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One Year Later, December 2005
It was a great quarter for ASI. Among other things, we filled up 900-seat Campbell Hall with the film SEEDS and a Q&A, had two excellent speakers (Yossi Klein Halevi and Cookie Lommel), sold a couple hundred dollars in falafel and made important progress with getting the study abroad program to Israel reinstated -- not to mention ASI's new Israeli culture group, Sababa, which has really taken off. And next quarter there's even more to come. So congratulations on a job well done, all your hard work made a real difference!
But we still have an arduous journey ahead.
Over a year ago, Joey Tartakovsky wrote to this listserv about the criticisms Israel receives on campus and the lessons to be learned followed by an article by Yossi Klein Halevi. And about a year ago, the first editorial to the Daily Nexus about reinstating the EAP in Israel was published.
One year later, Arafat has died, Israel has unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, the fence is nearing completion, Ariel Sharon is longer the prime minister and a political earthquake has given birth to a new political party Kadima, or "Forward." Israel has changed -- the world has changed -- but the campus is stuck in a timewarp, somewhere around 1947 for the professors and September 2001 for the students. UCSB's Center for Middle East Studies chooses to host activist-academics like Ilan Pappe who insist that a Palestinian genocide is occurring and students screen videos of rock-throwing children and checkpoints.
More importantly, the study abroad program in Israel is still suspended and the campus is still overwhelmingly anti-Israel.
But we're moving forward and making progress, one quarter at a time. T
errorism is now condemned the world over because of vicious attacks in so many countries. Israel is safer than at any other time in the last ten years because of the security fence. The burden of responsibility – even to people like Kofi Annan and the EU – now rests squarely on the Palestinians after Israel's Gaza withdrawal. Finally, Israel is still a leader in technology and investment – and an American-Israeli duo won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics.
A Campus like All Others, November 2005
Yossi Klein Halevi spoke at an ASI event (November 9, 2005) to a crowd of about 400 students and member of the community (Pappe had about 40, mostly adults). Afterwards, members of ASI joined him in a more intimate setting to talk over coffee and dessert. Two days later, he published the following article, which makes an important point about the only democracy in the Middle East.
It is timely and important article, especially on campus. At a Global Studies class on November 16, a UCSB graduate screened a short documentary film about the plight of the Palestinian people, although it stopped after ten minutes due to technical difficulties. Afterwards, the documentarian/activist made the following comment to the class of 300+ students: "Israel is not a democracy, Sharon even said so to the government [Knesset?] because the Palestinians living under occupation cannot vote... the Israeli government makes decisions about roads and voting and they have no representation. So Israel isn't technically a democracy." The professor was mute.
How does one respond to this? Do you talk about the many freedoms, the independent judiciary, universal suffrage, the parliamentary system, and so forth? Sure.
Another approach: one ASI member stated to the class, "That's just crazy," followed by laughter.
Don't take democracy for granted
by Yossi Klein Halevi
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051111.wcomment1111/BNStory/Front/
The greatest contribution Israel can make to spreading democracy in the Middle East is to strengthen its own democracy
Friday, November 11, 2005
Special to Globe and Mail Update
This week, as Israelis and Jews around the world commemorate the 10th anniversary of the murder of the Yitzhak Rabin by a fellow Jew, and as we turn our minds to the question of democracy and the future of democratization in the Middle East, we begin by asking ourselves the very painful question of how durable is democracy in Israel itself.
We tend to take for granted the miracle of Israeli democracy. And yet that miracle seemed suddenly to be called into question 10 years ago when we reached the lowest point of Jewish/Israeli discourse in perhaps several thousand years. There's something uniquely traumatic about that moment 10 years ago when we discovered just how fragile the nature of our democratic discourse and our most basic sense of unity really is.
And just how bitter the discourse remains, if not explicitly, then at least implicitly, in how we view each other today. When, to give you an example, during the recent debate over withdrawal from Gaza, the settlers and their supporters came out with a slogan I'm sure many of you saw: "A Jew does not expel a Jew." And that slogan of course is resonant with a sense of Jewish family, of solidarity.
Some cynics on the left responded with a counter slogan: "Yes, a Jew doesn't expel a Jew, a Jew only murders a Jew." And it's exactly that kind of bitterness that will continue to surface in our discourse and that has created a profound sense of mistrust, of rupture, in our most minimal sense of solidarity.
Yitzhak Rabin was the very best of his generation. He was our first Israeli born prime minister. He was present at every heroic moment in the history of Israel, beginning in 1948 when he commanded the forces leading to the breakthrough into Jerusalem on the road to Tel Aviv. In 1967, he was the chief of staff who presided over our greatest victory. He was the prime minister under whose watch the Entebbe rescue occurred. So that when we mourn Rabin we're not only mourning the man, we're mourning the loss of our innocence, the loss of our own contemporary heroic history.
In turning to the topic of democratization, I would argue that Rabin's legacy is complex and even ambivalent. His impact on Israeli democracy, in ways that I'll explain in a moment, were, I believe, decisive and historic. At the same time, his impact on the possibility, foreseeing the emergence of a democracy or some form of democracy in a Palestinian state, was far less successful; we'll be living with those negative repercussions for many years to come.
Rabin was the first Israeli prime minister who understood that Israeli democracy cannot be taken for granted, that a people living under siege cannot add to its burden of being a permanent occupier of another people. And it was Rabin who set in motion the process that not only began to free the Palestinians of occupation, but, from the Israeli point of view, even more significantly, set in motion the process of freeing Israeli society from being occupied by the occupation.
Rabin, when he ran for election in 1992, coined the phrase "Let's take Gaza out of Tel Aviv and Tel Aviv out of Gaza." That was a brilliant summation of what the Israeli public had learned from the bitter experience of the first intifada of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when a majority of Israelis began to emotionally withdraw from Gaza. The withdrawal that was implemented just recently was only the practical consequence of a shift in the Israeli political debate, in Israeli political consciousness, that occurred already in the late 80s; Rabin was the first Israeli politician and significant political leader to articulate this into a policy.
There was something, to my mind, almost mystical in Rabin's appearance in 1992, at the age of 70, at the 25th anniversary of the Six Day War, coming to try to save us from the occupation which he had inadvertently brought, imposed, on Israel.
