Masada Complex to U.N. Complex

Masada Complex to U.N. Complex

By Avraham Azrieli*

“It’s true that we have the Masada Complex,” Golda Meir famously told President Nixon.  “We also have a Pogrom Complex.  We have a Hitler Complex too.”

The Masada Complex is defined as “the conviction that it’s better to die than to lose political independence.”  It originates with the mass suicide of the last free Jewish rebels on the last night of the Roman siege on the mountainous fortress by the Dead Sea.

Today’s siege on Jewish independence is perpetrated not by warriors in togas riding on giant ramming machines, but by men in suits and ties who utilize lies and U.N. resolutions.

The deadly civility cloaking this modern siege is embodied in a mantra-like message:  “The return to the 1967 borders and the repatriation of the refugees will solve the Arab-Israeli conflict.”  Incessant repetition has turned this proclamation into an article of diplomatic faith, but every component of it is a clever lie.

The “1967 borders” to which Israel is pressured to withdraw are actually the 1949 armistice lines that left it nine miles wide after the Arabs attacked the Jewish state at its birth.  But this demand is so unreasonable, unjust and illogical that everyone says “the 1967 borders” and winks.

The repatriation of the refugees is not about the nearly million Jewish refugees expelled in 1948 from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, losing their homes, businesses and assets.  Those refugees have built new lives in Israel through hard work and determination.  The repatriation demand applies to the Arab refugees who left their homes voluntarily in 1948 to make way for the Arab armies that came to kill the Jews—in rejection of the very same two-state partition they’re supposedly ready to take now, having spent six decades drinking coffee and playing backgammon in UNRWA’s camp-cities.

Ending human suffering is a noble goal, and the abundant Mideast land and petrodollars could easily provide permanent homes for the remaining career refugees.  But “repatriation” is not about a peaceful solution, but about a final solution:  Ending Israel’s Jewish majority and killing the Zionist dream.

Most revealing is the Arabs’ refusal to negotiate peace unless Jews stop building homes in settlements in the West Bank.  Every lawyer and diplomat know that setting preconditions to negotiations is a way to avoid negotiations altogether.  It seems that the Arabs’ biggest fear is that another Israeli prime minister would agree, as Ben Gurion, Rabin, Barak and Ulmert had agreed, to practically all of the Palestinians’ demands.

The settlements precondition implies that the future “State of Palestine” will be Judenfrei like all other Arab countries.  At the same time, in the sliver of land left for Israel, nearly two-million Arab-Israeli citizens will continue to live and build homes, vote in elections, and serve in the Knesset, the government and the Supreme Court.  But Jews will be banned from the other half of their ancestral land, including the holy cities of Hebron, where my family’s roots are centuries’ deep, Beth El, Bethlehem and most of Old Jerusalem.  Where else would the U.N. bless such ethnic cleansing?

And what are the chances of success for this new Palestine?  Unlike any other people demanding independence—Kurds, Basques, or Tibetans—the Palestinians share no distinct language, faith, folklore, customs, ideology or national history.  Building a new society requires unique national identity, yet it appears that the only distinct “Palestinian” trait is hate for Jews.

While it’s all smoke and mirrors through the prism of pretend peacemaking, everything comes into sharp focus through recognition that there is no Arab-Israeli conflict, but rather a one-sided Muslim ambition to destroy Israel and drive all Jews (and Christians) from the region.

Fittingly, as huge outdoor TV screens showed the U.N. General Assembly giving Abbas a standing ovation, the crowd in Ramallah chanted:  “God is great!  With our souls and blood we will free you, Palestine!”  Does this sound like a cry for peace with Israel?

As a novelist, I am fascinated by evil because it is so often swathed in righteousness, because the most horrible acts are frequently committed by people who believe they are the good guys.  Hence the U.N.’s enthusiastic embrace of Palestine—a new country founded on hate.  As the cliché goes, it’s better than fiction.

And to paraphrase Golda Meir, we do have a Masada Complex.  We also have a Pogrom Complex, a Hitler Complex and, after decades of thinly veiled anti-Semitic resolutions, we now have a U.N. Complex.  Can you blame us?

* Avraham Azrieli is the author of The Masada Complex – A Novel.  www.AzrieliBooks.com

Copyright © 2011. This article may be shared, emailed, or reprinted without specific permission.