The International Herald Tribune ran an op-ed by Mustafa Barghouti in what it will take to bring peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict. I think they included it because they needed to balance a pro-Israeli op-ed on the Six-Day War by Jerold Auerbach, A Biblical Victory. In any case, they serve up to their readers the typical Palestinian narrative, filled with memory failures about past Palestinian deeds (including the work of Mustafa’s brother Marwan, who led the more violent aspects of the “Al Aqsa Intifada”), and demopathic pitches to just the kind of uninformed (or dogmatic) liberalism of someone like Roger Cohen, or Stanley Greenway, or Nicholas Kristof, or…
Targeted killing won’t bring peace
By Mustafa Barghouti
Friday, June 8, 2007RAMALLAH, West Bank:
As we enter the 41st year of Israel’s military occupation, one of the more sinister policies inflicted upon us is what Israel calls “targeted killings.”
Israel applies no death penalty, except against Palestinians living under Israeli military government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
There, suspected opponents of Israel’s occupation are routinely executed without charge, judge or jury. Innocents who happen to be in the vicinity of Israel’s “target” just as often suffer summary execution.
Interesting that Barghouti would present this as a judicial procedure when it is a war-time tactic aimed at dealing with precisely what makes peace impossible — the suicide terror campaign that his brother played so prominent a role in launching. But the hypocrisy of someone from the PA — where summary executions are standard operating procedure, including the complete disregard for collateral damage (and this to their own people, not to enemies) — I think qualifies as a good illustration of demopathy.
In April, 17-year-old Bushra Breghish was pacing her bedroom, studying for an exam. An Israeli sniper, from a squad dispatched to arrest her brother, shot her through the forehead, killing her instantly. All she held in her hands was a book.
Last week in Ramallah’s central square, in broad daylight, Israeli undercover forces shot a fleeing 22-year-old, Omar Abu Daher, in the leg. After he fell, and was entirely vulnerable to arrest, an Israeli assassin shot him in the back of the head from close range, then kicked his body, apparently to confirm the kill.
Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing what happened. Palestinian “eyewitness” accounts, when it comes to Israeli activity in particular, are about as unreliable as they come. But still worse, this is a fairly accurate depiction of the modus operandi of Palestinian gunmen. Only with an uninformed Western audience can such anecdotes stir outrage.
The deaths of these young Palestinians are not rare, nor were they unintentional. They were the victims of an openly acknowledged policy.
For decades, Israel murdered Palestinian leaders abroad, following the macabre calculations of its political scientists and intelligence experts that even a small number of assassinations could retard, if not foil, our national movement.
Israel claimed to target those guilty of committing or planning acts of violence. In reality, Palestinian political leaders, poets, journalists and other professionals and artists were also killed.
Israel began “targeted killings” in the Gaza Strip in the 1970s, and expanded this practice during the first Palestinian intifada, which occurred from 1987-1993.
Palestinian youths faced Israeli tanks with little more than slogans and stones. Israel condemned their “targets” based on mere suspicion. They have since signed the death warrants of hundreds more, including bystanders like young Bushra studying for final exams.
Since September 2000, more than 400 Palestinians have been murdered in extrajudicial executions. Nearly half were innocent bystanders and at least 44 were children. These extrajudicial executions are war crimes.
The Palestinian unity government has offered to end all forms of violence, provided Israel reciprocates and ends its violence against Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Our own security forces are challenged, and we face acute internal political differences. But we are committed to halting all attacks - including by Qassam rockets - as long as Israel respects its obligations under international law and stops murdering Palestinians.
Now we move from tragedy to comedy.
We have no hope of succeeding in this goal if Israel will not meet us half way. Palestinians would rightly reject a government that protected Israeli lives while failing to protect Palestinians, who have been slaughtered at 30 times the rate of Israelis over the last 17 months.