If the assassination was the lowest moment of Israeli political discourse, the withdrawal from Gaza two months ago was, I believe, our finest democratic moment. And it was, in its way, a vindication of Rabin, though one needs to say only a partial vindication - because Rabin envisioned an Israeli withdrawal in the context of a negotiated peace.
And what we learned through the 90s, and especially after the Rabin assassination and in these last bitter five years, was that Rabin was only partially right. He was right about the need to withdraw from Gaza. He was wrong that there was a partner on the Palestinian side with whom we could negotiate in good faith a withdrawal.
Nevertheless, the fact that we not only withdrew from Gaza unilaterally but also managed to avoid the apocalyptic predictions that were rife in Israeli society, in the media, for months before the actual withdrawal took place, was the clearest indication that Israeli society as a whole has learned the lessons - or begun to learn some of the lessons - of the assassination.
There are, however, several dark sides that emerged again in the course of the withdrawal. The first is that whenever you look at a picture of Ariel Sharon, and most of us in Israeli can only see him through pictures now because his bodyguards will not allow him to circulate, what you see is a very small Sharon (and Sharon is not a small man) engulfed by literally dozens of bodyguards. I don't know if there is another political leader in the West today who is quite as guarded, as protected, as Sharon needs to be.
Now, most of the settlers and their supporters oppose violence and they proved it during the withdrawal. They would certainly be horrified at the prospect of another assassination. Nevertheless, there remain today in Israel several hundred potential assassins, many of them with sophisticated military training, within the settlement movement and among its supporters.
In assessing the role of religious Zionism in creating this culture in which assassinations have become a permanent part of Israeli political thinking and planning, it seems to me that the religious Zionist community passed one test and failed another.
It passed the test in that their sons (in the army) went into the settlements in Gaza and pulled out friends, in many cases relatives, and participated in an act that most of them considered political madness. Nevertheless, they did so because of their profound commitment both to Jewish unity and to preserving the integrity of the Israeli army. And they revealed a level of maturity and of loyalty to democratic principles which needs to be emphasized.
The test that religious Zionism has so far failed, and it is a significant failure, is that the leadership of the community, as opposed as they are to political violence, did not make clear to their young people that however appalling it is to dismantle settlements and to destroy organic communities that were sent by successive Israeli governments to Gaza, there is one scenario that is far more devastating to Israel's ability to survive - and that is, God forbid, another political assassination. I don't know if Israeli society could survive another, similar trauma and still remain intact.
When I think about the future of democracy in Israel, my fear is the state of mind of a generation of religious Zionists who are among our best and most dedicated young people. They're the ones filling the commando units, the officers' corps. They're the ones who travelled the Diaspora looking for Jewish communities to reach out to. And yet, their commitment to democratic principles is, I would argue, thin.
Here, I need to say, as well, that Sharon played a very negative role in the way in which he pushed withdrawal through the Israeli political system. Sharon initially agreed to hold a referendum within the Likud over the question of withdrawal; he assumed he would win. The religious Zionist community, and especially its young people, mobilized in a passionate display of democratic enthusiasm. They went house to house explaining to the Israeli public, looking for members of the Likud to persuade to vote against Sharon and the referendum. They played entirely by the democratic rules.
Sharon lost the referendum, turned around and said, "The referendum isn't binding," which, technically, it wasn't. It was a gentleman's agreement that he had made with the Likud. He violated the agreement, proceeded to pass it through the Knesset and the cabinet. But in violating the very democratic process that he had initiated, and which so many young religious Zionists committed themselves to and was their first taste of the democratic process, that along with the trauma of withdrawal has embittered a generation of religious Zionists. And I fear for their long-term commitment to democracy.
When it comes to encouraging democracy in the Middle East, the most obvious contribution that Israel can make is to enhance its own democracy.
We do not live in a bubble in the Middle East. We are constantly being observed by the Arab world. Al Jazeera and other Arab satellite stations maintain offices in Jerusalem, interview Israeli political figures, regularly report on Israeli society to the Arab world in a way that has never happened before. And while much of that which is reported tends to be distorted, nevertheless, enough of Israeli reality seeps through so that we are being observed and tested for our democratic commitments.
As the only democracy in the Middle East, we need to continue to examine the state of our democracy - as, for example, in the question of equal rights for Arab citizens. It's a very complicated question. The Arab minority in Israel is a very peculiar minority. In fact, I know of no other minority quite like it in the world, where it is within Israel a second-class minority, but within the Arab world, it is part of the regional majority and it is very uneasily aligned, at least emotionally, with a hostile regional majority. When an Israeli Jew looks at the Arab minority, many of us feel at once guilty for the second-class status in Arab Israelis - and also wary of whether this community is going to be a fifth column or not.
Nevertheless, for all of our fears, and I would argue to some extent justifiable fears, we need to actively engage in a democratic dialogue with the Arab minority, which we have not as a society begun to do, in order to deepen our credentials as a democracy and to deepen the quality of Israel as a democratic entity.
And I would add, parenthetically, that here again Rabin has left us with a very positive legacy. He was the first prime minister to put the question of equality of Arab citizens on the agenda. When he was murdered he was mourned, I believe, as deeply among many Arab Israelis as he was among Jewish Israelis. Rabin was the first to tell us not only that the occupation was untenable - but to go a deeper level and tell us that "Israeli" does not equal "Jewish." Israeli is a broader category than Jewish and that's a very difficult concept not only for Jewish Israelis to absorb but also for Arab Israelis.
We need to begin a dialogue with the Arab community on issues ranging from equality to integrating Arab Israelis not just formally into the society but more profoundly into some form of common Israeli identity.
So that is our first responsibility toward enhancing democracy at this crucial moment for democratization in the Middle East: We need to be a better democracy.
Our second contribution is what we began to do in Gaza and what I believe we will continue to do in the West Bank (in the absence of a credible negotiating partner) - to continue implementing unilateral withdrawal, which will gradually end the occupation. I personally believe that that is Sharon's long-term goal, perhaps after the next elections.
And, in ending the occupation, what we will do is end the Arab world's excuse for blaming others for their own civilizational failures. As long as there is this occupation to which the Arab world can continue to point and say we need to continue to deal with this, then they will continue to allow themselves an easy way out and not confront themselves. Our second contribution, to encouraging democratization in the region, is removing this great excuse onto which the Arab world has latched.
