Posted on 03/27/2002 11:52:01 AM PST by davidtalker
William Murchison: U.S. can't seek neutrality in Middle East conflict 03/27/2002
By WILLIAM MURCHISON
We have to back off from this one so as to achieve the wider view.
Among Americans, courtesy of a robust and unshackled media, noses are pressed against all of the Middle East minutiae – special envoys, negotiating sessions, cease-fires, pullbacks and so forth.
Those aren't the questions most in need of addressing by Americans, for all the value that Middle Easterners and American diplomats may ascribe to them. The question needing reflection over here is: Whom would you want living next door – industrious, generally honest people who keep noses and neighborhoods clean, or people ready to blow themselves up and you along with them? It really isn't much of a choice, though that choice's nature gets lost amid the recriminations always on display in the – to give it a neutral name – Palestinian controversy.
The Palestinian terrorists, both individually and collectively, truly are appalling – as bad as any al-Qaedist who ever put a knife to an airline pilot's throat and just as crazy in the head.
I mean, whom do we want to win this thing? The PLO-Fatah-Hezbollah crowd, vengeful, murderous, armed to the teeth and ready to blow up a bus or a crowded restaurant for the sake of expressing its precious hatred? That would be all we needed: these sweethearts running Palestine-cum-Israel, doling out foundation grants for bomb research at Osama (formerly Hebrew of Jerusalem) University.
If it were just the mad bombers, that might not be critical. We could hope for better things from peace-loving Palestinians. There must be some – it is just that they seem, like Br'er Rabbit, to lie mighty low. One reads of families bursting with pride that Junior or Sis self-splattered on a Jerusalem sidewalk, taking several Israeli young people along for the ride. What, for that matter, of Yasser Arafat? Do we read of him frantically working the streets and backrooms, urging the bombers to cease and desist in the interest of peace? He might fail in that beneficent endeavor. There is nothing wrong, all the same, with trying – the activity for which he shows hardly any taste.
Where does all of this get us, then? Is there a larger point than beating up on the morally disabled – the bombers and their well-wishers? Well, sure.
An ingratiating American trait is the disposition to look for solutions – to split differences among contending parties and hope for nicer behavior. It still could happen in the Middle East. Theoretically. (It nearly did in 2000, when Yasser Arafat, in the American-brokered talks, walked away from almost everything he could have hoped negotiations would bring him.) Moreover, simple war weariness sometimes drives compromise.
But what if it doesn't this time around? If it doesn't, and the self-splatterers increase in number and savagery, it is hard to know what we should expect the Israelis honorably to do in their own defense – apart from doing what they have to do under the law of survival. What they "have to" do could entail the reoccupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip and the physical ouster of the feckless or cunning (take your pick) Yasser Arafat. It certainly would entail the wider use of military force.
It is amazing we need to have such an argument as this. Israel, with all of its flaws and failings, is democratic and Western at the core. It strikes only when struck or to prevent being struck. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the slaughter of several dozen innocent Muslims at prayer a few years ago – acts perpetrated by Israeli fanatics – show there are awful people on both sides. The difference on the Israeli side is that awfulness doesn't equate with national policy. If it did, Americans could stand aside while Israelis and Palestinians battled to the finish, and bad luck to them both.
It doesn't work that way. As things are going over there now, our conciliatory efforts notwithstanding, we may have to choose. That is, if you call choosing between the splattered and the splatterer a choice in any normal sense.
William Murchison is a contributing columnist to Viewpoints.
Which Middle Eastern regime is "Western"?
Certainly NOT Israel, see: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel. Shahak, I., & Mezvinsky, N. (1999). London: Pluto Press. which describes the hatred of Western culture by these fundamentalists.
Give it a rest. He has been more pro-Israel than any POTUS we've had in years.
Ever consider that once you accept others are sub-humans and they know you think that way, there will be no solution? That there is no alternative but a fight to the death? And that everyone must be killed on one side?
Better to hate people for what they do, not what they are. That way, everyone has a way out.
I am glad our President doesn't view anyone as an untermenschen. History shows what happens when a leader has that view of people.
We are really fortunate that President Bush is a mature and level-headed conservative unlike all too many posters.
BTW, subhuman fits quite well. There is no moral symmetry here. If Israel goes it will only whet their appetite. Simply, look at these creeps in places like The Phillipines, Indonesia, taking on Christian Churches and kidnapping missionaries. That has NOTHING to do with Israel and the Middle East. It has everything to do with the notion of the battle of civilizations.
Sad, a Frankenstein has been created. After being caged in camps for some 50 years, deprived of any future, no employment, shelters being destroyed, being told they will be whipped until they whimper, their fellow Arabs refuse to take them in and instead supply them with bombs to blow themselves up and kill others, what is surprising about this hopelessness?
If it were just the mad bombers, that might not be critical. We could hope for better things from peace-loving Palestinians. There must be some – it is just that they seem, like Br'er Rabbit, to lie mighty low. One reads of families bursting with pride that Junior or Sis self-splattered on a Jerusalem sidewalk, taking several Israeli young people along for the ride.
As he said, that is the bottom line. Everything else is just noise.
That's why he refuses to meet with Arafat of course.
BTW it looks like your buddy Norquist has some unsavory friends, who are connected to terrorist groups.
LOL. Why do you think the mad Islamists hate the US and Israel? It's our shared Western modernity. Colin Powell callsd Israel our 'Democratic ally' in the Middle East. You are not going to claim the Arabs nations are Western or democracies....are you? That would be a knee-slapper.
Calling Palis subhuman is ill advised, but considering their behavior, I think "uncivilized" would be quite appropriate.
Or do you agree with Luvz that they deserve our compassion while the Israelis deserve censure?
I don't see the point into going into it all but if you insist on smearing decent conservatives, don't have much choice, do I?
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