyway.
So what bothers me here isn't the quail that are being hunted or the hunters. My problem lies with the influence James " _ _ _ _ the Jews they don't vote for us anyway " Baker continues to have on the presidential family and an even more bothersome worry that the family shares many of these same ideas with or without Baker's influence. I have a feeling that Daddy and James are peas of the same pod here, but I was hoping, despite the odds, for something better from the son. He quotes, after all, from Joshua in the Hebrew Bible...but then apparently espouses Judea becoming Judenrein in the next breath.
While Bush the First was at the helm, widespread published reports circulated that Secretary of State Baker promised Hafez al-Assad the same deal on the Golan Heights as Egypt's Sadat received in the Sinai Peninsula...a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces. And this was prior to negotiations between the parties themselves... a promise Baker evidently made to Saddam's virtual twin butcher, author of the "Hama Solution," etc.
Hama was the town that dared oppose Assad and suffered tens of thousands of casualties within a few months as a result...far more than Arabs have suffered after several years of intifada and suicide bombings against Israel. And with no United Nations' inquiries either. And I won't even get into Syria's atrocities against its own non-Arab Kurds a la Saddam in Iraq.
Presidents Bush and Baker know full well how Syria used its position on the Golan prior to '67 to rain death on Israeli kibbutzim and fishermen in the Sea of Galilee below. And they also know the losses Israel took to end that state of affairs when war was forced upon it—largely via Syria's instigations and game playing with Nasser's Egypt—in 1967. Had it not been for Israeli forward positions on the Golan, it was an easy downhill assault into Israel proper when Syria attacked in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. And if you believe that Israel was attacked to simply retrieve "occupied lands," I have two bridges to sell you.
The passes Israel now controls greatly prevent a renewed Syrian assault. Additionally, much of Israel's water supply originates in this area...a vulnerability Syria is well aware of and has tried to cash in on in the past. So what gives here? Up until now, it looked like George W. was able to distance himself from the troublesome record of the past. His Dad's venomous attack against Israel when the latter launched its surgical strike against Saddam's Osirik nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 still haunts my memory. It angered too many of his Arab oil buddies and their State Department allies.
But as the months now progress after the toppling of Saddam in Iraq, the President's line in the Middle East sounds more and more like the same one constantly pushed by Daddy, Baker, and Foggy Bottom: "Justice for Arabs and _ _ _ _ everyone else." Has anyone heard of a "roadmap" for some thirty million stateless Kurds yet? Arabs must have a 23rd state, but Kurds are forbidden even one.
Nauseating. America can acquire, conquer, or whatever land and manipulate, topple, or whatever governments in the name of its own national security interests, but how dare Israel build a fence to keep Arab bombers from blowing up its kids that does not precisely cling to its pre-'67, 9-mile wide armistice line existence or insist that a compromise is in order to assure that Baby Assad doesn't follow in Papa's footsteps. Right now he has an incentive not to do so: Israeli long range artillery on the Golan are in a position to potentially do unto Damascus what Damascus actually did unto Jews for two decades prior to '67.
Every military personality who has visited the Golan from abroad has given the same advice: Israel would have to be suicidal to return to the status quo ante bellum here. Israel doesn't have the wriggle room on the Golan or in Judea and Samaria / West Bank that it had in the Sinai. Yet reports are now coming out that Washington is concerned that Israel is solidifying its position on the Golan and will put the squeeze on here as it has done vis-à-vis the West Bank.
All of this sounds too much like another Baker/State "done deal" scheme with G_d knows what kind of behind the scenes' pressure being exerted on Ariel Sharon. While territorial compromise to create "secure and recognized borders" to replace Israel's 1948 armistice lines a la UN Resolution #242 are in order regarding the territories, a unilateral retreat to reward terrorism and Arab rejectionism forced upon Israel by its shades of Munich "friends" is a disgrace. And it has the stamp of James Baker all over it.
No, once again, the problem has nothing to do with quail. But it is about demanding that Israelis remain forever as sitting ducks, for that is what a return to the pre-'67 armistice lines amounts too. Let's try less sympathy for dead Jews and a little more empathy for live ones for a change.