The third, no less significant responsibility is that Israel remain strong, not give psychological victory to the culture of terrorism. What we have done as a society in the last five years of reclaiming our streets and cafes and buses from the jihadist war was a contribution toward the eventual democratization of the Middle East by proving to the Arab world that democracies can be stronger in war than jihadist terror culture.
Over the last 30 years, Israel has learned two very painful lessons. The first is that democracy cannot afford to fool itself into believing that it can remain a democracy while engaging in non- or anti-democratic behaviour. We in Israel, for many years, fooled ourselves into believing that one can maintain a benign occupation; and we learned in the end that there is no such thing as a benign occupation and that there are no democratic shortcuts for a society that wants to maintain its democratic soul.
The second message that we learned is not to deceive oneself about the possibility of making peace with dictators. Don't have illusions about false allies.
Whatever else happens in the region, whatever else happens in the West, an Israel that remains true to those two hard-earned insights is, I believe, an Israel that will be able to maintain a strong, healthy democratic society through whatever it is that faces us in the future.
Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel correspondent of the New Republic, this week delivered the first lecture in the Gerald Schwartz/Heather Reisman lecture series at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, from which this article is adapted.
Yossi
Klein Halevi: Campus Lessons
June 2, 2004
Yossi
Klein Halevi is one of the leading commentators on
Israeli affairs, and it is always interesting to hear
what has to say. Growing up Orthodox in Borough Park
as the son of Holocaust survivors, he was drawn as
a youth to the right-wing Zionism of Betar. He later
joined Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League,
where he was especially active in the struggle to
free Soviet Jewry. In his book, Memoirs of a Jewish
Extremist, he tells of how he would purchase
front row seats when Soviet troupes came to perform
in New York, only to throw containers of animal blood
onto them in the midst of the show. Soon after immigrating
to Israel, however, he would abandon his radicalism.
Now, he lives in Jerusalem as a correspondent for
the center-left New Republic, and remains a wise and
bold advocate of Israel and a great writer. His latest
book, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A
Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims
in the Holy Land, was extremely well-received.
The majority of the hundreds on this listserv are
college students, spread over around thirty or so
campuses from coast to coast. As we’ve all seen,
there is something particularly brutal about the way
Israel is treated on campus, mirroring its treatment
in the international arena. Ask any sane “peace
activist” if they think terrorism is bad, and
they will likely agree that yes, it ought to be condemned.
But this commitment often seems to dissolve the minute
Palestinian terrorism becomes the terrorism in question.
Terrorism, however, is nothing other than deliberately
applying violence to civilian societies in order to
cause anxiety, demoralization and death. It does not
matter who is doing it, or for what reason, just like
it does not matter who commits a murder or why they
say they did it – stolen property, perceived
injustice, anger, blood feud, sociopathy – only
that they did in fact choose to murder. That Israel
does not target civilians and makes every effort to
avoid collateral damage gives it the moral high ground
in this war. Pro-Palestinian activists try to label
Israel as terrorist too, because blurring the definition
of terrorism is in their interest. The day Israel
responds to a suicide bombing in an Israeli nightclub,
with perfect equivalence, by sending a missile hurtling
into a Palestinian nightclub, we can call Israel terrorist.
But until then, let us be clear about the dynamics
of this conflict: the problem with Israel is the occupation;
the problem with Palestine is terrorism.
Worst of all are criticisms of fundamental legitimacy,
made by bigoted people who have no interest in peace.
These criticisms tar Israel as colonialist, apartheid,
fascist or racist and some combination of them all.
These are powerful words with powerful implications
that those who invoke them probably do not stop to
think through. If these charges were actually true,
rectification would mean Israel’s abolition
or at least some wholesale reordering of Israeli society,
for we believe that apartheid or fascist states are
illegitimate and should not exist. If Israel is the
Third Reich or an agent of Satan, then Israel is inherently
evil and there can be no political solution to the
conflict. If Israel is a Western colonial implant,
it follows that its existence should be understood
as temporary, alien, and in need of de-colonization.
As long as these labels are applied, Israel must remain
unnatural and offensive. It becomes acceptable to
hate evil Israel, and unacceptable to make peace with
it. Anyone who uses these terms does not only disagree
with the policies of Israel; they disagree with the
national existence of Israel.
If you believed these things, it would be hard to
approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with anything
but righteous outrage. It is this attitude that leads
to the brutality that differentiates the pro-Palestinian
cause as practiced at UC Santa Barbara from others,
like, say, the Tibetan freedom movement. Professors
do not offer lunchtime lectures “objectively”
explaining how terrible China is. There is no divestment
from China campaign. There is no academic boycott
of China. There are no classes on the state of human
rights in China. Casual anti-China brickbats aren't
hurled out by professors in the Environmental Studies
or Dramatic Arts departments. Even at Tibetan freedom
concerts, rare would be the attendee that declared
China a fundamentally illegitimate country and demanded
its abolition. Yet, if the movement doesn’t
act quickly, Tibet will hardly exist in ten years.
*****************
Only the uninformed get hysterical about the Middle
East conflict. If you keep your wits about you, you
find that there are people in power on both sides
working to end the conflict, and that the issues take
time and patience to understand. Weak and disordered
minds are the ones that resort to paranoid conspiracy
theories to explain matters in ways favorable to their
interests. When Sharon first announced his plan to
withdraw from Gaza and dismantle its settlements,
the outcry from the Arab League arose instantly, which
makes me think they would oppose anything Sharon put
forward. Isn’t withdrawal what Palestinians
have been demanding all along?
What Sharon is doing is significant. By offering
to withdraw from Gaza without any guarantees from
Palestinians, Sharon is stepping outside the old Oslo
framework of reciprocal concessions. This is called
unilateral action, and it has gained momentum in recent
months because the Israelis have concluded that there
is simply no Palestinian leader with which Israel
can make any agreements. It was the Labor Party that
long called for this policy – also known as
“divorce” – while the Likud Party
argued such a move would hand the terrorists an emboldening
victory. Now Sharon, of Likud, is proposing the plan,
and Labor is presenting its own version of the disengagement
plan. The Gaza withdrawal has enormous bipartisan
popular support in Israel (the May Likud referendum
against the plan reflected the opinion of only 2
percent of the Israeli populace).
