Yes, Mr. Ambassador, Golda did order the killing of the Black September murderers of Israeli athletes in Munich during the 1972 Olympic Games. But so what? What has this to do with the efficacy of assassination against ongoing Hamas terrorism, against a persistent campaign of suicide bombing spurred on my Israel's failure to abrogate the Oslo Accords? And yes, Professor, the King was angered and humiliated by the Mossad mishap, but Jordan - my dear distinguished scholar - is hardly a friend of Israel. It is high time for Mr. Sprinzak and others on the Israeli Left to understand what international lawyers call the fallacy of "legalism," that error of reasoning which ascribes automatic worth to signed documents. The "peace treaties" with Egypt and Jordan were designed by Cairo and Amman only to buy time for the now impending war with the Jewish State. These treaties will be laid aside altogether by the Arab parties whenever it is decided, together with Iraq, Iran, Syria and the PLO, to begin hostilities.

The problem with the botched attempt on a Hamas leader's life is not that it failed ("success," after all, would have elicited only further anti-Israel terrorism) but that the assassination option was itself completely inappropriate. Mr. Netanyahu must realize, and soon, that Palestinian terrorism (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PLO - it makes no difference) is like the mythic Hydra monster. When one head is struck off, two new ones grow in its place. The only remedy for such terrorism, which is now sure to be expanded, is to extract Israel from a desperately delusionary search for peace and to prepare expeditiously, on all fronts, for the inevitable war.

The active war that is coming soon to the Middle East will follow the Arab/Islamic plan for attrition/annihilation of Israel. Combining Yasser Arafat's PLO army (a 50,000-strong plus "security service" made possible by a so-called "Peace Process") with the steadily-militarizing armed forces of Syria, Iraq, Iran, and treaty-partner Egypt, this plan has been in the works for several years. When it is implemented, the Israel Defense Forces will be so preoccupied with containing Arab guerrilla violence outside and within the Green Line that they will be hard-pressed to protect the State's borders with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Although King Hussein may not commit his own army to the war until he is quite certain that Israel is finished, he will certainly allow his territory to be used by other advancing Arab armies.

Iran, too, will play a major role in the coming war against Israel. Having prepared its missile and unconventional weapons capabilities for years, it will cooperate with Israel's Arab "friends" as well as with Iraq and Syria to ensure that the Jewish State will pray for another Flood. Before anything can be born from the rubble of the coming war against Israel, a gravedigger will have to wield the forceps.

Ambassador Gold and Professor Sprinzak, you both miss the point. The Arab/Islamic world has no intentions whatsoever of honoring Oslo commitments to a Jewish State. The Arab/Islamic world has never had any intentions to honor these commitments. Never anything more than a Trojan Horse, Oslo is the carefully-chosen instrument whereby terrorism weakens Israel (attrition) for defeat in the larger conventional and unconventional war (annihilation).

Ambassador Gold and Professor Sprinzak, the Arab/Islamic war against Israel has already begun. This war has nothing to do with land, and it has nothing to do with peace. It is a war about God, a war - according to the Arab/Islamic side - that can know absolutely no compromise and that can never be avoided or sidestepped.
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