"What Is the Real Crime?" - A formidable adversary

National Review Online | April 8, 2002 | Rich Lowry

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President Bush in his speech last week urged Arab governments to end their support — financial, operational, and moral — for Palestinian terrorism.

"All states must keep their promise," Bush said, "made in a vote in the United Nations to actively oppose terror in all its forms. No nation can pick and choose its terrorist friends. I call on the Palestinian Authority and all governments in the region to do everything in their power to stop terrorist activities, to disrupt terrorist financing, and to stop inciting violence by glorifying terror in state-owned media, or telling suicide bombers they are martyrs. They're not martyrs. They're murderers. And they undermine the cause of the Palestinian people."

A day later an unmistakable message came back from the Saudis, in a Friday Washington Post op-ed by Bandar bin Sultan: Drop dead.

Bandar is, of course, "the Saudi we can do business with," he is the long-time Washington operator with a taste for fine cigars, an Aspen estate with 15 bedrooms and 16 baths, and homes in Washington, England, and Saudi Arabia (actually he has a palace there). He embodies the relationship between the U.S. and the Saudis, its strategic and financial underpinnings, its insider dealing among elite sophisticates.

So it is all the more remarkable how far the "sophisticated" Bandar's view of the crisis departs from that of the United States — indeed, how far it departs from reality and from what would be the view of any minimally honest opponent of terrorism.

He invokes George Washington in defense of Palestinian violence, arguing that Washington was among the many leaders of national liberation "who were all labeled as terrorists by the occupying military force at the time. So what is the real crime, when the Palestinians resist the Israeli military occupation of their country?"

Well, if Washington had been strapping explosives around the waists of 18-year-old colonial women and packing them onto ships to cross the Atlantic and then walk into British pubs and cafes to blow up civilians — then maybe the British would have had a point in calling him a terrorist.

Bandar apparently sees no "real crime" in the suicide bombings. He says "the Palestinians' greatest crime is their insistence on resisting the military occupation of their country." The "greatest crime"? Really? Greater than the Passover massacre?

Yes, Bandar makes a rote denunciation of "the killing of innocent people." But he then accuses Israel of killing innocent Palestinians. And this is really the rub: For Bandar there appears to be no significant difference between the collateral damage caused by Israeli military strikes, and the Palestinian suicide bombings.

Indeed, Israel's actions may be worse: He refers to "Israel's terrorism" and "the terrorist Israeli aggression," but never to Palestinian terrorism. So, whereas the U.S. sees "terrorism" — the deliberate killings of innocents — as always an illegitimate tactic, period, end of story, Bandar struggles to justify it in the case of the Palestinians.

As for putting a stop to terrorism, forget about it. "No leader in the world can guarantee that no one will resort to violence," he writes, "but I can guarantee that a desperate and oppressed person whose dignity has been insulted and is willing to die cannot be stopped by any means."

In other words, Bush can take his call to Arab states to discourage terrorism and stuff it — there is no stopping the Palestinian suicide juggernaut, as long as Palestinian "dignity" is insulted by the Israelis. (When that will stop no one knows. Is Israel's very existence an affront to Palestinian and Arab dignity?)

As for comparisons between the Israeli offensive and U.S. action in Afghanistan, Bandar will have none of it: "Based on international laws and norms, the United States was justified in defending itself following the attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11th, attacks directed by officials in Afghanistan and their terrorist allies. What Israel is doing now is the exact opposite."

If we take this literally, it means that Israel is a terrorist state that needs toppling.

Bandar trots out other whoppers. He says that he "understands the priorities of 3 million unarmed Palestinians." Unarmed? Why then are they shooting back? He says Yasser Arafat "was elected by the Palestinian people." Well, yes. He was elected once, in a rigged election, and apparently has no intention of ever getting elected again.

Hawks who have recently warned that an enormous gulf has opened between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have sometimes been dismissed as alarmist. But here is Bandar riding to the rescue, demonstrating the hawks' case for them, in black-and-white, under his own byline.

Someone buy that man a nice cigar.

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I can guarantee that a desperate and oppressed person whose dignity has been insulted and is willing to die cannot be stopped by any means

It sure looks like Sharon has stopped the suicide bombers for now...