Chris hedges AND george Monbiot ON THE IGNORANcE - ColdType

Changing History
flying over Mount
Ararat in turkey
he was struck by
the idea: why not
go to jerusalem
and speak directly
to the israelis at
home?
48 thereader | November 2008
to the existing emotional pattern. Therefore,
in order to really change a person’s
opinion, one has to address his emotions,
too.
I needed a real example, and that’s
where Sadat came in.
Sadat did it. He had addressed the emotions
of every Israeli.
This bold deed was the shock to the
emotions and consciousness, without
which the peace with Egypt would not have
been possible. Sadat captured the hearts of
a whole people. Emotional attitudes that
had been frozen for decades melted like
butter in the midday sun, clearing the path
for a completely different way of looking at
things. People who hated the Egyptians -
and, indeed, all Arabs - liked him on sight.
From this moment on he could talk to the
Israeli public and persuade it - they hung
on his lips.
Until that moment, there was a complete
consensus in Israel that we must not,
under any circumstances, “give up” the Sinai
Peninsula. That this would amount to
national suicide. That we would lose our
essential “strategic depth”. Moshe Dayan,
then serving as Defense Minister and national
idol, declared that he “preferred
Sharm-al-Sheikh without peace to peace
without Sharm-al-Sheikh”. Nobody was
ready to give up the Sinai oil fields. The Labor
Party ministers had built a large settlement
bloc in North Sinai, centered on a new
town, Yamit, considered our most beautiful
and well-planned. And Sadat himself was
known to have collaborated with the Nazis
in World War II and to have spent time in
prison for that.
Now, practically overnight, all this was
wiped out. Who needs Sinai, who needs
Sharm-al-Sheikh (and who remembers
today that the place was known in Israel
at the time as “Ophira”?), who needs the
oil, who needs Yamit - when we can have
peace instead? All was gone. All was evacuated.
Nothing remained but the pictures of
Tzachi Hanegbi’s ridiculous last stand on a
tower and Meir Kahane’s unfulfilled prom-
ise to die in a bunker.
Without a doubt, Sadat was a genius.
He had a specifically Egyptian wisdom,
the 6000-year old wisdom of a people who
have seen it all and lived through it all.
That does not mean that he did not make
serious mistakes, that he did not entertain
illusions, that he did not say quite foolish
things together with very wise things,
sometimes in the same breath.
But no one who met him face to face
could avoid the feeling that they were in
the presence of a historic figure.
Arriving at the decision
How did he arrive at his decision? As he
told me (and many others), he had an almost
mystic illumination. He was on his
way back from a visit to the Romanian ruler.
He had posed to his host two questions:
Can one believe Menachem Begin? Will Begin
be able to carry out his decisions? Nicolae
Ceaucescu answered both questions in
the affirmative.
Flying over Mount Ararat in Turkey he
was struck by the idea: why not go to Jerusalem
and speak directly to the Israelis
at home?
That is a nice story. But it does not cover
all the facts. Sadat was neither naïve nor
a gambler. Before he took his fateful step,
he had secret negotiations with Begin. The
Egyptian deputy prime minister, Hassan
Tohami, was sent to Morocco to meet with
Moshe Dayan, Begin’s foreign minister at
the time. Dayan assured him unequivocally
that Begin was prepared to give back all of
Sinai, to the last grain of sand.
(When I published this long ago, it was
denied by both sides. Recently, however,
General Binyamin Gibli, Dayan’s confidant,
confirmed it on his deathbed.)
In simple words: Before the dramatic
gesture, before the start of the official negotiations,
Sadat knew that he would get
back all the Egyptian territory occupied by
Israel. He was walking on solid ground.
That is the reverse side of the coin, the
Israeli side. Sadat’s initiative would not