Editor’s note: To understand what the phrase it’s raining means to an Israeli, remember: in Israel the rain rarely falls for much of the year. (The rain does fall often enough in Jerusalem. But Jerusalem sits atop a mountain.) Americans grin ear-to-ear when the stock market rises. Israelis grin ear-to-ear when Lake Chennerith, alias The Sea of Galilee, rises a foot. So it’s raining becomes a message of hope and prosperity and luck. But when that message is false…!

It’s raining! Or is it?

Long ago, before Oslo 1993, it occurred to me that there is something lacking in the mentality of Israel’s political leaders, a flaw that renders Israel’s Government an enemy of the Jewish people. Ariel Sharon saw a sign of this flaw in an article he published in the Jerusalem Post on March 31, 1995 “The Enemy Within,” in which he denounced PM Yitzchak Rabin and others.

The idea of “The Enemy Within” did not become crystal clear to me until Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem on November 19, 1977. The next day, Israel’s major daily newspaper, Yediot Aharanot, published a photo of the dinner held in Sadat’s honor the previous evening. The photo showed Sadat wearing a tie with a strange design, that of linked Swastikas!

Seated next to Sadat was a smiling Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who seemed to be oblivious of, or pretended not to see, what was woven in Sadat’s tie, hence, was apparently unaware of the utter contempt the Egyptian leader had for Begin and the Jewish State.

The cover of my book, Sadat’s Strategy, displays a picture of that tie. That the tie was visible to Israeli dignitaries present at that dinner taught me that Israel’s enemy could spit in Israel’s face and in face of Israel’s Prime Minister, but the mere fact that the President of Egypt was rubbing shoulders with the Prime Minister of Israel, was enough for Jews to proclaim: “It’s raining!”

It’s raining! Peace and security!

Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat at the White House, 13 September 1993. Photo: Vince Musi/The White House

This verbal precipitation has inundated Israel ever since April 13, 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, democrat and a despot, shook hands on the White House Lawn and signed the Israel-PLO Agreement.

Today, PM Rabin has been succeeded by PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and PLO chief Yasser Arafat by Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas. The actors have changed, but the script is the same: It’s still raining!

Indeed, Abbas, who openly applauds Arab terrorists, has been spitting in the face of Benjamin Netanyahu year after year for a decade, and Netanyahu keeps saying “It’s raining”! This is what Netanyahu’s persistent peace negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas amounts to. The hapless Bibi, entrapped in his own lies, is drowning in Abbas’ expectorations.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud is laughing all the way to his Palestinian bank, knowing it has received another annual grant of two or three hundred million dollars, courtesy of witless American taxpayers.☼