Subject: Union-Tribune Article by Jim Goldsborough, April 8, 2002
The Bush administration had an epiphany last week, and the surprise is not that it occurred but that it occurred so late. Having all but cheered as Israel re-occupied Palestinian lands, the administration suddenly realized the invasion was creating a mess for everyone, including us.
Bush Middle East policy has been a mystery. It is though it learned nothing from history. We know how Middle East events affect American interests. Since 1967, when America took over from France as Israel's main protector and sponsor, every Middle East tremor has reverberated in America.
Prior to Bush, U.S. administrations understood this. For previous presidents, the idea of leaving Middle East events to run their course was as unthinkable as leaving all the White House faucets running. When you finally see the damage, it is too late.
The administration had no explanation for its paralysis other than "terror is terror." You are either with us or against us, good or evil, black or white, bomber or victim, said Bush.
Until last week's epiphany, it was as though the administration, after Sept. 11, lost all ability to make distinctions. We had foreign policy by slogan, speech-writer inventions such as the "axis of evil," linking nations whose only link was that they didn't like us any more than we liked them.
You cannot see the Middle East in slogans. Terrorism has been a part of its regional history since Jews rose up against the Romans, and probably before that. Terrorism is common because the region has so often been occupied and oppressed, usually by the Europeans, now by the Israelis, and those things breed resistance.
Jews, of course, know oppression better than anyone, and that is why they must be called to account when they are guilty of it. There shall be no double standards. If it is wrong for one people to oppress another, it is wrong for all people.
All "terrorism" is not the same. We can try to come up with a definition of terrorism, as Muslim foreign ministers tried in vain last week, but it is useless.
Why not, you ask, define terrorism as any armed attack on civilians?
Because the definition won't work. Violence in democratic regimes where
nonviolent means of achieving political ends are available is different from violence against an occupying power where peaceful means for change are denied. The Bush administration failed to understand the difference.
Besides, who in the Middle East is a civilian, who is a soldier? All
Palestinians, except for the police, are supposed to be civilians, and that includes Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, who are soldiers.
What of schoolgirls with bombs?
What of Israelis?
Since the 1967 war, Israel has sent 200,000 settlers deep into Palestinian lands. (This excludes the 210,000 Jews living in so-called Greater Jerusalem.) Some of those 200,000 are the armed, militant, fundamentalist settlers with names such as Gush Emunim.
Gush settlements have been deliberately built in heavily populated Arab areas such as Nablus to create a Jewish fait accompli on the ground. Future governments, goes the reasoning, will not dare give the land back.
Are the Gush settlers civilians? Should they be exempt?
The settlements are illegal. One can make a legal case for Israel's
occupation of the territories until a peace treaty is signed. There is no legal case to be made for an occupying power to colonize land and evict its inhabitants. Such actions are denied under U.N. resolutions and Geneva conventions, yet that is what Israel has done.
If Israel attacks civilians, should Jewish civilians be exempt?
When Bush, after Sept. 11, attempted to roll these complications into a big black-and-white anti-terrorist dough stretching from North Korea, Iran and Iraq to Palestine, he had a problem. If they were all the same, he would have to treat them the same.
That meant giving the green light to Ariel Sharon, who has built a career on trying to drive the Palestinians out of the Middle East.
From that intellectual flaw, Bush policy simply disintegrated. As the world looked on in disbelief, he simply repeated the mantra that Israel had the right to defend itself – as though Israel's defense problems were created by threat of invasion rather than from the brutality of its own policies.
The fundamental issue is this: You cannot treat people as Israel has treated the Palestinians. Jews can accuse the world of anti-Semitism, U.S. politicians can slink into their holes for fear of backlash, the Bush administration can invent slogans, yet the issue remains the same:
You cannot treat people as Israel has treated the Palestinians.
Angry writers accuse me of failing to condemn horrible acts such as the
Passover bombing in Netanya. One writer gave me a choice: I am either stupid or evil.
The hate spawned by Israel's occupation has created the suicide bomber
perversion. Terrorists of old were not kamikazes. They tried to get away, not die. Suicide bombers are the result of a generation of people forced into ghettos. The last people who should be surprised by this are the Jews. |
