Vicious 'Cycle'
Hey, did you know there's a "cycle of violence" in the Middle East? That earth-shattering news comes to us from the New York Times (emphasis ours):
Supporters of Israel in and out of Congress assailed President Bush today for criticizing Israeli attacks on Palestinian militant groups as the administration worked to protect its Middle East peace initiative from a new cycle of violence. . . . A diplomat in touch with the administration said that the situation was so perilous that Mr. Abbas could be ousted from power if the cycle of violence did not abate. . . . Other diplomats said the Israelis had to know that the attack would provoke a new cycle of violence and make it impossible for Mr. Abbas to keep what little support he has among Palestinians.
It's time for a ban on the phrase cycle of violence. Not only is it a journalistic cliché--a substitute for thought--but it paints a fundamentally false picture of what's going on in the Middle East. (Though not everyone who uses the phrase is a liberal ideologue; watching the fair-and-balanced Fox News Channel this morning, we also heard a correspondent speak of the "cycle of violence.")
"Cycle of violence" suggests that Israel and its enemies--in the most recent case, Hamas--are somehow equivalent. Israel attacks Hamas leaders in response to a Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, which itself was a response to an Israeli attack on a Hamas leader, and so on. Who knows, who cares, where it all began? It's a destructive cycle, and it must stop.
But this is nonsense. Consider this report from the Australian Broadcast Corp.:
Israeli army radio reports the army has been ordered to "completely wipe out" the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas, a day after a suicide bomber killed 16 people on a Jerusalem bus. . . .
The army order, which directs the military to use "whatever means necessary," was issued following a meeting of Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz with the army's top command shortly after the attack.
It is directed not only at the infrastructure of the organisation, but at its leadership, with everyone, "from the lowliest member to Sheikh Ahmad Yassin," a Hamas founder and its spiritual guide, as a legitimate target.
Consider the stark moral unequivalence here. After scores of terror attacks, Israel is only now getting around to vowing to wipe out Hamas, a group whose raison d'être is to wipe out Israel--that is, to murder every Jew who remains in the Middle East. Israel is practicing self-defense; Hamas is practicing genocide. Palestinian civilian deaths are a tragic but unavoidable side effect of Israel's defending itself; Israeli civilian deaths are Hamas's goal. They are no more caught up in a "cycle of violence" than are America and al Qaeda.
The Times describes yesterday's bus massacre in Jerusalem as "an apparent retaliation for Israel's attempt to kill Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a top leader of Hamas, on Tuesday." But this is "apparent" only to those who cannot--or refuse to--distinguish between genocide and self-defense. Hamas would have gone on murdering Israelis whether or not Israel tried to kill Rantisi, and Arutz Sheva reports that a Hamas spokesman "admitted that his organization is incapable of organizing an attack on such short notice and called the timing 'a fortuitous coincidence.' "
A Times editorial places the blame squarely on the victim:
The gravest political damage is being done by Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, whose reflexive military responses to terror threatens to undermine the authority of Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate new Palestinian prime minister. . . .
Nobody expects Israel to tolerate terror against its people. But terror can be more effectively rooted out if responsible Palestinian leaders like Mr. Abbas are strengthened, not undermined. It is easy to see why Hamas would like to make Mr. Abbas look irrelevant. But Israel should be doing all it can to strengthen his hand because in the long run that is in Israel's own interest. . . .
Mr. Abbas must be given a chance to follow up his words with effective police action. The obvious place for him to start is Gaza, where Hamas is based and where the Palestinian Authority's security forces are strongest. To build a Palestinian political consensus against terror, Mr. Abbas needs to show his people that his conciliatory words have brought a change in Israeli behavior. Regrettably, Mr. Sharon's latest actions demonstrate just the opposite.
The New York Post's Deborah Orin asks the right question: "If [Abbas] lacks the will--or the power--to stop the anti-Israel terror, what good is [President] Bush's road map?" The first stage of the road map obliges the Palestinian Authority to undertake "sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure." The Palestinians were supposed to have done this by last month. But Abbas has taken no "police action"; he has only spoken of a "cease-fire" with Hamas, which naturally has rejected the idea.
Three cheers for John McCain, who in an interview yesterday with MSNBC's Chris Matthews put the matter plainly:
If anyone came to my hometown in Phoenix, Ariz., and set off a bomb on a bus and killed 18 people and injured 100 of them, my citizens would expect us to respond. . . . Do you want to call that a cycle of violence? You can call it what you want, but these acts of terror, these organizations, funded by the Saudis, at least encouraged by Yasser Arafat, are inexcusable in their tactics--and their results are horrendous."
Indeed. The only way to stop the "cycle of violence" is to kill or incapacitate the instigators. If Abbas cannot or will not do so, how can anyone fault Israel for acting in its own defense?
Fearless Martyrs of Hamas
Ha'aretz reports on an interview al-Jazeera conducted with Hamas terrorist Ismail Hania:
At the start of the interview, from Gaza, which began at noon, Hania was asked about the possibility that Israel might try to harm Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. "These threats don't frighten Hamas or the Palestinian people, because the occupation has already made use of everything at its disposal to end the intifada and the Palestinian resistance," he said. . . .
At this point, while still responding to the interviewer's first question, Hania can be heard saying, "I must end the interview now because I hear helicopters."
opinionjournal.com
Message 19028804 |