I always wonder where Palestinian statistics come from. Does this include Palestinians killed by other Palestinians. Haven’t they already met the Israelis half way by killing themselves at more than the rate the Israelis are killing them?
Israel has responded with escalating attacks against Gaza and extrajudicial killings in the West Bank. Is its political objective something other than peace? Israel’s assassinations over the past seven years have repeatedly shattered unilateral truces by Palestinians and scuttled any prospect of negotiations.
The notion that Palestinian declared “unilateral truces” constitute anything more than a slight reduction in attacks — the Qassams come from “unofficial” groups — is, again, aimed at the uninformed audience. Of course, the failure of the MSM to report these matters guarantees that the Western public will be uninformed. But the really interesting point is that, alas, targeted assassinations work when they target the decision makers. When PA or Hamas leaders are targeted, despite the predictions of the MSM that this will lead to further violence, we all of a sudden hear about another hudna. Like the handlers who send suicide bombers to their deaths, these folks are not willing to sacrifice their own lives as easily as their dupes eager to get at their virgins in heaven.
Why has Israel consistently re-kindled violence? Is it possible that our willingness to negotiate our differences is more dangerous than any military threat our beleaguered population could ever muster against the sixth most powerful military in the world?
Could it be that Israel seeks to finish the systematic dispossession of Palestinians begun in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were driven or fled in fear from their homes and homeland? Does goading Palestinians into violence permit Israel to dodge peace negotiations, and provide it cover to continue its confiscation of Palestinian land and construction of Jewish settlements in the lands it seized in 1967?
After all, “security” was the initial justification for Israel’s settlements, and “military necessity” was the pretext for the seizures of our lands.
“Security” rationalizes the segregated road system Israel has constructed in the West Bank, whisking Jewish Israeli settlers wherever they wish to go, while Palestinians negotiate a decrepit one.
“Security” is allegedly served by the 500-plus Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints that dot our territory, restricting travel and smothering our economy, and by the “separation fence” that Israel has built, penning our communities into small Bantustans that function like open-air prisons.
“Security” is why Israel says it will never give up the Jordan Valley, nearly 30 percent of the West Bank.
In fact, security for both Israelis and Palestinians is mutually interdependent, not mutually exclusive. Israel cannot have security while denying it to Palestinians. When Israel is willing to renounce violence, it will discover how ready we have been as a partner for peace.
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is Minister of Communication for the Palestinian Authority. He is also the founder of medical organizations which provide health services to more than 1.5 million Palestinians each year.
The question here is, does Minister Barghouti really believe these things, or is he just pulling our leg? The whole house of cards depends on the notion that the Palestinians are indeed ready for a compromise peace (i.e., Israel gets to exist). Indeed the logic depends on that being so true that the Israelis are afraid of it. Shades of Avi Shlaim. And yet, here is the Minister of Communications, the folks who bring the PATV horror show of warmongering and genocidal hatred that PMW chronicles daily. Chalk up another for the demopaths and their MSM dupes.
RL, I have to commend your intestinal fortitude in dealing with such as Mustafa Barghouti. Now, if you’d like to do a fisk job or une explication de texte of rabid incitement op eds that appeared in the Int’l Herald Tribune, you might look up past op eds in the IHT written by Marwan Bishara, Azmi’s brother. He uses generous doses of traditional Christian Judeophobic themes and motifs. Fisking Bishara frere would be very much a literary explication de texte, although it might also be malodorous and an experience de mauvais gout.
Here is some background on Bishara frere from my blog.
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2007/05/jimmy-carter-stole-borrowed-his-book.html
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2007/05/azmi-bishara-stars-as-martyr-in-la.html
Comment by Eliyahu — June 10, 2007 @ 6:03 am
why shouldn’t they take this road? it works.
here’s what i replied at totten’site to the comment that the pals are not any closer psychologically to making peace with israel:
============
Not closer psychologically? They’re further away from it. After all:
the us is in decline and its support for israel is weakening — wait for the dhimmicrats;
israel lacks leadership and olmert is begging syria to return the golan just so it does not have to fight and lose again;
they are being funded to do nothing but try to destroy israel;
the world is coming around nicely to the idea that the holocaust is questionable and that israel is a nazi state that was a big mistake;
the west is gonna go native (islamized) soon anyway.
