Cowboy behaviour
The Munich business was the work of Arab guerrillas who, according to their own words, see nothing for it but to resort to violence; and their words and deeds are similar to those cif the Provisional IRA in Ulster. There is nothing much to pick between them; and neither Black September nor the Provisionals are readily distinguishable from the guerrillas, or terrorists, who formed the Stern Gang. It is not very helpful to endeavour to draw fine distinctions between those who are thugs, killing innocent people in the pursuit of their fascist aims, and those who are freedom fighters whose heroism knows no bounds. After the Munich deaths, it was • immediately prophesied by journalists in Israel that the Israeli Government would exact retribution, and sure enough, attacks were swiftly launched against targets in Syria, Jordan and the Lebanon where terrorists were said to have their camps. That some of the terrorist camps were also refagee camps, and that refugees could be among the casualties, was readily admitted, and as readily waved aside' and out of mind, by the generality a men who saw nothing reprehensible but rather something primitively appropriate about Golda Meir's response. Since then, an Israeli diplomat has been enticed into a café and shot and an explosive letter has killed Israel's Agricultural Counsellor in London. The Jewish De-.
• fence League has endeavoured to smuggle arms out of Israel for reprisals against Arab embassies; and although the Israeli authorities have apparently prevented the shipment, a spokesman of the League said in Tel Aviv that the League's intention was to set up an " anti-terrorist " organisation that "will teach the Arabs that Jewish blood cannot be shed freely." Mrs Golda Meir last week said "Israel will fight Arab terrorists wherever possible," and the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Abba Eban, declared this week: "We must stop merely condemning terrorism. It has to be rooted out, and this has become our most important war. Israel can fight terror attacks by delivering blows against, and weakening, the saboteurs in their bases. This is the basic way of blunting the punch of their war."
It is easy, and tempting, confronted with this sort of language and considering the proliferation of terrorist and counterterrorist activities, to equate one evil with another, to shrug, to say "it's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," even when it is ten eyes for an eye, ten teeth for a tooth. Israel is admired in the West for the courage and audacity of its army, and for the way that skill and hard work have begun restoring the wasted land of Palestine and enlivening the Biblical promise of a land flowing with milk and honey. Israel is also forgiven much, understandably if illogically, because of the long and appalling history of Jewish persecution and in particular because of the Hitlerian extermination. But it is worth recalling that, in the dispute between the Palestinians ' and the Israelis, it is the Palestinians who have been sinned against, and not the Israelis: it is the Palestinians who have lost their land's and their houses and their hope a a national home; it is the Palestinians who are the refugees, the victims.
This is. not the end of it. If governments are to bring the present outbreak of guerrilla or terrorist activity to an end, then the governments themselves cannot behave like the guerrillas or terrorists. This is recognised generally; but not, apparently, by the State of Israel. No other civilised state would respond to a Munich incident in the way that Israel did; and this is just as well, for if it became the rule for states to behave like cowboys the fragile international order which now subsists would be destroyed in the Middle East as elsewhere.
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