Sharon
is so serious about withdrawal from Gaza that two
rightist parties – National Union and National
Religious Party – are threatening to exit his
coalition, and members of the former have even called
Sharon a traitor.
Arab leaders understand his seriousness too, which
is why Sharon and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
exchanged letters last week, and why Israeli Foreign
Minister Silvan Shalom is going to Cairo on Thursday
to discuss the withdrawal. Egypt has an important
stake in a stable post-IDF Gaza because it borders
on Egypt, and sort of Palestinian Götterdämmerung
would have destabilizing consequences on them. To
prevent the densely populated Gaza Strip from devolving
into chaos or a Hamas-ruled fundamentalist dictatorship,
Israel and Egypt are working to ensure that a responsible,
non-fanatical administration steps into the vacuum.
The anti-Intifada moderate Mohammed Dahlan is the
ideal person to take control, and a few European countries
said they back the plan along with President Bush.
In order to accomplish a proper handover, the Palestinian
Authority needs to, first, consolidate its twelve
overlapping security agencies under unified command,
and second, compel Arafat to hand over the security
portfolio to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia
(pictured above left). This is what Egyptian Intelligence
Chief Omar Suleiman is reported to have told Palestinian
leaders in a recent Ramallah meeting (Suleiman has
been active in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and
was the one pelted with shoes while visiting the Dome
of the Rock last year). There’s a lot of finger-pointing
going on, but the bottom line in Gaza and the West
Bank is that only when a responsible Palestinian leadership
has police control over its own territories –
meaning it arrests terrorists, seizes weapons and
materiel, closes bomb factories and freezes terrorist
funding – will Israel be in a position to negotiate.
This
scenario probably sounds to many like a replay of
the spring of 2003, when Arafat was supposed to cede
security authority to then Palestinian Prime Minister
Mahmoud Abbas. Instead, Arafat blocked meetings between
Abbas and Sharon, retained control over all 12 agencies,
and had his terrorist militia, the al Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade, refuse to participate in any cease-fire talks,
all of which led Abbas to resign in September (see
our discussion of Abbas here).
Israel has long given up on Arafat as a partner for
peace, and even King Abdullah of Jordan last month
called on Arafat to step
aside and make way for the younger, more moderate
PA leadership. Now, it’s between Egypt and Arafat.
Egypt is expecting a response from Arafat soon.
Read "Essay:
Campus lessons," by Yossi Klein Halevi from
The Jerusalem Post of April 23, 2004.
Victor
Davis Hanson: Should we stop supporting Israel?
May 21, 2004
That there exists animus towards Israel
far in excess of any reasonable consideration of the
conflict’s magnitude is self-evident. Place
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in comparison to
nearly any of the twenty odd conflicts raging around
the globe to make clear the glaring inconsistency
between calamity and scrutiny. The most potentially
catastrophic conflicts are between India and Pakistan
or China and Taiwan, not in the Holy Land. As we speak,
Arab janjaweed militias backed by the government of
Sudan are carrying out ethnic
cleansing, according to both the United Nations
and major human rights groups. One might think the
following brutal arithmetic would dictate moral urgency:
just over 4,000 have died in Israeli-Palestinian fighting
since September 2000. Meanwhile, Nicholas Kristof
of the New York Times reports
that, “the government of Sudan is engaging in
genocide against three large African tribes in its
Darfur region here. Some 1,000 people are being killed
a week, tribeswomen are being systematically raped,
700,000 people have been driven from their homes,
and Sudan's Army is even bombing the survivors.”
People fear famine,
and relief is being blocked.
The “world community” should
pay attention – it’s a lot worse than
home demolitions, suicide bombings, gunfights and
fences. Even as the United Nation's own Sudan coordinator,
Mukesh Kapila, calls it “the world's greatest
humanitarian crisis,” the issue of Sudanese
ethnic cleansing – a member-state in the Arab
League, incidentally – wasn’t even broached
for weeks in the amoral General Assembly. Nor has
their responsibility for massive crimes against humanity
stopped the Khartoum regime from sponsoring a UN resolution
to criticize Israel for rejecting the UN Fact-Finding
Commission in Jenin, which was to investigate a massacre
that never even happened. (Later, a UN committee would
clear Israel of the malicious and false charges.)
When Sudan received the chairmanship of the UN Committee
on Human Rights, the U.S. walked
out to Sudan’s taunts.
*************
In
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict both sides fight,
but not for the same reasons. Israel fights to preserve
its democracy, Hamas fights to establish theocracy.
Israeli politicians seek support through promises
of solutions and calm, Palestinian leaders seek support
through promises of martyrdom and struggle. Israelis
are saddened by violence committed by their army in
their name and prosecute its soldiers who violate
the law. Palestinians greet atrocity carried out in
their honor with public embrace, rationalization,
and fireworks (or, as on 9-11, pass out sweets). If
Israelis march in the streets, it is almost always
to appeal for peace; if Palestinians pour into the
streets, it is most certainly to demand vengeance.
If there wasn’t a profound cultural asymmetry,
how can you explain that there exists not one pro-Israel
group among the Palestinians, or in any Arab countries
for that matter? Why do only 2 out of 22 Arab states
recognize Israel diplomatically? Why was “I
Hate Israel” a major pop hit in Egypt, while
the reverse could never be true? Why is it that the
chief imams in Saudi Arabia vent racist hatred against
Jews on a weekly basis, calling them “the sons
of pig and monkeys,” but the chief rabbis in
Israel never reciprocate? What explains this lovely
gesture from Egypt?
Last
Saturday, 150,000 Israelis marched
in Tel Aviv under the slogan “get out of
Gaza and start talking,” again demonstrating
that a substantial portion of Israelis seek peace
with the Palestinians. (See Tel Aviv rally at right.
Compare with rally of a different sort above). Activists
were joined by key members of Israeli political and
military establishment like Shimon Peres, two-time
former Prime Minister and recent Minister of Foreign
Affairs, former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon (the Shin
Bet is Israel’s FBI), and a former Israeli general.
Can anyone imagine a leading politician or former
security official or general from any Arab country
calling for reconciliation with Israel and living
to tell about it? Where are the Palestinian peace
marches? Is it that Palestinians have nothing to apologize
for, nothing to concede and no Israeli justice to
recognize? What is their dream?
