FIGHTING FANATICISM T
he world condemnation of Israel for its actions on the West Bank is both disproportionate and insincere. Many of the Arab states routinely indulge in far worse atrocities against their own populations than those alleged against Israel. Yasser Arafat's internal forces have committed many welldocumented acts of brutality against the people of the West Bank without arousing the wrath of the United Nations. There is more outrage over the killing of one Palestinian by an Israeli soldier than over the killing of 100 citizens by an Arab dictator in the furtherance of his own power; in other words, the Israelis are judged by completely different, and vastly superior, standards from others in the region. Those who condemn Israel out of hand, therefore, are, in effect, anti-Arab racists.
Israel is a small country, both geographically and in population, and is surrounded by hostile states, many of which have been calling for its complete extermination for half a century. Each terrorist act within its borders consequently has a much greater resonance and significance than acts of similar magnitude in larger and more secure countries.
Events made it clear that Yasser Arafat had no intention whatever of halting the wave of suicide bombings that were taking place in Israel. He claimed to lack the capacity to do so, even in the police statelet that he ran: but there is abundant evidence that he and his henchmen trained, funded, armed and encouraged such bombers. Large caches of arms and explosives have been found by the Israelis on the West Bank. Arafat's claims of ignorance and impotence are simply not credible, What course, then, could Israel have taken? Was it supposed passively to accept the suicide bombings, in the hope merely that they would die down? What state could stand by idly while the most elementary aspects of daily life became fraught with danger?
Of course, in a retaliatory action such as Israel's, many innocent people were bound to suffer, and unfortunately some to be killed. It would appear at the very least that the Israeli forces have at times behaved brutally. These results surely cannot have been unpredictable to the Palestinian leaders who connived at the bombings. And
while the death of even a single stonethrowing child is regrettable, one is entitled to ask what kind of people allow their children to throw stones in such a situation. Some people have argued that this must illustrate the depth of the desperation of the Palestinian people; but it must always be remembered that fanaticism is not necessarily proportional to the suffering that allegedly provokes or produces it, nor is the worth of a cause necessarily proportional to the lengths to which people are prepared to go to promote it, The end does not justify the means, but neither do the means justify the end.
The Israeli action is self-defence; it is not at all comparable morally to the wave of suicide bombing that occasioned it; and the frequent comparison throughout the world of the Israelis with the Nazis is especially offensive — and presumably designed to be so. Even if the Israelis were wholly in the wrong, the toll of Palestinian dead could not remotely be compared with what happened in Germany and Eastern Europe, and even with many lesser man-made catastrophes that have happened since then; and anybody who suggests such a comparison proves thereby not only a bias of murky provenance, but that he is unable to think clearly.
Sympathy with Israel does not preclude sympathy with the plight of ordinary Palestinians, nor with the Palestinians' right to their own territory. But neither of these entails support for the leaders of the Palestinians, who have consistently used their population as a kind of hostage to their own political ambitions. Yasser Arafat's recent rejection of Ehud Barak's offer — by far the most generous that Israel has ever made — proved once again that he is a maximalist, unconcerned at bringing about any immediate or lasting improvement in the condition of his people. For him, as for Lenin, the worse things are, the better. In the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the Israelis concluded that he would accept nothing short of the destruction of Israel.
The condemnatory noises made by the West against Israel will not appease the Arabs, who believe that Israel can be made to do anything the Americans tell it to do, but will encourage the terrorists, who will derive moral justification for their acts from them. The West is shooting itself squarely in the foot by its insincere denunciations of Israel, suggesting a moral equivalence between a democratic state's selfdefence and the bombers of pizza parlours.
Ultimately, the Palestinian people are the victims of their own leaders more than they are of Israel. This leadership has led its people up a blind alley for half a century. There can be no solution to the problem in the Middle East, and no end to the cycle of bombing and retaliation, until that leadership changes not only personnel but heart. And this in turn will require a deep change in the political culture of the whole region.
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