Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 23rd, 2006
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
In The Sunday Times of July 23, 2006, Michael Portillo wrote two of the best articles regarding the real world of terrorism. The first article, an opinion piece, was titled “The Bloody Truth Is That Israel’s War Is Our War.” The second article was titled “No Offense, Imam, But We Must Call It Islamic Terror.”
“George Bush and Tony Blair refuse to support United Nations calls for a ceasefire between Israel and fighters in Gaza and Lebanon. Our two countries risk both diplomatic isolation and criticism at home, since the toll of civilian casualties sickens public opinion across the world.
Caught unawares by a microphone in St Petersburg, Bush and Blair expressed no concern for the suffering. The president’s strategic analysis (”the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s all over”) was inadequate to say the least, and in the brief exchange Blair descended to Bush’s level of inarticulacy.
None of that means their policy is wrong. To explain why they might be right is an uphill struggle because many more innocents are dying in Lebanon than in Israel, making it easy to accuse the Jewish state of disproportionate violence. The proper question has to go beyond “how many civilians are dying today?” to “can Israel’s actions contribute to eventual peace?” The second question is legitimate because Israel is committed to extracting itself from much of the territory it has occupied since 1967. The proposal to pull out was so controversial among Israelis that Ariel Sharon, the last prime minister, left the Likud party. He created a new party, Kadima, which won office on its single issue promise of unilateral withdrawal. It will involve the destruction of some Jewish settlements.
Sharon’s unilateralism was criticized by both Israelis and Palestinians. But he could find no Palestinian leadership able to deliver and enforce a deal. The late Yasser Arafat was both ineffectual and in hock to the terrorists. Mahmoud Abbas, his successor as president of the Palestinian Authority, shows willing but is largely powerless, all the more so since Hamas took over the Palestinian government in a surprise election victory this year. The dual leadership of Abbas and Hamas illustrates the division in Palestinian public opinion between those willing to create a new state alongside Israel and those committed to Israel’s destruction.
In May Abbas proposed resolving that ambiguity with a referendum. He is willing to gamble that even though Hamas won the elections, the majority of Palestinians accept the two-state solution. A positive ballot would bring the Palestinians into line with the Arab League, which in 2002 voted to accept Israel’s existence if it gave up the occupied territories.
Before the question could be put, Hamas fighters kidnapped an Israeli soldier in a raid from Gaza, from which Sharon had withdrawn. A kidnap puts tremendous pressure on a government. It enrages public opinion and the crisis cannot end until the hostage is released or murdered. Presumably that is why the terrorists chose the tactic. Israel’s response to the abduction was bound to be “disproportionate”. Among Israelis the attack also discredits the policy of unilateral withdrawal because it seems to leave them vulnerable.
Optimists have hoped that Hamas might in time be willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist. It may yet happen but the kidnap is not a promising sign. In any case, if Israel and Hamas are to do business they must work that out for themselves. It is hard to see how US or European mediation could help.
Even the most sanguine pro-Arab apologist would not suggest that Hezbollah will soon be ready to recognize Israel. So in responding with massive force to the kidnapping of two more soldiers by Hezbollah, Israel is not only attempting to disarm a well-equipped hostile force. It would also marginalize a group that opposes the two-state solution, endorsed by most Arab countries. Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have condemned Hezbollah’s aggression. If Hezbollah remains in control of large parts of Lebanon, then that country cannot enjoy stability and Israel will not gain peace even if it continues to withdraw from occupied areas. For Israelis only the prospect of security justifies the trading of captured land.
The American government will understand that position. Additionally, Bush does not want to imitate President Clinton, who in the last weeks of his incumbency staked enormous political capital on a comprehensive peace deal that Arafat rejected. Nor does he want to tell other countries to tread softly as they pursue terrorists across borders.
I was surprised by the Bush-Blair conversation. I have heard world leaders debate crises in private and none of those discussions compared with theirs in crude banality. The emphasis on Syria seems extraordinary too. Syria supports Hezbollah, not least with weaponry, but to believe that Syria could simply stop Hezbollah probably underplays Iran’s role.
The trouble that Syria and Iran can cause is sad testimony to the failure of American and British foreign policy. When our forces entered Iraq, Syria quaked. Its difficulties deepened following the assassination in Beirut of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese premier. At the time Syria occupied Lebanon and was blamed for the murder. Lebanese protesters forced Syria to pull out its troops.
The Damascus regime looked precarious. The ruling dynasty is Alawite (an offshoot of Shi’ism) in a country where Sunnis are the majority. President Bashar al-Assad was not groomed for high office - the heir apparent died in an accident. He flirted with liberalizing the regime but was then pushed back by reactionary forces. Perhaps his weakness has proved a strength. Bush and Blair do not like him but they know he may be better than whatever might replace him. So he remains in place, pulling the strings in Lebanon.
