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David Horovitz: Heďż˝s Winning

Deportation, if not execution, is looming. But Yasser Arafat must be feeling fairly contented, nonetheless. Three years after he chose not to legimitize Jewish Israel at Camp David, and at the trifling cost of just a few thousand Palestinian dead, his relentless effort at overwhelming the Jewish state seems to be starting to pay off.

Very soon now, thereďż˝ll be more Arabs than Jews between the river and the sea. And yet Israel, to Arafatďż˝s unquestionable delight, still shrinks from the critical debate about how much of this territory our existential interest demands we retain or relinquish.

Even within sovereign Israel, the proportion of Jews is dwindling, and not solely because of the higher Arab birth rate. The flow of immigration from the former Soviet Union is drying up, and thousands of those who came here are already heading elsewhere -- in part because of the violent instability Arafat has fostered. A stream of veteran Israelis, too, is flowing overseas; however resilient we are proving in grappling with the relentless, nationwide effort to murder our civilians, everybody has a breaking point. If living daily in the dark shadow of terror is not bad enough, an inability to feed your family because there is no work or it pays too poorly can also constitute an irresistible imperative to look elsewhere. And the widening, government-perpetuated economic inequalities, which see a tiny proportion of Israelis thriving while the rest of the nation sinks into poverty, hardly engender internal solidarity. We may be more powerful than ever in strictly military terms. We could pulverize the region in 48 hours. But our strength in depth, as a nation, is undermined with each passing day.

Diaspora Jews have, overwhelmingly, turned their backs on Israel under the terrorist threat -- only an admirable minority (many of them readers of this magazine) have been prepared to put their lives on the line and set foot here these past three years. And the long-term implications of the disconnect run both ways: isolation for Israel, and a dwindling number of Diaspora Jews energized by the Israel experience into both pro-Israel activism and domestic community involvement.

Money from the Diaspora is coming harder, too. There is a limit to how often campaign directors can scream "emergency" to donors. In many of this yearďż˝s federation campaign videos, Israel looks like a Third World basket case -- all terror victims and depressed storekeepers over a soundtrack of wailing violins -- an approach designed to persuade givers to dig deeper but one that carries a very real risk of alienating them. And not smart either -- when there is resilience and innovation to highlight too.

By keeping visitors away, terrorism is also depriving would-be supporters of a firsthand understanding of what is going on here. And that is hugely debilitating at a time when Israelďż˝s very legitimacy is under growing assault, with Palestinian and pro-Palestinian speakers continuing to outmaneuver an Israel whose own senior ministers and officials often alienate both their overseas counterparts and open-minded public audiences with what seems like arrogance. The Israeli power-point presentation to U.S. defense officials for loan guarantees was described as interminable and incomprehensible to many who saw it; we were granted the financial assistance despite, not because of, the way we formulated the request.

Arafat, master of the dramatic media appearance -- V-signs and blown kisses to the thousands his TV anchorman had summoned into the streets -- must laugh himself silly at the Israeli spokesmen who, in striking contrast to Arafatďż˝s reasonable-sounding professionals, still shout at their interviewers and impose sulking boycotts of networks they donďż˝t like; at the absence of women; at the hesitant ambassadors; at the lack of a consistent message. Watch in horror now as assured, soft-spoken Palestinian officials like Michael Tarazi begin to hype the one-state solution as the best way to bring peace to the Middle East, artfully marketing the elimination of Israel as a vital contribution to regional stability and to the well-being of Jews, Christians and Muslims. And wait in vain for an effective Israeli response.

Arafat must have marveled at his good fortune when an Israeli would-be prime minister, putting his own ambition ahead of the national interest, and seeking to depict himself as a hard-liner to find favor with his own party hawks, strengthened and safeguarded him still further by calling for his murder. And he must be rejoicing, too, at the sight of George W. Bush, the president who seemed to be so much more powerful a nemesis than Ariel Sharon, isolated at the U.N., embroiled ever deeper in Iraq, and sliding in popularity at home. Bush wants to give international legitimacy to Israelďż˝s claim of Arafat as terrorist, but when the General Assembly votes, one wonders who is on the margins: Arafat and the 133 nations who want to protect him, or the U.S.-Israel-Micronesia-Marshall Islands quartet?

Arafat has shrugged off the relatively moderate Mahmud Abbasďż˝s half-hearted effort to usurp him -- and in the process exposed Israelďż˝s unwarranted claim to have marginalized him. And it is hard to envisage any new, moderate initiative gaining popular Palestinian support in the near future. That is partly, it must be said, because Israel has failed these past three years to provide sufficient incentive for Palestinian moderation. Why risk oneďż˝s life to challenge Hamas, when the Israeli government is no longer clearly promising viable terms for coexistence if you do so? But it is mostly because of Arafatďż˝s own relentless assault on Israeli and Jewish legitimacy through his schools, his media and the use of hard cash.

So, yes, time is inevitably running out for Arafat, but he must be confident that the sheer weight of numbers will gradually have its way, and that no Palestinian leader will emerge to thwart the demographic slide toward a single, binational state by cutting a deal with an Israel that shows no sign of truly internalizing the existential danger.

Someone asked me the other day: What are the chances of a rational Palestinian leader emerging to challenge or succeed Arafat? But what has Arafat done that is irrational? Appalling, of course. Murderous. But irrational? Quite the reverse.