Israel, Palestine, and the Real Shadow War
August 5, 2010 No CommentsNicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times recently wrote an article discussing the “nonviolent” movement currently on the rise in the West Bank. He described a march he participated in, mentioning the throwing of stones at Israeli soldiers and the soldiers tear-gassing the marchers in retaliation. Then, he compared the Palestinians to the oppressed Indians of Gandhi’s time, discoursing on how much more effective a true protest, perhaps carried out by Palestinian women, would be than the current protests, which define nonviolence as “not involving guns or explosives.” Throughout, he betrays his bias towards the Palestinian position, portraying them as refugees discriminated against by an oppressive occupying force – the state of Israel.
Kristof has fallen into the same trap as the rest of the liberal media; he believes that the core problem is that Israel ought to treat its disenfranchised neighbors better. It probably should, a fact which the Israelis have historically agreed with. The Palestinians have agreed with this notion as well. This conflict is being perpetuated by a relatively small group of people, most of them outside of the Israel/Palestine area, who stand to gain by the bombings and the controversy. Hamas is generally seen as the Palestinian instigator, but it has begun to take its role as a political party more seriously of late. This shift has been helped by the rise of the Fatah party in the West Bank. Israel is currently run by the no-nonsense Benjamin Netanyahu, who has drawn much criticism for his handling of the conflict.
Such criticism as Kristof’s is, however, laced with hypocrisy. The lack of military action on American soil since the Civil War has created a false sense of invincibility, and a mystique that we, isolated by our two oceans and still-dominant navy, could not be attacked. So our response to the 9/11 bombings was to destroy any hint of infrastructure Afghanistan had, however twisted and ineffectual said infrastructure may have been. Israel has coped with regular attacks, originally from legitimate military forces (belonging to Syria, Iran, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and for some time Lebanon, among others) and more recently from terrorist organizations, since it was created in 1948. Their response has been primarily to defend their borders against a significant Arabic size advantage. The largest military expansion of their territory to date came as a result of the Six-Day War in 1967, conceived as a strategy to prevent the combined militaries of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria from staging an invasion. At that time, the Arabic nations enjoyed advantages in size, geography, and technology, and it is very likely that had Israel not struck first, it would have been annihilated. By now, most of that land has been returned to its pre-war owners. As of now, Israel maintains control only over the West Bank, Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem.
If the United States found itself in the same situation as Israel, faced with regular bombings on its own soil and high risk to civilians, we would classify the entire Palestinian people as enemy combatants and send in the Marines. By that standard, Israel’s response has been fairly mild. Yet Israel has some blame for the current situation. Actually, they shoulder quite a lot of the burden, but not because of their brutality.
Rather, they have picked the wrong target.
Terrorism is essentially a political tactic. Horrific and inhuman, yes, but political in purpose nevertheless. And, terrorism is the chosen tactic of much of the Arab world. By goading Israel into a military response to Palestinian aggressions, the surrounding nations have generated some measure of sympathy for terrorism against Israel – de facto this gives them political leeway to pursue an underlying goal of eradicating the state of Israel. Time and again, the collective Middle East has demonstrated its opposition to the existence of a Jewish state, regularly attempting to invade. It has only been since Israel developed a superior military (notably, with nuclear armaments) that direct attacks on their soil have fallen out of favor among their foreign enemies. In addition, the leaders of nations like Syria and Iran are well aware of their advantage in world opinion, however inept they are at cultivating it for themselves.
While terrorism is a political tactic that serves the interests of the Arab world well, there are enough rational people among the Palestinian community to realize that terrorism does not help the Palestinian cause at all. This recognition is the primary driving force behind protests like the one in which Kristof participated. In truth, peaceful protest likely is the preferred tactic of the Palestinian people, whose motivation seems to be a need for a legitimate home. They see Israel as an oppressor because that is, indeed, their day-to-day experience of the situation. But despite the religious lens through which this day-to-day experience is often projected, the Palestinian people are not jihadists – rather, they are permanent refugees.
This brings us closer to the core of the problem described quite clearly in another recent New York Times editorial by Efraim Karsh: not only are the nearby Arab states exacerbating the problem, they are doing so with a singular lack of concern for the Palestinians themselves. As clarified in one truly frightening quote mentioned in the editorial, courtesy an Egyptian diplomat of all things: “We couldn’t care less if all the refugees die. There are enough Arabs around.” Numerous times throughout this conflict groups sponsored by various Arabic states have slaughtered Palestinians on some pretext or another, and not once were they punished for it. It could even be said that the refugees have been treated worse by the Arabic countries they seek shelter in than the Jewish nation they are exhorted to despise. It seems hypocrisy runs strong not only in the liberal American media, but in the Arabic world as well.
So here is a suggestion for Netanyahu: stop bombing the Palestinians. Halt your settlements in the West Bank. Extend aid to the Palestinian people, propose peace talks to the Palestinian Authority, do everything in your power to give them what they are asking for – a secure and autonomous state of their own. Punish the culpable, not the scapegoats. It’s time to acknowledge that this war is not between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but rather the same war Israel has been fighting for the past sixty years as the only Jewish state in the world against countries like Iran, Syria, and Jordan. The Palestinians are simply human shields for the true aggressors. If only Israel and the American media would figure that out…
-Noah Fram
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