*************
The
matter of terrorism illustrates the political-cultural
chasm as well as any other. Even if one felt that
terrorists were just as legitimate combatants as uniformed
soldiers – despite that only the former target
unarmed civilians, and despite the fact that such
a belief has no precedent in international law –
it would be hard to deny the pathology in naming stadiums
and schools after suicide bombers or hanging posters
of them on the walls of youths as is practiced in
Palestine. Israeli youngsters do not pin up pictures
of Israeli generals or Apache pilots because violence
to them is distressing, not inspiring. Who will deny
that there is something pathological in Intifada
sticker albums? The student gunfights
at a Nablus university demonstrate how the praxis
of violence is tearing away at Palestinian society.
At the gravesite of Baruch Goldstein,
the one and only Israeli terrorist, who murdered 29
Palestinians in February 1994, supporters left a tombstone
that echoed the way Fatah or Hamas describes their
fallen: “Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel
Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous
and holy man, may the Lord avenge his blood…His
hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed
as a martyr of God on the 14th of Adar, Purim, in
the year 5754.” Now, consider the reaction on
the Israeli side: the Israeli government, along with
the entirety of Israeli society, immediately condemned
the act. Then in 1998, the Knesset passed a law forbidding
the erection of monuments to terrorists, which is
why, in 2000, it destroyed a shrine built around Goldstein’s
gravesite.
This
obvious asymmetry does not itself justify Israeli
policy, whether one considers it right or wrong. But
it does call to attention the fact that the roots
of violence run deeper than border disputes or refugee
resettlement. It is fair and accurate to say that
Israel oppresses, occupies and forces daily indignities
upon the Palestinians. But that does not mean its
citizens can be slaughtered with impunity, and it
does not mean that if terrorists attempt this, that
Israel will not retaliate swiftly and harshly. Occupation
cannot explain the phenomenon of suicide bomb campaigning,
because there are many oppressed peoples in the world
today and not all of them embark upon sustained campaigns
of suicide terrorism or construct elaborate cults
of martyrdom. Not all Palestinians support terrorist
attacks against Israel, but polls consistently show
60-70 percent. Let this percentage grow. A few weeks
ago, in a sign of moderation, a group of prominent
Palestinians signed a petition calling for non-violent
resistance to Israel, a strategy which, had they chosen
earlier it, would have already brought them a state.
Read "When
should we stop supporting Israel," by Victor
Davis Hanson, March 28, 2004 from his website -- www.victorhanson.com.
Ha'aretz:
At Nablus university, gunfights erupt between student
activists
May 11, 2004
Especially
for those on a campus somewhere, this is an interesting
bit of news: yesterday, on the campus of al-Quds Open
University in Nablus, conflict between student Fatah
activists and student Hamas activists ended in gunfights.
Though to a profoundly lesser extent than in Israel,
there are internal schisms within Palestinian society
between the leading movements. This is partly the
result of clan or family loyalties, and partly the
result of differences over strategy. The younger generation
of Fatah in particular has criticized the manifest
uselessness of violence against Israel in achieving
Palestinian national aims. They have also decried
the total disaster of Arafat’s Second Intifada
for both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. Hamas
campus recruitment, meanwhile, probably attracts the
weak and disturbed minds of the haters and fanatics
and agonists.
We have long insisted on this listserv that terrorism
is nothing other than a violent mode of politics –
to get what you want, instead of arguing or comprising
or persuading, you murder and intimidate. In societies
like ours it is exceptionally rare for politics to
turn bloody; yes, even at the University of California.
In those societies without various social and institutional
restraints, violence can supplant politics. Perhaps
nearly four years of Intifada has made violence into
a probable method of conflict resolution. A society
does easily wash itself of a self-created culture
of struggle worship, reasserted daily through television,
music, radio and print.
"8
Palestinians hurt in Hamas-Fatah gunfight,"
by Arnon Regular, Ha'aretz, May 10th, 2004. The image
on the right is of a lecture schedule at al-Najah
university with a biography of Karim Nimr Mafaraja,
a dead Hamas militant involved in suicide bombings.
Isaiah
Berlin: Albert Einstein and Zionism
May 8, 2004
We
have sent out hundreds of articles on this listserv
over the last few years, but few have been as intellectually
and morally forceful as this one. Sir Isaiah Berlin,
the Latvian-born philosopher, essayist and historian
of ideas, one of the last century’s intellectual
giants, considers the views of another titan of the
20th century, Albert Einstein. The article –
published in November 1979 in the New York Review
of Books – explains that Einstein, far from
limiting the application of his great intellect to
mathematics or physics, chose to comment on the varied
social and political issues of his time. One of those
topics was Israel. Berlin writes:
“Einstein lent the prestige
mondial of his great name, and in fact gave his heart,
to the movement which created the state of Israel…Einstein's
support of the Zionist movement and his interest in
the Hebrew University were lifelong…If young
people (or others) today, whether Jews or gentiles,
who, like the young Einstein, abhor nationalism and
sectarianism and seek social justice and believe in
universal human values—if such people wish to
know why he, a child of assimilated Bavarian Jews,
supported the return of the Jews to Palestine, Zionism,
and the Jewish state, not uncritically nor without
the anguish which any decent and sensitive man cannot
but feel about acts done in the name of his people
which seem to him wrong or unwise, but, nevertheless
steadily, to the end of his life—if they wish
to understand this, then they should read his writings
on the subject.”
Einstein was unafraid to confront the
complex issues of war and peace, statelessness and
self-determination, anti-Semitism and Zionism. Anyone
who has honestly engaged such matters has had to abandon
the soothing emotional defenses of self-righteousness
and victimization. If you approach the Middle East
conflict with decent intent, or any other conflict
in which people are dying and where both sides can
legitimately claim justice, do not expect a mind at
ease. Genuine introspection leads to humbling ethical
unease and unwelcome thoughts that cause pain. But
at the same time, moral judgments can and must be
made, like declaring the perpetual villainy of terrorism,
no matter the justification. The unwillingness to
assign blame, or to view all disputing parties as
equally guilty mirrors of each other, is the signal
character of the pernicious postmodernism that holds
that we can’t really know what is wrong and
what it right, and which allows people to feel smart
without having to think. Just as blame must at times
be dealt out, guilt must at times be accepted, and
anyone who refuses to do this is a fanatic. In the
end, Berlin writes:
“That Einstein, who tolerated no deviation
from human decency, above all on the part of his own
people—that he believed in this movement and
this state and stood by it through thick and thin,
to the end of his life, however critical he was at
times of particular men or policies—this fact
is perhaps among the highest moral testimonials on
which any state or any movement in this century can
pride itself.”
