By JAMES TARANTO
Israel Avenges the Passover Massacre
Israel says it has killed Qais Idwan, head of the military wing of Hamas, who masterminded the Passover massacre. Sheikh Jamal Abu al-Heija, a Hamas "political official" in Jenin, tells Reuters to expect more terror: "Israel bears the responsibility for all of the massacres . . . and for the killing of these holy warriors. Our retaliation will be very harsh and cruel according the measure of the crime."
Doing Vidkung Proud
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Now some people want to take it back. RevokethePrize.org claims it has more than 200,000 "signatures" on an online petition, which it says it will forward to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which administers the peace prize. Dozens of readers have e-mailed us about this site (which we actually noted way back in August). Well, allow us to go on the record as strongly opposing the revocation of Arafat's Nobel. It would deprive us of one of our best lines, and if that happens, the terrorists will have won.
Besides, as even RevokethePrize concedes, a Nobel Prize cannot be revoked--a fact that is causing members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to despair. It turns out they regret having awarded the Peace Prize in 1994--to Shimon Peres, then as now Israel's foreign minister, who received it along with Arafat and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
"Yes, I wish it was possible that we could recall the prize," Hanna Kvanmo tells Agence France-Presse. "What is happening today in Palestine is grotesque and unbelievable. Peres is responsible, as part of the government. He has expressed his agreement with what [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon is doing. If he had not agreed with Sharon, then he would have withdrawn from the government."
Kvanmo still approves of Rabin, who has the virtue of being dead. And neither she nor any of the other Nobel committeemen quoted have a word to say against Nobel laureate Yasser Arafat's instigation and toleration of terrorism. Perhaps the Palestinian strongman won the Peace Prize because he's helped so many Jews rest in peace.
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reports that Camp Norge, Norway's second-largest grocery chain, is boycotting Israeli products. "Israel isn't a big import country for us, but a boycott has great symbolic value," says the chain's managing director, the delightfully named Bernt Aas.
Why Powell Went
The New York Times (link requires registration) offers this explanation for President Bush's decision to send Colin Powell to the Middle East:
A senior administration official deeply involved in setting the policy said Mr. Bush decided in meetings on Monday and Tuesday that he would have to intervene far more directly because he feared that long-term allies in the region like Egypt and Jordan were facing destabilizing protests.
"The president felt we were at a tipping point, where the fundamental pillars of peace were endangered," the official said. "He decided at a national security meeting on Tuesday to send General Powell, and that he couldn't go without the president laying out a big vision of the Middle East."
It's true of course that Realpolitik sometimes dictates alliances with dubious governments. Even so, there's something galling about the notion that America should restrain a fellow democracy from fighting terrorism for fear that dictatorships might be overthrown.
On the other hand, here's a reason to be glad Powell is going: Reuters reports from Baghdad that "an influential Iraqi cleric" denounced Powell's mission as a "new conspiracy." Obviously the Iraqi rulers fear, as today's Wall Street Journal editorial (link requires registration) hopes, that Powell's ultimate purpose is to get America's ducks in a row before toppling Saddam Hussein.
Echoing the influential Iraqi cleric is America-hating columnist John Pilger, who writes in Britain's Mirror tabloid of Bush's speech yesterday: "What he neglected to say was that . . . he is secretly planning a massive attack on Iraq."
Hey Pilger, shut up already! It's supposed to be a secret! Don't you know that loose lips sink ships?
A Culture of Hate
Let's say Colin Powell manages to persuade Yasser Arafat to embrace the Mitchell and Tenet plans. Let's go out on a limb and say Arafat is sincere and makes a genuine effort to stop terrorism and live in peace with the Jewish state. It's still hard to see how there can be a real peace when so many Palestinian Arabs, especially young ones, have embraced an utterly depraved culture of hate. The Toronto Globe and Mail quotes a neighbor of Ayat Akhras, the 18-year-old high school senior who murdered two Jews when she blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket a week ago:
The girls in Ayat's neighbourhood say they've been discussing martyrdom for quite some time. "It's sensational, it's awesome, it makes me think anyone would love to be in her place," a 14-year-old named Shireen said. Shireen is very good at math. She says that, if she can't be a martyr, she'll settle for being a doctor.