Posted by
Comment by fp\:http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/ — June 10, 2007 @ 10:25 am
i am reading THE BOMB IN THE BASEMENT about Israel’s nuclear program. I came across the following and wonder what we how it would be if we still had real leaders in Israel rather than the incompetent, corrupt clique of today:
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The “disturbances” of 1929 and the “Arab revolt” of 1936 imbued Ben-Gurion with a deep anxiety, which remained with him throughout his life. In December 1936, at a meeting with his close friends in Jerusalem he said: “The danger we face is not rioting, but extermination. The attackers will not be only the Arabs of Palestine, but also the Iraqis and Saudi Arabians, and they have warplanes and artillery. We have to prepare seriously to constitute a substantial force in this country, capable to standing up to a massive offensive.” His friends looked at him as if he had lost his mind. Others attributed his prophesy of doom to a transient mood. But Ben-Gurion meant what he said, and indeed, his forecast was fulfilled almost entirely twelve years later, immediately after he declared the independence of the state of Israel. And this fear of extermination lasted even after the victory in the War of Independence and led Ben-Gurion to his decision to develop the Israeli nuclear option.
Comment by fp\:http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/ — June 10, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
Since fp mentioned Michael Totten, here’s my response on that comment thread:
There must be a way to empower moderate Palestinians politically. Right now the only voices seem to be those with guns.
I am sure that there are peaceful, progressive people among the Palestinians but they’re increasingly in danger themselves. Women are now being threatened by morality police. This isn’t limited to the PA though, Egyptian universities can no longer forbid the niqab. And from Cairo to Pakistan, music shops, internet cafes, dissident voices are being silenced.
I’m concerned, looking back at it, that UNRWA and Western financial support have actually contributed to fostering radicalism among the Palestinians. It seems hard to deny that the UN itself has provided not only safe haven in the “camps” but also its educational system has helped foster the idea of “return” and destruction of Israel. And, we were behind the disastrous resurrection of Arafat and although the “peace process” appeared to be well-intended, attacks on Israeli civilians skyrocketed after the Oslo Accords were signed.
For their part, Arab treatment of Palestinians has been shameful. The institutionalization of a refugee population, which could easily have been managed in 1950, has created millions of angry, hopeless people - who aren’t truly aliens, who are Arab Muslims, who have relatives, for example, in Egypt and Syria, most of whom have never seen Israel, some of whom had no more than a two-year connection to the Mandate at the time of the 1948 war.
And, the fact is, there’s hard-core resistance to the very idea of Israel among many Palestinians and thus the Oslo Accords and Clinton’s statehood deal were a direct threat to them. For this reason the Arab Peace Initiative, though its language as currently couched is obviously unacceptable, IS a major step forward. I think Arab state actors ARE starting to realize that Israel is there but also, maybe, that it might be part of a solution to regional problems and that the continued attacks against her are not in the interests of the region and are destabilizing to say the least.
One of the few silver linings in the current contretemps in Lebanon is the spotlight cast on the camps, the situation of the Palestinians in Arab lands, and the need to treat them decently and perhaps even offer citizenship. Lebanon in particular though has been hard hit by radicals in the camps and if I’m reading history correctly, actually lost sovereignty via the Cairo Accords in 1969 - so there are TWO states within a state in Lebanon: Hezbollah and the Palestinians. The UN resolutions 1559 and 1701 have reaffirmed her rights but nobody has a clue as to how disarming the militias is supposed to occur in real life. And Syria of course, and Iran, have been acting at cross-purposes and also destabilizing the Palestinians. Iraq also played a role and still does, indirectly: the fall of Saddam has created refugees and among them are Palestinians victimized for their former support of Saddam. Many others had been expelled from Kuwait for the same reason. Without sympathizing for their political choices one must empathize with them personally: on a human level, these are victims.
