The Media Minder links this post over at WaPo that has four quotes I want to dissect. I have a few other links in this post as well.
One of the most shrill critiques of the U.S. president came from Al Hayat columnist Abdul-Wahab Badrakhan, who accused Bush of viewing recent events as just another "episode in America's revenge for September 11."
The only connections I can draw from this and the September 11 attacks are that both involved Islamic Arabs murdering civilians. Osama bin Laden never claimed any affinity for the Palestinians; his stated opposition to the US was the fact that we have forces stationed inside Saudi Arabia, the host country to Islamic holy cities Mecca and Medina.
All Bush sees in this crisis are "acts of terror" regardless of the sacrifices of Palestinians, Badrakhan wrote.
Sacrifices such as this, or this, or this, or this, or this, and especially this, which was the final straw. The only problem with these Palestinian "sacrifices" is that they took out a whole lot of Israelis with them.
Of course, not all of the sacrifices resulted in dead Israelis; this one killed a bunch more Palestinians, but since they were Palestinians, their deaths will get lumped into the death toll of Palestinians, and used as propaganda against the Israelis.
Jamal Khashoggi, deputy editor in chief of the Arab News, an English-language daily published in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, wrote yesterday about questions from American readers of the paper's Web site about suicide operations. Khashoggi questioned the "legality" of Israeli soldiers killing civilians and the justification for subjecting the Palestinian population to imprisonment in much the same manner that Americans challenged the killing of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings.
Oh, the moral equivalence card. The difference is that the attack he cites (of which I do not know details) would not have occurred if the murderous bombings had not been carried out. Israel is now at war to defend its citizens against an intransigent, intractable enemy, and any attacks carried out earlier were those designed to take out leaders of groups that were actively plotting against Israeli citizens. Terrorist leadership does not entitle one to the title of "civilian", even if one is not a member of a formally organized military unit.
.. . The president, unfortunately, sees only terrorism and suicide attacks. Bill Clinton coined the phrase 'It's the economy, stupid.' Now it is time for us to say: 'It's the occupation, stupid.' "
The reason for the occupation is the fact that Arafat would not settle for less than 100% of the land Israel took from Jordan and Egypt in 1967. A offer for 95%, plus additional land to compensate for the remaining 5%, (plus a deal that ended Israeli sovereignty over the portion of Jerusalem that it annexed in 1967) was rejected 18 months ago, just before the current intifada began.
An article in the Thursday New York Times (no longer available on the web; excerpt courtesy of Instapundit) is instructional about the true mindset of the groups that are fighting the Israeli "occupation":
Hamas wants Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza, the dismantling of all Israeli settlements and full right of return for the four million Palestinians who live in other states. After that, the Jews could remain, living "in an Islamic state with Islamic law," Dr. Zahar said. "From our ideological point of view, it is not allowed to recognize that Israel controls one square meter of historic Palestine."
"Historic Palestine" includes all of Israel. And somehow, I doubt that "Islamic Law" is going to safeguard the freedoms enjoyed by all in Israel, Jew or Arab.
Perhaps I will get around to writing a real response on the Abdullah "peace' initiative, but it seems rather pointless now.
Update: 16 June 2002 None of the links in the paragraph about Palestinian sacrifice are working any more, but they all referred to different suicide bombings in the month of March.
posted on April 05, 2002 02:45 PM
Comments:
posted by Michal, Israel on April 6, 2002 01:06 AM
