They sure do and THREE TIMES the US has ACTED in the UN, first time ever too! ;o)
(April 5) - In his surprise speech yesterday, US President George W. Bush demonstrated what has become an axiom of international relations: Israel is the only country whose right to defend itself is not self-evident, but subject to strict international limits. The transplantation of this axiom into the post-September 11 world order is a tragedy, not just for Israel, but for the US.
Over the past month alone, Israel lost 125 of its citizens to terrorism, almost twice the proportionate toll the US suffered on September 11. Yet Israel is not doing what the US did in Afghanistan. Far from it. Though the US did not deliberately kill a single civilian, thousands of innocent Afghans reportedly died in aerial bombardments designed to oust the Taliban and crush al-Qaida.
The lion's share of Israel's fighting, by contrast, has been done on the ground, with greater care to prevent civilian casualties than any other army facing a similar threat would employ. While it is possible to argue that Israel could do a better job of implementing its own ideal, the contrast between the Israeli and Palestinian ideals could not be more stark: Israel tries to minimize civilian casualties, while the Palestinians try to maximize them.
The past week, for example, was a happy one for Hamas. "Forty were killed and 200 wounded - in just two operations," one Hamas leader told The New York Times with a smile. These operationsâ were the massacres of families attending a Pessah Seder in Netanya and in a restaurant in Haifa.
As the leader of the free world and the war on terrorism, Bush's job is to support Israel to the hilt, not stand hovering with a stopwatch. It is rank paternalism to suggest Israel must be lectured to about "distinguishing between the terrorists and ordinary Palestinians" and told long-term security depends on peace.
As usual, we will swallow such insults and be thankful the US, alone in the world, supported our right to self-defense for seven whole days without succumbing to international pressure to say "stop!" We will also draw comfort from the fact Bush scored Yasser Arafat for his "failure" to crush terrorism and "betrayal" of his own people.
But Bush's ratcheted-up rhetoric against Arafat does not change the fact he is being given yet another last chance. It is even possible this is truly Arafat's last chance and when he fails again, the US will end his exemption from the Bush Doctrine and support his ouster.
The question remains, however, how many more Israelis and Palestinians must die on the altar of another last chance for Arafat?
If the Bush administration really cares about saving these lives, not to mention the integrity of its war on terrorism, the Bush Doctrine must be explicitly applied to Arafat. That doctrine is, as Bush told the UN in November, "No national aspiration, no remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent." Its corollary must be that the US will not recognize any leader of any people, Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding, who is dripping with such innocent blood.
In his remarks yesterday, Bush rightly declared, "No nation can negotiate with terrorists." But then he misstepped with his explanation: "For there is no way to make peace with those whose only goal is death." Actually, the goal of terrorism is not death, but victory. Terror is not an irrational spasm but a calculated means to achieve concrete aims.
Just after September 11, Hamas decided to stop all its terror attacks because, as a member of its five-man steering committee told The New York Times, "Our resistance in Israel might be confused with what had happened in the US." If Bush wants to stop terrorism, he must not sow utter confusion between Israel's and America's struggle against terrorism; the two must be indistinguishable. This is not just a matter of strategy, but a description of reality. If terror wins anywhere, it will spread everywhere.