The Jerusalem Post Krauthammer: Israel has abandoned Oslo messianism June 11, 2002 Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's vision of a "new Middle East," as espoused over the last decade, is a lethal form of secular messianism that has led to the worst bloodletting in Israel's history, internationally acclaimed American columnist Charles Krauthammer said last night. "Israel has at long last awoken from the most devastating messianic reverie - the Oslo Agreements," Krauthammer said last night at a Jerusalem lecture, where he was presented with Bar-Ilan University's annual Guardian of Zion Award. Calling the 1993 Oslo Accords "the most catastrophic and self-inflicted wound by any state in modern history," which was based on "an extreme expression of post-Zionistic messianism," Krauthammer said that the secular messianism espoused by Peres was more dangerous than the religious messianism of Gush Emunim or certain followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe because of its impact on shaping contemporary Jewish history. "For the messianic Israeli left, Oslo was more than a deal, it was a ratification [in their minds] of a new era in modern history, a new era in human relations and a radical break in history which they declared was occurring not at some point in the future, but now," he said. "In the 1990's America slept and Israel dreamed," said the New York-born and Montreal-raised Krauthammer, whose weekly syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group which now appears in over 100 newspapers, including The Jerusalem Post won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for distinguished commentary. "The US awoke [after the terror attacks on America] in September 2001 and Israel awoke [after the start of Palestinian violence] in September 2000," he said. "Like the Israeli Left, the US in the 1990s was intoxicated with the idea that history had changed from military conflict to a world of markets and technology. September 11 abolished that illusion and taught us that there are ideological enemies who care nothing about economics, and like in the old history of war of one God against another, will use all military means to attain their goals," he said. Krauthammer, one of the few American columnists to warn from the start that the Oslo peace accords were a fraud and deception that were doomed to failure, said that talk of Israeli-Palestinian economic and technological cooperation as espoused in Oslo was an "insane" idea which was based on a "dangerous mirage" of those who sought to transpose the entirely different idea of EU cooperation on the Middle East. "Israel labored seven long years until reality declared itself with former prime minister Barak's astonishing conciliatory offer at Camp David [in July 2000], which was met by Arafat with suicide bombings and terrorism," he said. Declaring that peace is "not impossible," but contingent on an Arab willingness to live in coexistence with the Jewish state, Krauthammer said: "The idea that one can strike a real peace agreement with [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat without a Sadat-like acceptance of the Jewish state is an illusion." In contrast to what he saw as the secular messianism espoused by Peres, Krauthammer said Zionism was the very antithesis to messianism, in that it was against Jews waiting in the Diaspora for a last-minute miracle to occur. In contrast to the Oslo Accords, which were dependent on the will of Arafat, Krauthammer said "Zionism was a movement based on self-reliance, self-realization, and a refusal to depend on others. Zionism accepted the world precisely as it is and because of that Jews saw that they had no future in the Diaspora and that they must go and build a state for themselves in Zion." The full text of Krauthammer's speech can be read on Bar-Ilan University's Web site at www.biu.ac.il (Actually, it can't be 'read' but it can be heard.) |
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