It will take years until their credulous pasts fade in the memories of those who know them, or until enough of the people who knew of their gullibility die.
Tel Aviv, August 25 - Abashed supporters of the land-for peace formula and the Oslo "peace process" that once held sway in Israeli politics, but now registers as the height of naivety, would love to claim that they never fully embraced those approaches, but not enough time has passed for them to make a believable argument to that effect because too many people know they were sincere in the delusion that any credible Palestinian leadership or popular for genuine peace existed, various erstwhile supporters of the Oslo paradigm acknowledged this week.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because they feel to embarrassed to associate themselves with the discredited notion of Palestinian peace-seeking, the lifelong leftists acknowledged that it will take years, perhaps decades, until their credulous pasts fade in the memories of those who know them, or until enough of the people who knew of their gullibility simply die off. The latter possibility appears more likely, experts say, since only Israelis over a certain age can remember a time when the Palestinian leadership was not openly encouraging its people to stab, shoot, bomb, run over, or hijack Jews.
"The Second Intifada gave us the first clue," admitted one former Meretz voter. "Arafat's rejection of a statehood offer, and his decision to pursue violence instead, should have provided enough evidence, but when you're emotionally invested in something, you don't want to simply drop it. We had a serious identity challenge. We were the moral ones, and the evil people were the ones who looked like [slain Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin's killer. No way the people on that side of the divide could be right about anything!"
"Then [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas rejected [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert's similarly-far-reaching offer," recalled an ex-Labor Party supporter. "And all the while, the whole good-cop, bad-cop of Fatah and Hamas, we allowed ourselves to think represented something real, some actual difference between radicals and moderates, ignoring all the while the pay-for-slay, the education system that demonized us, the official rhetoric and materials that deemed Jews aliens to the land. Just empower the moderates with concessions, and all will be well! Yeah, no. That's not how the Palestinians understood things. They saw it as terrorism working."
"I know that now," the remorseful leftist continued. "Make that, I always knew it, but my pride and political identity wouldn't let me admit it. And now, maybe in as little as a decade, people might forget or consider unimportant the fact that I was such a dupe."
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