THE LEADER FIGHTING FANATICISM
The world condemnation of Israel for its actions on the West Bank is both
disproportionate and insincere. Many of the Arab states routinely indulge in
far worse atrocities against their own populations than those alleged against
Israel. Yasser Arafat’s internal forces have committed many
well-documented acts of brutality against the people of the West Bank
without arousing the wrath of the United Nations. There is more outrage
over the killing of one Palestinian by an Israeli soldier than over the killing
of 100 citizens by an Arab dictator in the furtherance of his own power; in
other words, the Israelis are judged by completely different, and vastly
superior, standards from others in the region. Those who condemn Israel
out of hand, therefore, are, in effect, anti-Arab racists.
Israel is a small country, both geographically and in population, and is
surrounded by hostile states, many of which have been calling for its
complete extermination for half a century. Each terrorist act within its
borders consequently has a much greater resonance and significance than
acts of similar magnitude in larger and more secure countries.
Events made it clear that Yasser Arafat had no intention whatever of halting
the wave of suicide bombings that were taking place in Israel. He claimed
to lack the capacity to do so, even in the police statelet that he ran; but
there is abundant evidence that he and his henchmen trained, funded, armed
and encouraged such bombers. Large caches of arms and explosives have
been found by the Israelis on the West Bank. Arafat’s claims of ignorance
and impotence are simply not credible.
What course, then, could Israel have taken? Was it supposed passively to
accept the suicide bombings, in the hope merely that they would die down?
What state could stand by idly while the most elementary aspects of daily
life became fraught with danger?
Of course, in a retaliatory action such as Israel’s, many innocent people
were bound to suffer, and unfortunately some to be killed. It would appear
at the very least that the Israeli forces have at times behaved brutally. These
results surely cannot have been unpredictable to the Palestinian leaders who
connived at the bombings. And while the death of even a single
stone-throwing child is regrettable, one is entitled to ask what kind of
people allow their children to throw stones in such a situation. Some people
have argued that this must illustrate the depth of the desperation of the
Palestinian people; but it must always be remembered that fanaticism is not
necessarily proportional to the suffering that allegedly provokes or produces
it, nor is the worth of a cause necessarily proportional to the lengths to
which people are prepared to go to promote it. The end does not justify the
means, but neither do the means justify the end.
The Israeli action is self-defence; it is not at all comparable morally to the
wave of suicide bombing that occasioned it; and the frequent comparison
throughout the world of the Israelis with the Nazis is especially offensive
— and presumably designed to be so. Even if the Israelis were wholly in
the wrong, the toll of Palestinian dead could not remotely be compared with
what happened in Germany and Eastern Europe, and even with many lesser
man-made catastrophes that have happened since then; and anybody who
suggests such a comparison proves thereby not only a bias of murky
provenance, but that he is unable to think clearly.
Sympathy with Israel does not preclude sympathy with the plight of
ordinary Palestinians, nor with the Palestinians’ right to their own territory.
But neither of these entails support for the leaders of the Palestinians, who
have consistently used their population as a kind of hostage to their own
political ambitions. Yasser Arafat’s recent rejection of Ehud Barak’s offer
— by far the most generous that Israel has ever made — proved once again
that he is a maximalist, unconcerned at bringing about any immediate or
lasting improvement in the condition of his people. For him, as for Lenin,
the worse things are, the better. In the circumstances, it is hardly surprising
that the Israelis concluded that he would accept nothing short of the
destruction of Israel.
The condemnatory noises made by the West against Israel will not appease
the Arabs, who believe that Israel can be made to do anything the
Americans tell it to do, but will encourage the terrorists, who will derive
moral justification for their acts from them. The West is shooting itself
squarely in the foot by its insincere denunciations of Israel, suggesting a
moral equivalence between a democratic state’s self-defence and the
bombers of pizza parlours.
Ultimately, the Palestinian people are the victims of their own leaders more
than they are of Israel. This leadership has led its people up a blind alley for
half a century. There can be no solution to the problem in the Middle East,
and no end to the cycle of bombing and retaliation, until that leadership
changes not only personnel but heart. And this in turn will require a deep
change in the political culture of the whole region.
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