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PARTISAN REVIEW
tactical propagandist and political reasons-though to little avail.
Appeasement and denial did not help the West then and for the Jewish
people it proved to be a catastrophic mistake. Mr. Bush appears to have
learned that lesson in crushing the Taliban in Afghanistan. Israel, too,
finally seems ready to do the same with regard to the Palestinian
Authority.
Now, as then, we face an implacable enemy-an Islamic fascism
which exploits the Palestinian problem as the ultimate "just cause," the
revolutionary prologue to global jihad. But though their ideology and
long-term goals may be different, the Palestinian Authority under Arafat
shares with the Muslim radicals of the Hamas an ontological hostility
to Israel and fierce desire to see its demise.
The vicious anti-Jewish hysteria of Durban this summer provided
under the cloak of "anti-racism" and the UN Human Rights umbrella
the political prelude to the Twin Towers massacre.
It
showed that the
"Palestinian cause" has once more become the main vehicle for seeking
to destroy the moral foundations of Israel's existence as an intrinsically
"criminal," "genocidal," and racist state built upon systematic "ethnic
cleansing." This ideological Trojan Horse of "anti-racist" Judeophobia
masquerading as anti-Zionism has over the past thirty years sought to
undermine Israel and the West from within. It is a deadly political tool
that the Islamic fascists, like the more "mainstream" PLO, have cleverly
manipulated to intoxicate millions of naive people. The "hurricane of
fire" in Manhattan and the recent suicide bombings in Jerusalem and
Haifa were not just a warning-they are a final wake-up call to the
West, Israel, and the Jewish people.
-December
4,
2001