Still worse for Bush and Blair will be if Iran emerges from this struggle with enhanced prestige, at least in the judgment of the Muslim world. Iran is a bad dream for the West - a theocratic regime bent on using terrorism to clone its model throughout the Shi’ite world. Hezbollah was founded to bring about such a transformation in Lebanon, and Iraq and Syria could be other targets. The Iranian president is committed to destroying Israel. Iran is working on a nuclear weapon and its agents are helping to kill Americans in Iraq.
When Bush recently accepted direct negotiations with Tehran on nuclear energy he reversed an American policy that had applied since the Iranian revolution of 1979. Perhaps that smacked of weakness, since the US’s reward is a Hezbollah attack on Israel that Iran probably pre-approved. Perhaps then it is not surprising that America is not hastening Israel towards a ceasefire.
Critics of Israel point out that bombing Lebanon provides fresh grievances for Palestinians and other Muslims. That is undoubtedly so, and it is exactly what Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran would wish. Israel is forced to choose between looking feeble (which will increase its vulnerability) or playing into its enemies’ hands through “disproportionate” action. Before we criticize Israel we should at least understand that dilemma and be aware that if we stoke up anti-Israeli feeling we dance to a devilish tune.
It is fashionable to treat Bush’s idea of a global war against terror with contempt, even though America and Britain have experienced murderous outrages on their home territory. We are battling Al-Qaeda (a Sunni movement) in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Iraq we face attack from Shi’ite as well as Sunni extremists. Al-Qaeda’s ambition to bring down governments across the Muslim world including Egypt and Saudi Arabia should have us worried. Iran’s aim to create a cluster of theocratic Shi’ite states committed to Israel’s destruction is just as alarming. The Al-Qaeda and Iranian menaces are different (and sometimes opposed) but they both threaten our interests.
America, Britain and Israel have all committed big policy errors. Perhaps they have made things worse and maybe they have stimulated recruitment to the enemy. But the present Israeli government was elected to make peace and did not depart from that course of its own volition. Its struggle against Hezbollah fits into a complex global jigsaw of battles against terror.
The death toll in Lebanon is repugnant. But if the knee-jerk response of western public opinion is an upsurge in anti-Israeli and anti-American feeling then we misunderstand our interests and the threat to them from terror. For us to turn against Israel and America would be perverse and potentially suicidal.”
“After the terrorist outrages of July 7, 2005, most Londoners have continued to travel by bus, train and Underground. They are more vigilant, but few seem to experience anxiety about a repeat attack during their journey. That is remarkable because objectively the chances of another massacre must be higher than a year ago.
Last year the bombs were the first shock. The second was to discover that the terrorists were suicide bombers and British. We could have coped with the outrage more easily had the murderers been foreigners, raised in squalor, brainwashed under a theocratic dictatorship and shipped here to massacre people for whom they had no kindred feelings.
It is more plausible that we could defend the country against an exterior threat than defeat one that comes from within. We can hope to monitor comings and goings at our airports and to keep tabs on people who stand out because they are visitors. But the task is almost hopeless if the perpetrators live among us. If four young men who had enjoyed the advantages of life in Britain decide to kill themselves and as many others as possible, then why should there not be 400 or 4,000 more?
Once we understand that, we feel less safe. Also, things have got worse over the past year. Although there has been no anti-Islamic backlash it seems that many British Muslims feel victimized by the authorities’ response to terror. They think they face discrimination when stopped and searched. The bungled police operation in Forest Gate has become an emblem of supposed repression.
Even peace-loving Muslim spokesmen feel obliged to give credence to the perception that their community is being unfairly harassed. It causes some young Muslim men to withdraw further from a British society claimed to be hostile. At best that surrounds the terrorists with a penumbra of disaffected Muslims who may not condemn their crimes or denounce their murderous plots. At worst it enlarges the pool from which new bombers can be recruited.
It is there that Al-Qaeda has scored its greatest success. More significant for the long term than the bombs is the impact that terror has in dividing the groups that make up our society, and in increasing the appeal of militancy to those who can be duped into seeing themselves as repressed.
Muslim complaints about being victimized are perversely directed. Muslims are victims of the bombers, not of the state or the police. It is the terrorists who make Muslims potential objects of suspicion and fear because the bombers murder in the name of Islam. Muslims have every right to be outraged, but their fury should focus on the men of violence. The police action in Forest Gate was jack-handed and the shooting of one of the “suspects” was indefensible. But given the profile of the terrorists, Muslims are bound to be more affected. By analogy, when police are looking for a rapist they interview males without anyone believing them to be institutional men haters.