As far as the Democrats being worse than the Republicans, I understand what fp is saying but in fact, much of what is out there on the blogs is the far, far left, it isn’t mainstream Democrats - though it’s true the “bile of the blogs,” to quote Klein, is having an untoward impact on real life politics.
But can Democrats really be worse than the immoral “realists” who are apparently back in power via the Iraq Study Group? And, it wasn’t Democrats who forced the elections that included Hamas, armed and unrepentant, in the PA - that was either a strategic blunder or - I don’t want to think about it - in either case it has been a disaster. And, the huge corporate interests involved in the oil industry and related service industries represent powerful international players who are similarly detached from American moral and political values.
Sharansky wrote an article recently in which he reaffirmed the fact that democracy is more than just the ability to hold elections. There is so much more that needs to be done to prepare a society which has no experience with Western democracy, than giving out ballots and declaring people “free”. Iraq is a pretty obvious illustration of that fact, so is the PA, so is Lebanon, although there is hope to be found in all of them. I’m just worried that the US will lose its willpower and its courage long before the dream can become reality, and tens of millions of people will become victims.
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001460.html
Comment by Sophia — June 10, 2007 @ 1:55 pm
I want to say something about the targeted assassinations. They make me nervous.
I understand completely the rationale and perhaps this is the best way to handle a bad situation.
But is it necessarily?
Let me put it this way: have we - has the West - worked hard enough at the grassroots political and educational level to communicate with the Palestinian people? I don’t think so.
As I mentioned in my post on Michael Totten’s site, I think the UN and Western financial support for UNRWA and lately the PLO, has been a big part of the problem. I don’t know that we have DELIBERATELY sheltered and empowered radicals but we have in fact done exactly that. And some of the worst aspects of Western culture have filtered into theirs - totalitarian, revolutionary Leftist theory as well as Nazism.
Several generations this, combined with the facts of war and counterterrorism, have created a real psycho-social disaster. We must find ways to confront and reverse this and it won’t happen overnight. Step one is recognizing what has happened.
I wonder too, have we tried hard enough as people to see the Palestinians, really see them? I don’t think so. With respect to all, I don’t think many in the Jewish community have really even understood our own Middle Eastern roots as well as we should. Only recently in fact have I been able to find lots of CD’s of Sephardic and Mizrachi music. That’s partly because the Sephardim and Mizrachim themselves were trying hard to fit into Israeli (and Western) culture and only now are finding the self-confidence to celebrate their own roots, which are rich and wonderful. For example, did you know that Flamenco is heavily influenced by Jewish music? Or that some of the greatest exponents of Greek rememtika were Jewish, or that Jewish and Turkish classical musicians worked together centuries ago, that some of the most famous belly dancers in Baghdad were Jewish, or that there were wealthy and creative Jewish communities all along the Silk Road? I had to really study to learn those things, so heavily has our modern culture leaned toward the West. No matter how horribly the West has abused us, we have internalized it. And much of that is to the good - but there is much that we are missing.
So, I think we have some work to do within our own community. Our relationship to the Arab world needs help. We can’t let our status as their victims stop us from trying to get to know them better as people and to really enjoy the culture they’ve created, which is our heritage as well.
We have a view of Arabs that is colored by despair and violence, but it isn’t the whole story.
Curiously, within Israel this is happening, as LeBor has pointed out. This isn’t a threat to Zionism at all, but rather an evolution of it. Zionism was ALSO a feature of Oriental Jewry.
If a truly open, democratic Palestinian state IS created, one that will welcome Jewish residents, Jews have to be able to see Palestinians and other Arabs as human beings and I am not sure all of us do. In fact some of the settlers have been really mean to Palestinians and that isn’t right, it isn’t truly Jewish either. And I speak as a person who firmly believes Jews should be able to live in Judea and Samaria.