Read on.
The article, "Einstein
and Israel," by Isaiah Berlin from the New
York Review of Books, Volume 26, Number 17, November
8, 1979. (It requires a subscription or a purchase
price of $4.00.)
Remarks
at the Israel Independence Day Festival on April 28th
May 8, 2004
A number of subscribers have requested a copy of my
remarks at the Israeli Independence Day Festival at
UC Santa Barbara on April 28th, so here they are:
I am so proud to be here with so many of you
today, with people like you, who care so much for
peace, and work so tirelessly for it. As pro-Israel
activists, we have always faced an unsettling paradox.
The harder we work for a cause we know to be just,
the more some praise our efforts. But others, viewing
these very same accomplishments, are angered by them,
and they want us to stop. Such is the nature of our
political battles. In my three years of Israel activism
here, we have seen ups and downs, but have never been
deterred. We have met setback with redoubled effort,
and we have done so with passion, with grace, and
with a belief in open and dignified debate.
On a Friday not long ago, I had breakfast with
Tony, a good friend of mine, and a Palestinian-American.
Just as I am pro-Israel, he is pro-Palestinian, and
this is natural. We sit down to discuss these issues,
because they must be discussed, and because if they
cannot be discussed here, they can be discussed nowhere.
Our positions can be fierce without being hateful,
and compromising without being cowardly. You can believe
in Israel without believing in occupation, and you
can believe in Palestine without believing in terrorism.
But joining the other side at a table needs to be
done, because only in this way can we discover what
is common between us.
And what is common between us? What Tony and
I share, without illusion of its great difficulty,
is a modest vision of quiet and calm, of families
unburdened with grief, untroubled by pain and unbloodied
by violence. This I believe is a more enduring and
powerful dream than continued violence, mistrust and
recrimination, for they can achieve certain things,
but never peace. Those, like Hamas, whose inextinguishable
hatred compels them to do everything in their power
to derail this dream must be removed from the equation
in order to prevent its collapse. This will mean more
fighting, more sadness and more misunderstanding,
at least for some time.
But sustaining us is the belief that people do
not have to fight, that living is preferable to struggling
without end, or purpose. I imagine it has something
to do with the way hope – ha’tikvah –
even when burdened by weakness and failing, can outlast
glory, strength and fear. We should never forget that
true victory for either the Israelis or the Palestinians
can only come when bestowed upon one by the other
– when there are two independent states, side
by side, mutually recognized. When the time is right,
and may that time be soon, leaders and activists alike
will realize that forgiveness is more valuable than
triumph. It is an honor and a privilege to be here
with you today, with people who care so much. We will
never give up working for peace in the Middle East,
because we can do no less. And we will never stop
believing in a state that is less a state, than a
miracle.
Thank you very much.
What's behind all the talk about Arab hatred of the
U.S.?
April 30, 2004
If you really think about it, it’s
quite an odd thing, this endless talk about how U.S.
policy is making Arabs hate America. Firstly, hatred
is a powerful emotion, and it is always surprising
to hear the media describe the feelings of Arab populations
– nearly all of whom have had no direct contact
with the U.S. – in such terms so casually. If
they’ve in fact have reached the point of hating
us, they’ve clearly being growing angrier for
some time. And now that they hate us outright, can
it get any worse? Are there degrees of hate,
such that whereas earlier we faced “widespread
grumbling,” now, due to Israeli assassinations
and the occupation of Iraq we are at “pulling
out hair and shouting,” which is one level above
“fist-shaking” but a few levels below
“spontaneous combustion”?
Secondly, the refrain about much Arabs hate the U.S.
from leaders like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
or the Qatari network Al Jazeera presumes that this
is something Americans want to avoid. After all, why
should Americans be concerned with this in the first
place? Is it because there’s an ongoing worldwide
popularity contest, and Americans need to be loved?
Is it because we worry that if they get mad, they
will stop selling us oil? No, the clear implication
is that if they hate us long enough, some from among
Arab societies will eventually act on their hate and
do us harm.
And that is why, far from merely being some kind
of observation, it is in fact an ultimatum. What are
they really saying, if not this: you are doing something
we don’t like, so we will hate you. If you stop,
we will stop hating you. But if you don’t, be
warned. The warnings about the rising anti-U.S. sentiments
are not appealing to the American desire to be loved
by Arab world, but playing on the American fear of
it. But stranger, they are simultaneously telling
us how much they dislike us, and demanding
something. To see how ridiculous this actually is,
imagine the U.S. responding with its own version of
the ultimatum, demanding that Arab states stop blindly
supporting the Palestinians, or else all Americans
are going to start hating them, and gosh darn it,
Americans won’t stop hating until they comply.
Or was there some reason that Arab nations have the
right to support the Palestinians while Americans
don’t have the right to support the Israelis?
Arab nations support Palestinians because they share
certain cultural and political characteristics. Fair
enough, but ditto for the Americans and the Israelis,
who both embrace the values and institutions of open
liberal democracy. Common political systems lead to
common interests, and common enemies. Lo and behold,
the sworn enemy of every democracy – the transnational
jihadist movement – just happens to set its
sights on the U.S., Israel and the Western democracies
(did anyone miss this article?). Were shared democratic
values just a coincidence in producing the alignments
of the Cold War, in which Israel sided with the U.S.
and the Arab states placed their bets with the Soviet
Union?
Support for Israel is the source of this anger, we’re
told. But the U.S. has done more than any other country
to bring peace to the Israeli and Palestinians. Yasir
Arafat led the world in White House visitations in
the 1990s, but blew his historic chance at peace when
he abandoned the offer at Camp David of former Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak – 95% of the West
Bank, territorial compensation for the other 5%, all
of Gaza Strip, shared sovereignty over Jerusalem,
limited right of return and a $30 billion compensation
package. Rather, it is the Arab states that have done
nothing to advance peace, and, quite the opposite,
have done much to inflame the conflict.
