Tales of the Knesset: Warnings from the Past

In Israel, in the late spring of 1977, the left-wing Labour Party of David Ben-Gurion, which had dominated the politics of modern Israel from its establishment in 1948, was suddenly swept from power and replaced as the top power broker there by a right-wing coalition primarily dominated by the Likud Party. The leader of this party at the time was Menachem Begin, who has been called one of the most successful terrorists of the 20th century for his gruesome operations as leader of the Zionist-underground terror organization Irgun Zvai Le’umi. During the remainder of 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, also in his first year of office, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance repeatedly tried to get the new Begin-Likud government to consider honoring the agreements Israel (as a political entity) had originally made with the United Nations on May 12, 1949 at the Lausanne Conference as condition for its entry into the international community as a member nation-state. This now familiar, cyclical song-and-dance procedure to get Israel to honor its initial 1949 UN member-state commitments has become known as the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, or the Road Map to Nowhere.

In the Los Angeles Times, a member of the Israeli Parliament at the time, Arie Lova Eliav, is quoted in an article entitled “The Fairy Tale Status of U.S.-Israeli Ties,” as saying:

“After Secretary of State Vance’s recent visit to Israel, I rose to deliver a speech to the Knesset. Opening a volume of Hans Christian Andersen fables, I read aloud to my colleagues the well-known story ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’.

“This fairy tale, unfortunately, reflects the status of current U.S.-Israel relations. Because both the Israeli and American governments want fervently to believe that their mutual interests are growing ever greater and that peace in the Mideast is looming ever closer, they pretend it is so, just as the emperor’s subjects pretended that he was arrayed in expensive finery. But behind the outward trappings of mutual respect and goodwill—exhibited by government officials in flattering eulogies and carefully worded proclamations of optimism—stands the all-too-naked truth: The policies of Prime Minister Begin and his Likud Party [who are btw still in charge, and soon to be led once again by Benny “9/11 and Iraq-Chaos are great for Israel” Nut-n-Yahoo] have headed Israel on a collision course not only with America but with the Arabs and the rest of the world as well.” (1)

(1) Los Angeles Times article cited in: Andrew J. Hurley, Israel and the New World Order, Santa Barbara: 1991, pp. 81-82.