This IS a two-way street, let’s do our part, more than our part.
Comment by Sophia — June 10, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
sophia,
and my reply was that you provide your own evidence why your hopes are not warranted.
i am sorry, but I am wary of all this self-criticism in the face of nothing but barbarism, primitivism and hatred. there have been ample attempts to understand and help the palestinians, and all that got was contempt for weakness and more violence.
enough is enough. it is THEY who should question their own societies and behavior.
i would either perform taqiyya and propaganda just like they do, discontinue any contacts, respond with preponderant force to any violence and threaten to annihilate the me if in danger. and tell the worl to kiss my ass.
Comment by fp\:http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/ — June 10, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
here’s a typical palestinian narrative? notice the usual pattern?
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id
Comment by fp\:http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/ — June 10, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
Sophia said: Let me put it this way: have we - has the West - worked hard enough at the grassroots political and educational level to communicate with the Palestinian people? I don’t think so.
Please look at what the “West” has done over the years.
Instead of working with Palestinians who were willing to get together with the Israelis for something positive, the European Union and the State Department went ahead and with the Arab League brought Arafat out of retirement in Tunis. No sooner had they declared him the only leader the Israelis could deal with than the killings began of Palestinians who were working towards an accommodation with Israel.
It must be obvious from the behaviour of the Europeans that they are only interested in maintaining the violence. They have done absolutely nothing to admit and reprimand the behaviour of Arafat, his Fatah, Islamic Jihad or whatever other name over the years and everything to criticize Israel in defending itself.
One could almost say that they are stoking the fire in the hope of putting an end to the Jewish State.
For all the “Western Countries” cries for humanitarian issues, whatever, they have done absolutely nothing practical to attend to the well being of the people in Gaza other than pumping Hamas and Fatah full of dollars and euros.
Their behaviour is mirrored by UN actions and Darfur.
Surely it would be obvious that had the West truly wanted an accommodation they would have stopped the thuggery and violence (at a cost of their diplomat’s Saudi pensions?) a long time ago before it got to this point.
Comment by Cynic — June 11, 2007 @ 8:22 am
Sophia,
You don’t seem to have noticed that the current situation came about because of an Arab decision (the Three No’s of Khartoum in 1967) in which they have willfully condemned the Palestinians to be canon fodder in the fight against the Jews.
If a truly open, democratic Palestinian state IS created, one that will welcome Jewish residents, Jews have to be able to see Palestinians and other Arabs as human beings and I am not sure all of us do.
For this one needs to change their culture defined by the Qur’an, Hadith and Sira and to force them out of step with their Arab/Muslim bretheren.
Pay attention to what is going on in Thailand, Indonesia, the Phillipines.
When the Jew is defined by their culture as being descendents of apes and pigs how could Saudi Arabia, or Iran accept a “Democratic” Palestinian State?
How could one create that “Democratic” Muslim state (oxymoron?) given the push to sharia law by Muslims in the democratic West?
Comment by Cynic — June 11, 2007 @ 8:41 am
Gee whiz, Cynic. You embarass me. I thought that I was only one who had such naughty thoughts about the Europeans. And then you reminded me of something I had forgotten, that after yasser a. took over Gaza and Jericho, he started killing Arabs collaborating with Israel, who had often supplied vital info to Israel to help our security services prevent terrorist attacks. Israel owed protection to these people. But instead the Rabin-Peres-Beilin govt gave lists of such collaborators to yasser prince-of-peace. It should have been obvious what yasser was going to do with the people on such lists.