But who says you can't have it all? The National Post reports from Gaza City that Mahmoud Zahar is both a doctor and a terrorist--"a surgeon and a leading member of Hamas." The sanguinary sawbones tells the Canadian paper: "Even if one Israeli dies for every 10 Palestinians, then the three million Palestinians can kill 300,000 Israelis."
The Miami Herald reports from an Islamic Jihad terrorist training camp in the West Bank city of Jenin:
The road to oblivion here on earth begins early.
"I started when I was just 8 years old," said Ali, a dark-haired young man of about 20. He sat across from Abu Mohammed [a pseudonym for an Islamic Jihad trainer] in the dimly lighted room, watching his mentor's every move. "I am ready to die as a shahid [martyr] whenever I am called."
The New Republic's Elizabeth Rubin, who seems to have interviewed the same Shireen quoted in the Globe and Mail, notes the feminization of Arab terrorism, which grows in part out of the cowardice of Arab men:
In recent months the aspiration to become a suicide bomber has become particularly prevalent among Palestinian girls, many of whom seem to take pride in proving themselves as brave, or braver, than men. According to Shireen's older sister Shukruk, the talk among girls at school has been about following the examples of Ayat's predecessors, Wafa Idris and Dareen Abu Aisheh, two women who blew themselves up earlier this year. "It's become a wish among many girls to go and execute suicide operations," she said. Vivian Khamis, a Palestinian professor of psychology and former chair of social sciences at Bethlehem University, describes the use of female suicide bombers as a natural progression of the intifada. "There's been a big change in the role of women in our daily life," she says. "Today women are the first to confront the Israeli soldiers at checkpoints and at home, because the men are hiding."
In the midst of such barbarism, no "peace process" can bring real security. To be sure, cultures can change, but how? The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof calls on Powell and Sharon to "outline steps that will lead the Palestinians to statehood, and thus sprinkle hope in the occupied territories," but it is fatuous to say the least to think those who are willing to sacrifice their own lives in the "cause" of murdering Jews will be appeased by the mere "outlining" of "steps."
It's true in the postwar years the Allies purged the genocidal culture of Nazi Germany and the militaristic one of imperial Japan. Can anything short of utter defeat create the conditions to pacify the Palestinians? We certainly hope so, but it's hard to be optimistic.
Incidentally, Ken Adelman offers this suggestion (which The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier echoes):
Stop calling these Palestinian kids "suicide bombers," and begin to call them "homicide bombers." Someone committing suicide does so alone, without any inkling to harm anyone else. Here, rather, the goal is not to kill oneself but rather to kill others. For a Palestinian kid to commit suicide, without killing Jews, is to be a failure.
We take the point, but "homicide bombers" doesn't really work. For one thing, the word homicide is morally neutral; it simply means "a killing of one human being by another." A killing in war or self-defense is a homicide, even if it is not a murder.
Moreover, any terrorist who uses a bomb to kill people--Timothy McVeigh, say--can be called a "homicide bomber," but it is the element of suicide that sets contemporary Arab terrorism apart. The willingness to destroy oneself in the "cause" of killing innocent people is a novel kind of depravity. So if we must have a new name, how about "murder-suicide bombers"?
Seal of Approval
The Israeli Defense Forces have found documents proving that Yasser Arafat, hero of Norway, "personally approved payments to senior terrorists wanted by Israel," the Jerusalem Post reports.
A handwritten letter from Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of Arafat's Fatah faction in the West Bank, requests payments to three "brethren," including Ziad Muhammad Daas, suspected mastermind of an attack on a bat Mitzvah ceremony. "In a handwritten note scrawled on the bottom of the letter is the remark: 'Allocate $600 to each of them,' and Arafat's signature. The signature is dated September 19, 2001."
A fax sent by Tanzim leader Raed Karmi (whom the IDF killed three months ago), requests $1,000 each for 12 "fighter brethren." The Palestinian leader is something of a cheapskate: "On January 7, Arafat scribbled a note on the fax to the treasury in Ramallah, asking for $350 to be transferred to each man on the list. The faxed copy that is now in the possession of the IDF was sent on January 20."
The Jerusalem Post's "Washington Whispers" column quotes "sources" as saying that the State Department may soon add Arafat's Tanzim and Force 17 groups to its list of terrorist organizations. "Fatah far behind?" asks the lead paragraph. For that matter, how long will it be before every Palestinian is classified as a terrorist--except of course for Arafat himself, who is part of the "peace process"? |