There are those who in the interests of community relations denounce linking the word Islamic to “violence” or “extremism”. They object that we did not call the IRA “Catholic terrorists”, nor do we speak of “Christian extremism” or link Christian fundamentalism to violence.
There are good reasons for that. Although the IRA is rooted in the Catholic community, its aims are political and secular. Although there certainly are Christian extremists today, just now they are not murdering people in the name of purifying the world. By contrast, across the globe human beings are being slaughtered in large numbers by Muslims quoting from the Koran and vowing death to infidels, including other Muslim sects. Their objectives are political and religious.
So to try to condemn the expression “Islamic violence” is a dangerous attempt at censorship that would hamper our understanding of the threat we face. The term is certainly offensive to Muslims, but the offense is caused by the bombers, not by those who describe the process.
Last week Tony Blair caused a furore by calling on Muslims to do more to control, denounce or deliver up the men who preach and practice violence. Some Muslim spokesmen said that was a divisive remark that stigmatized Muslims instead of recognizing that the problem was one for British society as a whole.
The prime minister’s exhortation was valid. The bombers are not casualties of British society. Shehzad Tanweer, the Aldgate murderer, was only 22 yet left £121,000 after tax. The bombers’ grievances cannot be bought off with more money for schools or a new youth centre. They were corrupted, I assume, by theoreticians of annihilation from within their community. Their training was probably perfected in an Al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan.
Abdur-Raheem Green is an imam who believes that he preached to some of the 7/7 murderers and hopes that nothing he said encouraged them. When asked last week whether he would turn over to the authorities young men who were moving towards terrorism, his answer was ambiguous. He argued that it would be better for him to dissuade them rather than denounce them because that would risk creating further alienation. That is not the response that Blair, speaking for most Britons, is seeking.
There is another disagreeable ambiguity when some spokesmen link terror to British foreign policy. Anas Altikriti, the director of the Islam Expo (now taking place at Alexandra Palace in north London), wrote last week: “We will not stand for our country and people being terrorized nor will we stand for our government terrorizing any other peoples.” That is presumably a reference to Iraq and Afghanistan. What does “will not stand for” mean?
Even Dr Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, a brave opponent of the fundamentalists who argues that the Koran does not authorize violence, calls on Britain to reappraise its foreign policy. In many Muslim minds, apparently, terrorism in Britain has to be understood (even if not condoned) as a reaction to Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Harvard School of Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, in the Jerusalem Post of July 23, 2006, puts the blame for civilian casualties in the Middle East and elsewhere firmly at the door of those terrorists who hide behind the civilian population: “The very idea that terrorists who use women and children as suicide bombers against other women and children shed crocodile tears over the deaths of civilians they deliberately put in harm’s way, gives new meaning to the word “hypocrisy.” We all know that hypocrisy is a tactic of the terrorists, but it is shocking that others fall for it and become complicit with the terrorists.
Let the blame fall where it belongs: on the terrorists who deliberately seek to kill enemy civilians and give their democratic enemies little choice but to kill some civilians behind whom the terrorists are hiding.”
Writing for Israel’s YNetNews,com, Sever Plocker looks at the media coverage of the situation using the previous example of the 2002 “Jenin massacre” myth that appeared in much of the press at the time: “The fairytale about the “Jenin massacre” may have died, but were lessons learned? Some were. The European media, especially the electronic media, has given some expression to the suffering of Israeli civilians under attack. It has not (usually) supported Hezballah.
But in other cases, no lessons were learned from the blood libel of the Jenin massacre. During the second week of fighting, Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon is currently being portrayed as the total destruction of Lebanon, of essential civilian infrastructure, as a human tragedy on the level of the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Southeast Asia.
Dershowitz mentions - “reading reports from left-leaning field reporters, one gets a picture that Beirut has been destroyed at least as badly as Dresden was during the Second World War. Foreign television channels use one section of footage over and over, showing the destruction of one neighborhood in south Beirut, to ’show’ what has happened throughout the city.” Personally, I would like to add here that a Lebanese journalist accredited to the UN in New York, who returned from Lebanon via Aleppo. in Syria, and Europe, told me that that when she left Beirut July 18th, at a time the southern suburbs of Beirut where being bombarded, in the Northern part of the city some people were still going to restaurants. Further, the question arises what constitutes disproportionate reaction by Israel? Does one think that Israel was entitled to kidnap two Hezbollah operatives and fire an equal amount of rockets and missiles? Further on, as per information attached to the Dershowitz article, a diary of a former American living in Haifa is being quoted in the Washington Post:
“We found out recently that one of the rockets that fell Sunday landed near one of the first strip malls in Israel. Now that I take personally - one of our favorite restaurants is in that mall. Why do we like that restaurant so much? Because, while strictly kosher, it is staffed almost entirely by Arab Israelis, who really know how to be hospitable.
