Screeds
Sunday, September 26, 2004
As They Have Sown
December 13, 2001
There have been a couple of times recently when I've been proved wrong, and, as instructive as that can be, it always hurts. But there have been some times when I've been proved right, and in one case, it really hurts.
The Hamas bus bombing on the Gaza Strip yesterday has triggered a fresh and substantial Israeli operation against... whom? It's not quite clear. I don't recall hearing that they'd targeted any particular organization.
Who can they target? Who is the enemy?
We've heard about "state-sponsored terrorism" in connection with Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, but the Palestinians don't have a state. They have a plot of land within the sovereignty of the State of Israel, over which the Palestinian Authority -- Yasser Arafat and a few card-playing buddies -- exercises local control. They don't have foreign relations, or an army, or an embassy anywhere, unless one counts their presence at the United Nations. Should Israel decide to treat the Palestinians as if they were a state, and declare war on them, whom would it fight?
Incidentally, the Palestinians haven't had a state since David and Goliath had their little disagreement, so this isn't a new condition. But as a problem for the Israeli government, it's no small affair.
Governments are at their best dealing with other governments, whether in war or in peace. When they have to deal with something as diffuse as the Palestinians, they're at a terrible disadvantage. The enemy is everywhere and nowhere. He can't be seined out of the larger population without extraordinary and protracted effort. To take aim at him often involves unwittingly targeting many people who might look a bit like him but have nothing to do with him, the ultimate problem of justice in war.
The Palestinian terrorists, whether they align with Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, any other organization or none at all, are protected by a surrounding culture that shelters them from their enemies. That protection may be grudging in some cases, although I've never yet heard of a Palestinian turning in a Palestinian terrorist. The footage from the Palestinian sectors along the West Bank, from after the reports of the Black Tuesday atrocities, persuades me that it wouldn't be a very safe thing to be a life-affirming, terrorist-hating Palestinian.
Yasser Arafat is as close as any Palestinian comes to being a political leader for that community -- and he's either entirely unable to restrain the terrorists, or he covertly approves of their activities. There have been reports that many deeds he's condemned weakly to the world press in English, he's later praised to the local Palestinian media in Arabic. I don't read Arabic, so I can't verify this personally, but the reports have come from sources I tend to trust.
So: There is a population of about a million persons who call themselves Palestinians. Among them hide a goodly number of the worst men in the world, men who are willing to bomb a passenger bus and then machine-gun the survivors. Some fraction of the population actively supports those villains with money and shelter, and encourages its children to aspire to their status.
The dominant religion among Palestinians is Islam, but none of the surrounding Islamic states has been willing to absorb any appreciable number of them. In fact, of all the nations of the Middle East, only Israel has accommodated them at all -- and Israel is the target of their violent ire. Their rationale is that the Israelis "stole" Palestine from its rightful owners, and that there can only be war until that theft has been undone.
The United Nations partition plan of 1947 was accepted by the Jews of Palestine. It was rejected by the Muslim Palestinians, who thought to prevent the establishment of Israel by force of arms. We know how the war turned out: the Jews won, and secured for their embryonic state more territory than the partition plan would have given them. No doubt the Palestinians regretted their decision in the aftermath, but they have never accepted their defeat. They regard the war as ongoing, a win-or-die proposition that will go on until there are no more Palestinians, or no more Israel.
At this time, the single greatest threat to innocent human life anywhere is the Palestinian irredentist-terrorist movement. Despite certain misgivings about the Jewish state, and a profound desire that Washington cease to shovel my tax money at it, I cannot see any rationale for restraining the Israelis from doing whatever they deem necessary to end that threat.
Unfortunately, there is exactly one thing that can be done to end Palestinian terrorism. The culture itself, the very notion of "Palestinian," must be expunged from the world, preferably by enforced diaspora. Yesterday's bus bombing speaks eloquently to this point.
Why this bombing above all others? Two reasons. First, the viciousness of the thing: an open-road ambush in which men with automatic weapons systematically mowed down those lucky enough to survive the bombing. Second, because it demonstrates that even when the tenor of world opinion and the weight of American arms are plainly and openly opposed to terrorism, with a unanimity and to a degree unprecedented in the modern era, the Palestinian terrorists are unwilling to cease and desist even to preserve their facade as "victims." Peace-minded Palestinians, if there are any, are incapable of affecting events.
They have sown their land with dragons' teeth.
It's time to admit that no one will civilize these people. Put the demolition gear on the tanks, General Sharon. Take down their settlements, kill or imprison any of them who pick up a gun, and tell the survivors to keep moving. It won't be pretty. Innocent people will surely be hurt. But they've left you no other way.
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