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March 24, 2006
Who to blame? Israel!
Editorial
Based on the accepted wisdom that Israel implements security measures
mostly because it likes to be cruel, the world is outraged
outraged! at the images of the invasion of a Palestinian
prison last week.
The world tends to view every Israeli military action as symptomatic
of a streak of base cruelty. That Israel trespasses against Palestinian
rights for nothing more than perverse pleasure is a concept that
is possible to swallow only because much of the world has already
gobbled down the presumption that Israel has no legitimate security
concerns. Israel, the tiny ribbon of Jews surrounded by genocidal
Jew-haters, is the sole source of Middle East woes and peace would
certainly ensue if Israel relented to every terrorist demand: So
goes the clear, if usually unstated, "logic" of the anti-Zionists.
The security barrier is the clearest example of this atrocious double-standard
in action. The Israeli government, having weighed six decades of
relentless killings of Jews against limited inconveniences to Palestinians,
determined that, in the absence of any indication of peaceful intent
from their neighbors, they had no alternative but to create a physical
deterrent to the free movement of murderers. In response, the world
has spat venom at Israel. Even statistics indicating that the barrier
has saved hundreds, possibly thousands, of Israeli lives, are dismissed
as no justification at all. Based on the widely accepted view that
Palestinian terrorists target Israeli civilians because they deserve
it, an Israeli-made barrier that saves innocent lives is
unthinkable, therefore, the barrier is condemned as aggression.
It was in this well-trod rut of prefab outrage that the incident
at the Jericho jail was met last week. The world, appalled at the
sight of Palestinian prisoners paraded out of their prison in underwear
pictures that were eerily reminiscent of the American treatment
of prisoners at Abu Ghraib is up in arms against Israel again.
Yet shahids, known in English as suicide-murderers, continue
to gather almost no criticism from the global community, who justify
such acts of "resistance" as a natural outcome of the
desperation caused by Israeli policies. The desperation argument
is the catch-all that justifies everything terrorists do against
Israeli civilians. Because Israeli policies supposedly breed the
desperation, there is nothing that cannot be explained away by attributing
terrorist violence to desperation.
The irony, of course, is that if anyone is eligible for forgiveness
based on desperation, it should be Israelis, who have withstood
decade after decade of assaults. Unlike Palestinians who, with only
very rare exceptions, are injured or killed only when engaging in
violence, Israeli victims are overwhelmingly non-combatants. Those
Palestinians who have been injured or killed in the last six years
of the intifada have almost all been engaged in terrorist activity.
A surprising number of them have also been killed not by Israelis,
but by the Palestinian Authority and the region's notoriously fighting
factions. Dead and injured Israelis during the same period have
overwhelmingly been guilty only of riding public transit, ordering
pizza or dancing in discos.
Such was the backdrop against which the case of the under-dressed
prisoners transpired last week. The world community, which has never
been concerned with details, saw the Israeli army invading a Palestinian
prison and asked no further questions before condemning the incident
in the starkest terms. But why was Israel involved in this
unsavory incident?
The invasion occurred after American and British guards, whose positions
at the prison were part of an international agreement, abandoned
their posts. The Palestinian Authority was about to release Ahmad
Sa'dat, the leader of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, who is responsible for the assassination in 2001 of
Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi. Palestinian prisons, when
not under the guard of third-party states like this one was until
last week, have revolving doors that routinely release mass murderers
after paltry sentences. In this case, which involved one of the
worst affronts a democratic state can endure the assassination
of a duly elected official the murderer had spent five years
behind bars in what has been reported as a veritable holiday spa.
Under international and bilateral agreements, the Palestinians were
bound by conditions that included allowing neutral guards to ensure
that the prison doors stay locked. Once these safeguards were gone,
Israel was not bound by these agreements.
Israel's worst offence in this instance was not sharing the PR savvy
the Palestinians exhibit and keeping cameras away from unappealing
scenes.
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