When Arab leaders like President Mubarak demand “evenhandedness,”
it is not out of some belief in impartiality as the
key to peace, but an expression of their displeasure
with the U.S.-Israel alliance. If they really valued
“evenhandedness,” then they themselves
might try a little evenhandedness. Step one could
be closing the local offices and freezing the assets
of terrorists group like Hamas, PFLP or Islamic Jihad,
because those groups, I’m afraid, do little
to help peace. Step two – Arab nations could
recognize Israel diplomatically. At present, only
two out of twenty-two Arab nations do so – how’s
that for evenhandedness? They have done little to
encourage moderation among Palestinians leaders, denying
that is their responsibility, but then get angry if
in their stead the U.S. tries to pressure PA leaders,
or if Prime Minister Sharon presents his own plans.
As the following articles point out, Egypt not only
churns out anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda
at the frenetic pace of an English coal mill during
the Industrial Revolution, they remain on the U.S.
dole while doing it – two billion per annum,
to be precise (if you want to see it for yourself,
go here). Our foreign aid to Egypt – the second
largest amount after Israel – props up a dictator
now serving in his fifth term of President (we call
this a President-for-Life), who opposes our initiatives
in the Middle East (namely democratization), who uses
the money in corrupt and nepotistic fashions, and
who allows raving anti-U.S. conspiracies to be broadcast
by his state-controlled media.
Read "US
hatred among the Arabs," by Jeff Jacoby,
in the Boston Globe of April 25, 2004.
Read "$50
billion later, taking stock of US aid to Egypt,"
by Charles Levinson, in the The Christian Science
Monitor of April 12, 2004.
Jonathan
Rauch: Israel's War With Hamas Is America's, Too
April 26, 2004
Hamas
leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi believed it was his job
to kill Israeli civilians, and he did so to hundreds
in thousands of attacks. The Israeli government knew
its fundamental duty was to stop him, and it did so
two Saturdays ago. The main issues in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict – Jerusalem, refugees, borders –
are complicated, but not this one. Israel and Hamas
are at war, and by no stretch of international law
are those engaged in terrorism accorded due process.
There can never be a peace process with Hamas –
only a war process. That Hamas, no doubt working furiously,
still has not been able to avenge Sheikh Yassin, suggests
that Israeli is winning. Every government has an elemental
responsibility to defend its citizens, and certainly
not any less when confronting groups committed to
its destruction.
Some argue that even if Rantisi was a terrorist,
so is Israel, because Israel kills too. The definition
of terrorism, however, indicates otherwise. Terrorism
is the indiscriminate targeting of a civilian public
in order to cause fear, intimidation and death (see
the United
Nations definition). It has nothing to do with
the means employed – whether suicide bombs or
Apache helicopters – but whom you target. Terrorism
is in a special class of violence because it makes
no distinction between a state and its civilians,
or between combatants and non-combatants. If Palestinian
fighters employed suicide bombers against Israeli
soldiers, they would be guerrillas, not terrorists.
If the Israeli army fired missiles not at terrorist
militiamen, but into Palestinian nightclubs or school
buses, then they would be terrorists. But they do
not. If Israel genuinely sought to terrorize the Palestinians,
Ramallah would look more like Grozny. Considering
the years of terrorism – the stresses of which
have brought down democratic governments in the past,
like Uruguay in the 1960s – Israel has been
conducting one of modern memory’s most ethical
engagements.
The
Battle of Jenin in April 2002 demonstrates Israel’s
battlefield probity. Israel did not have to send soldiers
on foot into Jenin to root out the militiamen holed
up there. Instead, it could have sent Apaches or rained
shells like the Russians in the Caucasus or Indians
in Kashmir, at less risk to its soldiers but resulting
in indiscriminate killing of innocent Palestinians.
Israel sent in troops, and the result was fierce street
battles that left twenty-three Israelis and fifty-seven
Palestinians dead (all of whom but three were combatants).
During the fighting, Israeli Arab parliamentarians,
alleging a massacre cover-up, demanded an injunction
to prevent the IDF from removing dead bodies. The
Israeli Supreme Court obliged and ordered the IDF
to stop (Israel is one of the few countries that allows
it judiciary to override the military during a time
of war). But this is still war, and innocents are
killed in war. This is a sad reality that the laws
of warfare recognize.
In order for peace-minded leaders to figure out what
to do right, they must at least acknowledge what is
being done wrong. The basic sin of the Israeli side
is continued occupation, and that of the Palestinians
is continued terrorism. In more euphemistic honest
times, Israeli officials spoke of their “administration”
of Palestinians. But now Ariel Sharon has formally
stated that the occupation must end, and he is serious.
We are still waiting for a Palestinian leadership
that admits the terrorism of its side, instead of
using whitewashing terms like “resistance.”
No peace can emerge until they are stopped. Calling
some violence terrorist and other violence not is
intended to diminish the civilian 
lives
lost. But it is to insist that there is a moral and
legal distinction between those who target innocents
and those who do not, between those who seek to avoid
civilian casualties, and those who seek to maximize
them. Our own domestic law also makes a distinction
between intentional murder (first degree) and accidental
murder (manslaughter). If one refuses to admit that
the nature of the target matters, then all violence
can be terrorism. And then the designation of terrorism
as an unacceptable form of violence, in the same class
as genocide, piracy and organized rape, loses its
meaning.
The article, Like
It Or Not, Israel's War With Hamas Is America's, Too,
is from Jonathan Rauch, and appears in the National
Journal. Without a doubt, he is one of our nation's
top journalists.
Brigadier
General Eli Yaffe in Ha'aretz: Israel is
winning its war on terrorism
April 13, 2004
We
are so often forced to hear and re-hear the tiresome
campus discourse on the origins of terrorism, about
how it is the product of unrelieved suffering at the
hands of oppressors, a savage act of retribution,
but an act of retribution nonetheless. This is not
so. Terrorism is a tactic, used to advance political
interests. In the United States, our culture and institutions
ensure that political warring never goes further than
invective. In poorer countries, an AK-47 most effectively
gets the point across. An international organization
like Greenpeace works towards its ends by lobbying
a government; an international organization like al
Qaeda does so by bombing them. Within the borders
of unbroken Arab despotisms that sweep from Morocco
to Qatar, all politics are illegal, and therefore
anyone engaged in them is a priori revolutionary.
