In the wake of yet another terrorist bus bombing in Yerushalayim killing 16 civilian non-combatants, Arab spokespersons, including Arafat, are all over the media saying they’re against terror. I’ve bereaved myself of hope that the world will someday develop the discernment to distinguish between what Arab terrorists say and what they do. Yet, look at the facts.
- PM Makhmoud Abbas, who is responsible according to the ‘roadmap’ to jail or kill terrorists, smiles proudly for the camera embracing recently released terrorist Akhmed Jbarra – who blew up 14 Israeli Jews in Yerushalayim in 1975 (The Jerusalem Post, 2003.06.09, p. 3).
- Arafat says there should be a cease-fire, while continuing to provide refuge for terrorists in his own fortress in Ramallah.
- ‘Palestinian’ polls confirm that 70% of ‘Palestinians’ support suicide attacks against Israel
- When Israel takes out a terrorist that Abbas is supposed to take out but doesn’t, whining that he’s unable, then instead of thanking Israel for the assist in helping him accomplish the job he promised to do, he shows his true terrorist colors, condemning Israel for fighting terror
Frankly, I’m disgusted with media commentators who equate the deaths of victims of terrorists with the deaths of the terrorists who killed those victims. I’m just as disgusted with media interviewers who allow their interviewees to make such an equation Such equation should not be tolerated or ignored and left to stand. If every terrorist in the world was hunted down and shot to death, all of their deaths together would not equal even a fraction of one of their victims – whether the victims of terror are Americans, Israelis, Indonesians, Arabs, Muslims or whatever. Victims of terrorists must never be equated with the terrorists who killed them. While Pres. Bush and Colin Powell advocate a free hand in hunting down and killing Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists out of one side of their mouths, out of the other side of their mouths they hypocritically condemn Israel’s right to hunt down and kill terrorists who have blown up Israelis. It’s ok for everyone but Jews, is blatantly, inescapably, miso-Judaic.
I’m incensed at media commentators who understand when Americans or British injure or kill bystanders when taking out a terrorist but refuse to understand when Jews injure or kill bystanders when taking out a terrorist. It’s ok for everyone but Jews, is blatantly, inescapably, miso-Judaic. I’m particularly incensed because these media commentators rarely note that the terrorists deliberately surround themselves with civilian ‘human shields’ – shields that always include children. Where is the outrage at the Arab practice of recruiting children and women as ‘human shields’? It is an established legal principle that the one who places children and women in harm’s way are the ones responsible for their injury andor death. Yet, where is any media commentator who places the blame where it properly belongs for the injuries and deaths of Arab children and women on the terrorists who surround themselves with ‘human shields’? Women and children, I may add, who, the polls show, aren’t "innocent civilians" but are part of that 70% who are supporters of terrorism! 71% of ‘Palestinians’ support Usama bin-Laden, with Arafat second at 69%. 80% of ‘Palestinians’ state "The rights and needs of the ‘Palestinian’ people cannot be taken care of as long as the State of Israel exists." (Pew Global Attitudes Project poll, released the day of the Aqaba summit).
The latest bus bomber is a high school student. The day before, if he had been injured or killed by an Israeli soldier in Gaza the media would have reported another "child" injured or killed by Israeli soldiers. The "child" they’d like to portray as innocent is often no younger than the "Israeli soldier" being attacked by the "child." Arab terrorists send even eight-year-olds into harm’s way, as cannon fodder. Where is the outrage against recruiting child soldiers? Hamas terrorists gave him the bomb belt.
This isn’t an anomaly. It’s a frequently repeated pattern. Analysis by a German TV channel determined that the 12-year old boy (al-Dura), reportedly shot by Israelis a couple of years ago, was actually shot by ‘Palestinian’ Arabs. The shape of the bullet holes in the wall next to him are clear evidence that the bullets came from straight in front of the wall, the Arab’s position, not grazing the wall from the Israeli position he and his father were clearly hiding from. The photos show the father pleading with Arabs, not the Israelis, to stop shooting at them. Photos don’t lie. There was no cross-fire. It was a cold-blooded sacrifice to blame on Israelis. And the media bought their propaganda without asking questions. Such bias happens nowhere else in the world, particularly on such regular basis. Only against Jews, and that’s miso-Judaism. Mindless media commentators continue to equate injuries and deaths of Arab women and children combatants – recruited as ‘human shields’ and deliberately put in harm’s way – with injuries and deaths of women and children on a public bus, shopping in a mall or eating pizza in a restaurant. It’s beyond unprofessional. It’s journalistically irresponsibile and morally reprehensible!
Even Israeli intellectuals fall into Arab propaganda traps. One of the most eminent, Prof. Barry Rubin of the Global Research in International Affairs and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal which I often cite, recently fell in a couple of propaganda potholes. In defending Sharon’s decision to accept the ‘Roadmap,’ he writes (Jerusalem Post, 2003.06.10) "A cease-fire would save lives and improve the situation for everyone." That’s most short-sighted. A cease-fire offers a constraint on the IDF and breathing space for Hamas and other terror groups to re-arm and regroup. Even more being killed next month as a result of a cease-fire is no saving of lives.
