Due process / mob rule

Editorial

Often lost amid the cacophony of condemnation against Israel, the lawless and murderous behavior of elements in Palestinian society were demonstrated in their starkest form last Friday. An Associated Press photographer caught, in a horrifying series of images, a mob lynching of a Palestinian man accused of collaborating with Israel and abusing his daughters.

The series of three photographs shows Mohammed Rafiq Abdel Razek being led into a public square and shot to death in tableaux that should go down alongside the most poignant war photography. The report said hundreds of Palestinians stood shouting encouragement for the killers and derision toward the accused. (AP dutifully reported that Razek's relatives confirmed his guilt. This may assuage some Palestinian apologists looking for a kernal of justice in this brutal public execution, though it more likely reflects the terror of Razek's family over their own fate might had they dared to maintain their kin's innocence.)

This photograph, of course, is not technically war photography, since it was a Palestinian mob killing a Palestinian.

These photographs may prove eye-opening to members of the world community who treat Israel as the ultimate pariah while according the Palestinians every benefit of the doubt. While Canadian and other pro-Palestinian activists were performing intellectual yoga – this must be Israel's fault, but how? – the groundwork was already being laid at Israel's doorstep by Palestinian Authority spokespersons. They insist that Israeli occupation limits the PA's authority to maintain law and order. This remains an interesting assertion, given that the occupation is a direct result of the PA's inability and/or refusal to control terrorism when Israel withdrew from the territories as part of the now-aborted peace process. The PA can't control terror when Israel's there and can't (or won't) control it when Israel's gone.

Considering that the sole demand Israel has made before withdrawing from the occupied territories is the vaguest assurance of relative peace on its borders, one would think the Palestinians and their global allies would find a way to provide it. But if the genie of violence is out of the bottle, blame must be laid not on Israel, but at the feet of Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders and vigilantes who have legitimated violence over decades of terror against Israel.

These pictures are just the most visible proof yet of the fact that a significant chunk of the statistics of dead and wounded Palestinians during this intifada have no relation whatsoever to Israel – other than fabricated or untried accusations of Palestinian "complicity" and "collaboration" with the Zionist "entity." Buried amid the casualty statistics attributed to Israel are a substantial number of Palestinian casualties of Palestinian violence. It is a fratricidal and particularly grisly aspect of this terrorist war that has too often been ignored by Palestinians and their supporters.

Perhaps Razek's death will open a few more eyes to the reality of Palestinian violence, just as photographs of the booby-trapped body of a developmentally challenged Palestinian boy recently drew attention to the Palestinian tactic of recruiting children into "suicide" bombing. It remains to be determined what effect any of these documented atrocities will have on the massively anti-Israel slant of the world community.

Kudos to the Vancouver Sun for the editorial decision in running another Associated Press story immediately below the series of pictures documenting Razek's lynching.

On the same day that Razek was being shot apart by automatic weapons, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that, in reaction to an Israeli Supreme Court decision, the routing of Israel's security fence will be completely reviewed. The fence has been condemned internationally on two fronts: that it causes inconvenience to Palestinians and that it represents a de facto border between Israel and an eventual Palestinian state – a border that does not conform to the boundaries Palestinians demand.

These two stories illustrate a fundamental difference between Israel, where the rule of law remains supreme, and Palestinian society, in which lawlessness and violence have become socially acceptable during decades of righteous resistance to an "occupier."

Israel's critics, in Vancouver and elsewhere, have railed against the security fence as the incarnation of Israeli apartheid and segregation. Now, Israel's Supreme Court has demanded a review of the issue and Israel's government has responded. Of course, this court decision is already being condemned by Israel-bashers as too little, too late.

But it represents due process, which is the tectonic chasm between Israel and the PA.

Due process is slower than mob rule, but it's far more likely to reach a just conclusion in the long run.

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