The result is that words can only bring arrest, and
so politics become raw, physical and violent. In our
troubled age, this Middle Eastern form of politics
has scorched nations across the globe, from Spain
to Kenya to Indonesia.
Furthermore, terrorism is a tactic of opportunity.
When you recall that the tens of billions of dollars
in losses and thousands of victims inflicted by 9-11
were financed by a sum less than that of a single
tank, then you understand terrorism’s malefic
pragmatism. A bloody suicide bombing against Israel
costs $150 and one stupid teenager. In order to take
advantage of terror’s cheapness all you have
to do is dispense with a few universal principles
about the sanctity of human life that it took civilization
two World Wars to discover. Ignore the separation
between politics and murder, or, rather, see them
as one and the same. Deny that a state and its citizens
are in any way dissociated. Then insist that crime
is actually a punishment. If hopelessness and immiseration
led to terrorism, armies of the homeless in San Francisco
would be waging war on everyone north of California
Street. If brutalization always saw its counterpart
in retaliation, Holocaust survivors would be the most
fearsome people on earth. If it were war, poverty
and underdevelopment that produced terrorism, the
people that frighten would be from Africa. No, the
transnational terror movement has its roots not in
these things but in the modern political failings
of Arab governments. It is no coincidence that the
region that leads in the world in non-democracy also
leads the world in production of terrorists.
The arguments used to justify Palestinian suicide
bombing are tenuous, mostly because the sequence leading
from occupation to desperation to systematic slaughter
is unclear. But moreover, the rationalizations are
unprovable because there is no frame for comparison:
Palestinian society is the only one to have so diligently
constructed such an extravagant cult of suicide martyrdom,
its youth inculcated into the joys of detonation,
now so intimately intertwined within its illiberal
social fabric that it leeches on its children like
a parasite. Some students groups and individuals will
always see justice in Palestinian terror. My only
wish would be that they at least be consistent about
it. If you support Hamas, you support al Qaeda. You
can’t be picky about which anti-Western Islamic
revolutionaries you choose to admire.
The article below from Ha’aretz offers insight
into the day-to-day battles between Palestinian terrorists
and Israeli counter-terrorists. The creation of a
suicide bomber is a complex process, beginning with
recruitment and fundraising, nurtured by cultural
indoctrination, and necessitating surveillance, planning,
operational support, bomb manufacture and post-operation
publicity. A campaign of suicide bombing requires
organized hierarchical networks, popular support and
lots of cash. Last August, after a double suicide
attack, the head of UC Santa Barbara’s pro-Palestinian
group sent us a letter that we published on this listserv,
in which he lamented how the peace process could be
so damaged by the actions “two shithead, indoctrinated
teenagers…two fanatical punk kids.” We
replied that common sense would indicate that it is
more complicated than that: “Those two kids
didn't build their own bomb, indoctrinate themselves,
train themselves, pay for the explosives and then
drive themselves to Jerusalem. Nor are the big-money
checks their families are sure to receive previously
set aside by the punk kids in escrow accounts from
money they'd saved pumping gas.” Spider web-like
networks of terror exist in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. As long as the Palestinian Authority fails
to clean these up, either out of concerns for their
own safety, fears of civil war or concealed support
their actions, Israel must build a wall to seal itself
off.
Brigadier
General Eli Yaffe, retiring as head of the General
Staff's Operations Branch, reveals below that for
every one or two successful attacks, ten are stopped,
which means that Israeli police are stopping 80-90%
of attempted attacks. Because we did not hear of a
suicide bombing in the news today does not mean it
was for lack of trying. Yaffe also says that every
week around 100-150 terror suspects are arrested.
Israel could not make these critical arrests, nor
conduct its weapons and bomb factory raids, without
troops in the West Bank. If Israel ends its occupation
and withdraws these soldiers, it will most certainly
need a long tall wall to keep the waves of bombers
at bay.
Israel’s success in its antiterror campaign
in the face off an onslaught unprecedented in the
annals of terrorism should be praised. According to
Ha’aretz’s Ehud Ya’ari, “Today
there is no effective Hamas military apparatus between
Hebron and Jenin, but only a handful of isolated cells
that have great difficulty launching ‘quality
attacks,’ as they call them. The West Bank Hamas
leadership has been wiped out in targeted killings.”
Perhaps this is the reason why the terrorists are
sinking to new lows, even for them. Arrested members
of the Tanzim militia – a branch of Arafat’s
army – revealed plans to attach containers of
AIDS-infected
blood to bombers. These are sick people, and these
bombers made up just one of the ten suicide bombings
attempts foiled over the Passover weekend. It must
be enraging for Hamas that they not been able to avenge
Sheikh Yassin, a project on which they have surely
been working around the clock. A day of death is a
day of victory for Hamas. For the Israeli army, a
day of victory is a day of peace, and a day of life.
Read "Victory
in Israel-Palestinian war is determined by the other
side's mistakes," by Amos Harel, in Ha'aretz.
Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin: The Wages of Martyrdom
March
23, 2004
In 1998, Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, “The day in
which I will die as a martyr will be the happiest
day of my life.” Sunday was that day, yet so
few seem to share in any joy. Instead, fury has swept
the Middle East from Gaza to Dubai, accompanied by
unanimous calls for revenge. Palestinians swarmed
into the streets in the tens of thousands, firing
rounds into the air, ululating, rubbing their hands
in Yassin’s blood and demanding swift retribution.
Of course, the revenge they speak of will not be revenge
against those responsible for Yassin’s death
and their oppression – the Israeli army and
the Israeli politicians. They mean the revenge of
the school buses and pizza parlors. Palestinians and
the citizens of Arab states overwhelmingly supported
Sheikh Yassin, his means and goal – ceaseless
terrorism until the State of Israel disappears –
so this has meant the loss of their champion. Israel
promises that the next Hamas leader to take up the
green flag will meet the same fate. And so on, until
a Palestinian leadership emerges that believes in
a two-state solution as the goal, and negotiations
as the means.
The
European reaction to the assassination of Sheikh Yassin
is at once appalling and understandable. Appalling
because they are generally expected to uphold
civilization, not criticize a democracy’s lonely
self-defense against a decades-long terror campaign
so methodical that Human Rights Watch, the world’s
most prominent human rights group, has declared it
constitutes crimes against humanity. Let one European
official answer this question: why doesn’t Israel