Prof. Rubin then allows that Israeli Arabs agree closely with Israeli Jews, supporting creation of a ‘Palestinian’ state that would keep the peace. He contrasts this with Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, "an overwhelming 80 percent [of whom] insist that their rights and needs ‘cannot be taken care of as long as the State of Israel exists.’ " Prof. Rubin should talk with Jerusalem Post commentator Evelyn Gordon who reconciles this non-existent contradiction between Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. "When Arabs speak about a ‘two-state solution,’ what most of them mean is a Palestinian state alongside an ‘Israel’ that also has an Arab [and Muslim] majority, to be created by granting a few million descendants of Palestinian refugees the ‘right of return’ " [after which, the Arabs could simply vote ‘Israel’ into transforming into an Arab Muslim state like all of the others in the Middle East] (ibid.). When Israeli intellectuals don’t get it, how can we expect non-Israeli journalists to get it?
This is why there was such a big fuss about Makhmoud Abbas refusing to refer to a "Jewish state of Israel," why the entire Arab world was outraged when Pres. Bush referred to a "Jewish state of Israel" – and why Arabs adamantly refuse to give up their quest for a "right of return."
Israeli pundits state in the most confident terms that Israel will never compromise on the Arabs’ claim to a ‘right of return.’ Camel droppings!!! I remember back in 1985 when I warned that Israel would waffle on Yerushalayim. Israeli pundits poo-poohed me saying that Israel would never compromise on Yerushalayim. Barak offered it up. H-e-l-l-o-o.
Listen to the list cited by Michael B. Oren, senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Yerushalayim. "Over the years, Israel’s attitude toward the Palestinians has transformed radically. Less than a decade after Labor Prime Minister Golda Meir declared ‘there is no Palestine,’ hard-liner Menachem Begin signed the 1979 Camp David Accords recognizing the Palestinians’ right to political autonomy. Then, in the Oslo Agreements of 1993, Yitzhak Rabin acknowledged the existence of a Palestinian people and its just demand for self-determination – a commitment upheld by Rabin’s Likud successor, Benjamin Netanyahu. Israelis were also busy settling the territories during this period, but in 2000, Ehud Barak offered to uproot or concentrate the settlements, even to redivide Jerusalem, to accommodate Palestinian sovereignty. Finally, at Aqaba, Ariel Sharon, the former architect of the settlement movement, vowed to help create a territorially-contiguous Palestinian state to ‘live side-by-side with Israel in peace and security’ " (ibid.).
Gee, I wonder why the Arabs think they’ll win just by holding out.
Arab violations have already shattered the Aqaba ‘roadmap’ just as they did Tenet, Mitchell, Oslo and Camp David. It’s imperative that Israel repudiate these breached and fraudulent deceptions. The only historic Palestine was the Roman supplanting of the Jewish nation of Judea, a miso-Judaic war crime of the highest order. The only people indigenous to this land prior to the Roman destruction was the Jews. (‘Palestinians’ are Arabs, entirely unrelated to the Greek settlers known in the Bible as Philistines.) Until the 20
th century, Arabs refused even to be called ‘Palestinians,’ insisting that there was only one Arab Nation! There is no legal basis for a nation of Palestine, since no people obtained sovereignty over the land since the Romans took it from the Jews. The only religion indigenous to this land – for millenia before Islam was first conceived – was Torah.
One pundit likens the terror against Israel to Irish terrorism, claiming the same approach that stopped terror in Ireland will work in Israel. Yet, almost all experts agree that there’s almost no similarity. The Israeli problem isn’t 50 years old; it’s 2,000 years old! The Jews haven’t given up on our homeland of Israel and our capital, the heart of every good Jew, Yerushalayim, over the last 2,000 years, and we aren’t giving up on either of them over the next 2,000 years – regardless of what the Israeli government does or doesn’t do. No paper signed by an ephemeral "government" will change Biblical expectations that have already endured for over 3,000 years. Politicians who ignore this – whether Israeli, American or European – do so at jeopardy to their own careers and their legacy in the history books.
This is far less than a zero-sum game. It’s an unacceptably negative-sum, losing, game for both sides, which neither side will ever be willing to simply negotiate or compromise away. That’s why negotiations have no chance. Ever. They’ve never had any chance, except among the dangerously naïve and delusional dreamers who, in postponing the inevitable, are responsible for the daily flow of blood, on both sides, over many years. Peace will have no chance until one side is stripped of its ability to make war. Then and only then, the only solution will be autonomy, not the establishment of a new sovereign Arab nation that the world has never known, from which to launch their final elimination of Israel. Jews don’t want to rule over Arabs who squatted in the land that the Romans emptied of Jews centuries ago. Like I’ve said since 1986, peace can only happen with two distinct networks of villages, one Arab (and either autonomous or tied to Jordan) and the other Jewish and tied to Israel – two Concurrent Village Networks.