As for the Euros, Euro Judeophobia goes back to the Roman Empire, 2000 years ago. It seems that those of us who expected that the Holocaust had changed the Euros’ attitudes and behavior toward us forever were naively mistaken. All they needed was a suitable excuse for resuming their not so well hidden Judeophobia. The passion of the “palestinians” fills the bill. Allegations of Israel/Jewish crimes against this collective Jesus known as the “palestinian people” are a detergent strong enough to cleanse the Euro consciousness and conscience from any remaining specks of guilt toward Jews on account of the Holocaust. Actually, the “palestinian people” notion did not appear until the early to mid-1960s. But even shortly after WW2, British and American and assorted Euro Judeophobes were accusing Israel of moral turpitude in how it treated the Arabs, palestinian Arab refugees in particular.
How these people like to occupy the “moral high ground!!” They loved the symmetry of an insolent self-styled victim [the Jews in their view] who goes on to do exactly the same to the Arabs [as if there were ever a Treblinka for Arabs]. The Euros’ favorite sufferers, still called Arabs or palestinian Arabs, were alleged to be “victims of the victims.” Of course, the “palestinian people” notion did not exist publicly until the 1960s. This notion is the kind of thing that if it did not exist would have to be invented, at least for the sake of Euro policy and the Euro conscience.
BTW, Cynic, did you hear that today [6-11-07] the EU decided to resume paying money to the palestinian authority under Hamas leadership? And davka when Hamas and Fatah are killing each other?
Comment by Eliyahu — June 11, 2007 @ 9:08 am
one must have only half a brain not to see what’s been going on with the europeans. and there’s been written so much about it.
the term “secular and democratic state” is a term used by arafat to mean “not based on jewishness”. the notion that you could have an arab state not based on ethnicity and having nothing to do with islam is absurd.
to repeat: until the arabs overhaul their education system, which will take generations to take effect, there is nothing to talk about. and it’s not clear that the west will survive until then.
Comment by fp\http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/ — June 11, 2007 @ 10:47 am
btw, the europeans were pressed into anything to do with the palestinians by 2 phenomena: arafat’s plane hijacking and terror and the 1973 oil embargo.
in essence they embarked in a policy of appeasement and jizya, without much care for the palestinian conditions, or what they were going to do with the money (see Bat Yeor).
it’s the same welfare statism policy that they have employed in their own countries and which is now bringing them down the drain.
Comment by fp\http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/ — June 11, 2007 @ 11:33 am
Sophia, i’m going to give my asnwers to your questions in a post. i do think that they are what the french call questions mal posées,/> [badly framed questions]. the west has made extensive efforts to “reach out” to the palestinians — israelis and westerners. and it has made things worse. we have to ask ourselves why it failed rather than ask if we shouldn’t do more.
the real problem is that when a progressive sees palestinian culture for what it is, and not a projection of his or her cognitive egocentrism:
.
you assume here that the progressive, peace-committed personality is everywhere (rather than potentially everywhere), and that only repression keeps it in check. this may be true, but at a far lower level in prime divider societies than you may imagine from the perspective of a civil scoiety.
the really ugly aspects of prime divider, honor-shame cultures — like honor killings — pervade a culture and involve not only the elites (alpha males, aristocracies) but also the “pauperes” as the medieval sources referred to the powerless (commoners, women). we (esp the “progressives”) have tried to reach out to the palestinians, but the way we did it made things worse.
Comment by RL — June 11, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 06/11/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
Comment by David M — June 11, 2007 @ 12:19 pm
rl,
absolutely correct. however, there are two components to the west’s involvement with the palestinians.
you refer to one of them — the projection from civil society and the inability to see the cultural difference and what it leads to.
but there is another one, which I referred to: the fact that the west does not REALLY CARE about people. they mostly respond under duress (when they try to protect themselves from violence), or to satisfy their self-image of do-gooders and enlightened, which is a paternalistic form of racism.
taken together those two blind them to reality and lead them to undertake policies that have the opposite effect of that intended.
ironically, just like the arabs, they are unable to self-criticize and correct themselves either.
Comment by fp\http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/ — June 11, 2007 @ 12:31 pm