Soccer Dad

Aid and comfort

I read "Al Aksa's new attack methods" by Matthew Guttman and Arieh O'Sullivan. At the end of the article I read they wrote:

But when prodded on Al Aksa's possession of rockets, Zubeidi did not deny that the rejectionist groups in the northern West Bank seek to develop alternatives to suicide attacks.

"Our diplomacy at the Hague was 100 times more valuable than all the rockets fired from Gaza," Zubeidi said.

What does that tell about the International Kangaroo Court of InJustice's advisory opinion against Israel's security fence? It was law in the service of terror. (Zubeidi is the terrorist who hoisted Mahmoud Abbas on his shoulders during the campaign for PA president and whose brother was just arrested - by Israel - for an attempted terror attack.)

Consider also last week's editorial in the Baltimore Sun, "The Right Move":

ISRAEL'S DECISION to suspend its policy of demolishing the homes of terrorists' families is a welcome, if overdue, action. Israel's claims that demolitions would deter terrorist attacks have been suspect for years. In fact, a recent Israeli defense review found that house demolitions caused more harm to Israel because they incited hatred and hostility among Palestinians. That review led to last week's policy change. But collective punishment has never been a useful or humane practice.

The editorial is largely based on a report from B'Tselem and by a review of the policy by the army.
Well the policy may not have always been useful or humane, but it did have its successes:

Fadi had already filmed the video tape that was to be played after his suicide attack. He and his brother surrendered themselves, it was revealed, under pressure from family members, who feared that their homes would be destroyed by Israel in retaliation for the planned bombing.

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And Ze'ev Schiff, hardly a rightist, but someone who knows Israel's army very well is also skeptical of "The Right Decision." He also seems to feel that the policy was adopted for political reasons:

Only four months ago, on November 7, the IDF Spokesman wrote to B'Tselem, which was in the advanced stages of preparing a report on house demolitions, that "the IDF reckons that house demolition is an efficient measure that serves as a deterrent factor against terror." The committee had already begun its work when the letter was drafted.

But the Sun's editorial board (one of whose members, Ann LoLordo, was an Israel correpsondent for the paper. Her tenure could be described as "Deborah Sontag Lite" as she was even more clueless than her couterpart at the NY Times.) isn't interested in the whole picture. It's interested in disarming Israel, not in preventing terror.
One of the fetishes of most editorial boards in American newspapers in the Middle East is the peace process. So I found it interesting the the New York Times, Baltimore Sun and Washington Post didn't publish any editorials condemning last Friday's terror attack in Israel immediately. Eventually, the Times published "Mideast Climate Change" which asserted:

It is similarly encouraging that the terrorists who attacked a Tel Aviv nightclub on Friday, killing five Israelis, have not yet managed to completely scuttle the new peace dynamic between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel contends that those terrorists were sponsored by Syria, but its soldiers reported discovering an explosives-filled car in the West Bank yesterday. The good news is that the leaders on both sides did not instantly retreat to familiar corners in angry rejectionism. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, have proved they can work together to thwart terrorism and deny terrorists an instant veto over progress toward a negotiated peace.

Subsequent discoveries show that terror against Israel is still being plotted and Mahmoud Abbas despite his anger still hasn't acted against the terror groups. So why an Israeli response would be characterized as "angry rejectionism" is beyond me. If Israel responds it will be out of necessity, fulfilling a state's most important obligation to its citizens: defending their lives.
In "The Long Road to Gaza" the editors of the Baltimore Sun don't say a word about the terror and Abbas's failure to meet his obligation of fighting it. Rather they fret that Israel may not be doing enough to help the cause of peace.

Mr. Sharon's plan isn't perfect. Through it, he has secured a stronger hold on the West Bank and built a security barrier that looks disturbingly like a fortified border even though this territory remains in dispute and subject to a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Neither has the Washington Post saw fit to mention (and condemn) the terror attack. Its last word on the Middle East was "Words to be Measured":

Mr. Bush said that Israel "must freeze settlement activity," something it has never done; he said that a Palestinian state "of scattered territories," which Mr. Sharon has long envisaged, "will not work."

Of course anyone familiar with the maps knows that the fence will now enclose no more than about 3% of Judea and Samaria, contiguity won't be a problem. The only problem will be terror.
Yet all these publications do is spend their time complaining about Israeli failures justifying the Palestinian grievance.
What Israel did in 1990's in attempting to create a Palestinian state was pretty incredible. (I wasn't much in favor of it and still am not.) The reason that peace was not achieved was because every Israeli move was taken for granted and every Palestinian grievance was validated by the media, academic, political and diplomatic elites thus justifying Palestinian rejectionism. It appears that the media seems intent on repeating its stingy assessment of Israeli concessions and generous assessment of half-baked Palestinian actions. That will not help peace.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at March 3, 2005 06:38 AM | TrackBack