Into the Fray: My prediction – coming true with chilling precision

Into the Fray: My prediction – coming true with chilling precision

From Will at THE OTHER NEWS:

Into the Fray: My prediction – coming true with chilling precision.(JPost). By MARTIN SHERMAN.

A political tsunami is building that is threatening to wash away almost half a century of Zionist endeavor.

On Saturday night, the boycott of Israel gained an impressive new level of mainstream recognition in this country. Channel 2 News, easily the most watched, most influential news show here, ran a heavily promoted piece… on the boycott in its 8 p.m. primetime program. 

The piece was remarkable not only for its length and prominence, but even more so because it did not demonize the boycott movement, it didn’t blame the boycott on anti-Semitism. 

Instead, top-drawer reporter Dana Weiss treated the boycott as an established, rapidly growing presence that sprang up because of Israel’s settlement policy and whose only remedy is that policy’s reversal. 

– Larry Derfner, Boycott goes primetime in Israel, January 19.

There is, in fact, a groundswell of “elite” (read: Leftist) opinion building in favor of unilateral Israeli withdrawal in the West Bank.

– David Weinberg, The Impatient Israeli Political Left, January 28.

Last June, I published a column, “My prediction: Please help prove it wrong,” in which I warned that “A determined domestic thrust is under way to compress Israel back into its precarious pre-1967 frontiers, imperilling the viability of Jewish sovereignty.”

Three emerging threats.

Elaborating on my “strong premonition of dire things to come,” I predicted the emergence of three pernicious and interconnected processes, now materializing with alarming speed before our very eyes.

1. I forecast that the issue of anti-Israel sanctions would be raised with increasing intensity and frequency in the public discourse, and the threat, allegedly because of continued construction (indeed, existence) of Jewish communities across the pre-1967 lines (a.k.a., pejoratively, “settlements”), would be featured with increasing prominence in the mainstream media.

2. I then cautioned that, as a result of this, soon a wide-ranging campaign would be launched against the “settlers,” singling them out as the fundamental cause of the sanctions and casting blame on them for inflicting international isolation and economic pain on the rest of the country.

3. I warned that, as it becomes ever-more apparent that the impasse between Israel and Palestinian Arabs cannot be resolved consensually, Israel’s leaders will begin to capitulate under the perceived pressure of sanctions and embrace the idea of unilateral withdrawal from Judea-Samaria. Since coercive eviction of large numbers of Jews resident in the evacuated areas would be operationally infeasible and politically untenable, I foresaw the adoption of a policy of “benign” abandonment. This would mean that Jewish residents/communities would be left to the tender mercies of some prospective Palestinian regime.

Writing on the wall?Read the full story here.