Yoram Ettinger spoke on 3/27/05 at the Jewish Russian Center in Brighton in front of a group of about forty people at the invitation of the Land of Israel Committee and the Americans for a Safe Israel. Ambassador Ettinger made a very strong impression on his audience. Below are main points of his speech:
- "Disengagement" is seen as cut and run by the Arab street. This is placed by the US enemies right next to evacuation of US Marines from Beirut in 1983, Somalia in 1993, Israel's flight from South Lebanon in 2000.
- Since Israel left the inside of Gaza it needs three time as many soldiers to protect the border with Gaza
- Americans are fairly indifferent to the idea of "disengagement" -- clear sign of it is complete lack of any financial "carrot" which is usually attached to a foreign policy desired by US. The whole shameful idea originated in the minds of Israeli politicians whom Yoram Ettinger characterized as being "weak of mind and weak of spine".
- The key and the only solution is the complete elimination of PA and PLO. Hunting for suicide bombers while negotiating with Abbas would be similar to US forces in Iraq hunting for lone terrorists while leaving Saddam in Bagdad.
- The myth of dovish Israel public is just that -- a myth. During last fifteen years when given a choice Israeli always voted for strong people only to have their confidence betrayed by politicians of all parties.
- The question" "What happened to Arik Sharon?" is the same as the question "What happened to the rest of them?" Namely Rabin, Netanyahu, and Barak -- all of them campaigned on a position of strength.
- Finally, the last, but not the least. The Demographic threat about importance of which the left talked so much is a dud, canard, myth, propaganda fabrication. In a way, we, Russian Jews are an unwilling contributor to the impulse of creating this myth. Massive immigration of Russian Jews to Israel forces Palestinians to come up with a response, and they did. They invented a 1.5 million more Palestinians. Yoram Ettinger was one of the authors of a demographic report based exclusively on Palestinian sources which debunked the myth of a demographic threat. (See a related article in the Jerusalem Post, here is a report authored by Ettinger)
posted by: jrtelegraph
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