In short, that restaurant is Israel the way it could be, Jews and Arabs socializing together, if our neighbors would only allow it. Oh, and the food is pretty good.”
michael.portillo at sunday-times.co.uk
The Full Article by Professor Alan Dershowitz follows:
“THE PREDICTABLE CONDEMNERS.”
“The Hizbullah and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies.
By hiding behind their own civilians the Islamic radicals issue a challenge to democracies: Either violate your own morality by coming after us and inevitably killing some innocent civilians, or maintain your morality and leave us with a free hand to target your innocent civilians.
This challenge presents democracies such as Israel with a lose-lose option, and the terrorists with a win-win option.
There is one variable that could change this dynamic and present democracies with a viable option that could make terrorism less attractive as a tactic: The international community, the anti-Israel segment of the media and the so called “human rights” organizations could stop falling for this terrorist gambit and acknowledge that they are being used to promote the terrorist agenda.
Whenever a democracy is presented with the lose-lose option and chooses to defend its citizens by going after the terrorists who are hiding among civilians, this trio of predictable condemners can be counted on by the terrorists to accuse the democracy of “overreaction,” “disproportionality” and “violations of human rights.”
In doing so they play right into the hands of the terrorists, causing more terrorism and more civilian casualties on both sides.
If instead this trio could, for once, be counted on to blame the terrorists for the civilian deaths on both sides, this tactic would no longer be a win-win situation for the terrorists.
IT SHOULD BE obvious by now that Hizbullah and Hamas actually want the Israeli military to kill as many Lebanese and Palestinian civilians as possible. That is why they store their rockets underneath the beds of civilians; why they launch their missiles from crowded civilian neighborhoods and hide among civilians. They are seeking to induce Israel to defend its civilians by going after them among their civilian “shields.” They know that every civilian they induce Israel to kill hurts Israel in the media and the international and human rights communities.
They regard these human shields as shahids - martyrs - even if they did not volunteer for this lethal job. Under the law, criminals who use human shields are responsible for the deaths of the shields, even if the bullet that kills them came from the gun of a policeman.
Israel has every self-interest in minimizing civilian casualties, whereas the terrorists have every self-interest in maximizing them - on both sides. Israel should not be condemned for doing what every democracy would and should do: taking every reasonable military step to stop the terrorists from killing their innocent civilians.
NOW THAT some of those who are launching rockets at Israeli cities have announced they have new surprises in store for Israel that may include chemical and biological weapons, the stakes have gotten even higher.
What would Israeli critics regard as “proportioned” to a chemical or biological attack? What would they say if Israel tried to preempt such an attack and, in the process, killed some civilians? Must a democracy absorb a first strike from a weapon of mass destruction before it fights back? Would any other democracy be expected to do that?
The world must come to recognize the cynical way in which terrorists exploit civilian casualties. They launch anti-personnel rockets designed to maximize enemy civilian casualties, then they cry “human rights” when their own civilians - behind whom they are deliberately hiding - are killed by the democracies in the process of trying to prevent further acts of terrorism.
The very idea that terrorists who use women and children as suicide bombers against other women and children shed crocodile tears over the deaths of civilians they deliberately put in harm’s way gives new meaning to the word “hypocrisy.” We all know that hypocrisy is a tactic of the terrorists, but it is shocking that others fall for it and become complicit with the terrorists.
Let the blame fall where it belongs: on the terrorists who deliberately seek to kill enemy civilians and give their democratic enemies little choice but to kill some civilians behind whom the terrorists are hiding.
Those who condemn Israel for killing civilians - who are used as human shields and swords for the terrorists - actually cause more civilian deaths and make it harder for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.
HOW THE WORLD reacts to Israel’s current military efforts to protect its citizens will have a considerable impact on future Israeli steps toward peace. Prior to the recent kidnappings and rocket attacks the Israeli government had announced its intention to engage in further withdrawals from large portions of the West Bank.
But how can Israel be expected to move forward with any plan for withdrawal if all it can expect in return is more terrorism - what the terrorists regard as “land for rocket launchings” - and more condemnation when it seeks to protect its civilians?
Permalink | 
Printer Friendly | 
Email This Article
Posted in Reporting From the UN Headquarters in New York, Reporting from Washington DC, Israel, European Union, United Kingdom
Leave a comment for this article
###
