The State Dept.’s annual report on terrorism blames the victim. Who is responsible for Palestinian terrorism? Israel.
I.
Harry S Truman wanted to recognize the nascent State of Israel immediately after its declaration of independence, May 15, 1948. Truman did, minutes later — over the vociferous objections of the State Dept. Without claiming to have scrutinized in scholarly fashion the subsequent history of the State Dept.’s attitude toward Israel, there is no gainsaying, at a minimum, that Arabists have controlled the department’s attitude at many junctures in history.
So it was, again, late last month. The State Dept. issued its annual report on terrorism. Lo and behold, the slant on Israel is dramatically negative, so much so that State Dept. spokespeople are defensively rushing to the microphones to point out that the report “consistently highlight[s] terror attacks against Israelis.” Thus Heather Nauert, State Dept. spokeswoman, assures us on July 25:
“Those terror attacks that are perpetrated against Israelis by Hamas and others, there is no justification — and we will say that time and time again — there is no justification for any acts of terrorism.” Nice to know, Ms. Nauert, that two plus two equals four, something that your annual report clouds and even contradicts.
Contrary to Nauert’s oral response under the pressure of a blunt question at a public briefing, the report lists as “continued drivers of violence” against Israelis:
“ . . . a lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood, Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the perception the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount, and IDF tactics that the Palestinians considered overly aggressive.”
II.
Let us examine these “drivers of violence,” one by one:
1. Lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood.
A person who chooses not to apply for a job has no hope of wealth. For such a person to launch a terrorist attack against a government agency is not a sign of lack of hope, but of lack of responsibility. Palestinians lack hope for a state because they have taken few, if any, responsible steps toward statehood:
• extirpating its culture of violence (not only against Israelis but against themselves, as in honor killings);
• extirpating its culture of corruption by using the hundreds of millions of dollars it receives in foreign aid to build an economy (rather than pay families of terrorists, build terror tunnels and sustain masses on permanent unemployment checks);
• extirpating its culture of racism (the Palestinian Authority envisions its state as banning Jewish residents and already punishes, on pain of death, Palestinians who sell land to Jews, whether Israeli or not);
• holding democratic elections and building democratic institutions (current Palestinian Authority President Abbas is in the 10th year of his four-year term).
2. Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.
It is up for discussion whether this is politically wise, but settlements are not a “driver of violence” because the violence predates the settlements. Before there was a single settlement on the West Bank, that is, before June 5, 1967, terrorists from the West Bank regularly attacked and murdered Israeli civilians. In fact, these attacks were among the central causes of the 1956 and 1967 wars between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries.
It is not Israel settlers in the West Bank — it is Israeli residents anywhere in any piece of land called Israel under any definition — that is the “driver of violence.”
3. Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Settler violence is morally repugnant and politically counterproductive, as often noted on this page. It is also a tiny fraction of the violence between Israelis and Palestinians, the overwhelming percentage of which is wrought by Palestinians for reasons not stemming from West Bank settlers (see #2 above). For the State Dept. to list settler violence against Palestinians as a “driver of violence” by Palestinians, without noting the gross imbalance in the violence from each side, is prejudicial on its face.
4. The perception the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount.
On what basis would the State Dept. legitimate an inaccurate “perception”? Inaccurate, because the real change in the status quo on the Temple Mount was from one of Arab prayer to one of Arab bloodletting. Arab Israelis committed murder on the Temple Mount last July 14. That was the change in the status quo. The State Dept. is saying: Murder of Israelis is a “driver of violence” against Israelis. What possible, positive purpose did the State Dept. think it served in sending this twisted message?
Besides, by assuming that a change in the status quo is a terrible thing, is a “driver of violence,” the State Dept. legitimates anti-Democratic norms.
The “status quo” on the Temple Mount is that a Jew (or Christian) there is subject to arrest if he even silently moves his lips there, because that might indicate that he is praying! For reasons rooted in Jewish tradition, we do not believe that Jews should visit the Temple Mount for any purpose, including prayer, but for others to deny them this religious freedom is of a piece with the Palestinian Authority’s desire for a state that is Judenrein. For the State Dept. to say, in effect, that the status quo on the Temple Mount must be sustained is either to be grossly ignorant of Muslim Wakf practice on the Temple Mount or it is to buy into the Muslim Wakf’s explicitly anti-Semitic (and anti-Christian) norms.
5. IDF tactics that the Palestinians considered overly aggressive.
A tactic that is undefined cannot be considered overly aggressive or not aggressive enough. The point here is not to engage in an abstract exercise in logic, but to indicate that no matter what the IDF does, Palestinians will object and deem it “overly aggressive.”
• In the last year, Israelis tried and convicted an IDF soldier who shot and killed a Palestinian terrorist after the terrorist had been neutralized. If the punishment by Israel of one of its own is a Palestinian “driver of violence,” it is clear that only the closure of the IDF altogether would satisfy the Palestinian criterion of an Israeli army rendered not “overly aggressive.”
• In the last year, IDF soldiers have shot and killed Palestinians who undertook terrorist acts via knives, cars and other weapons. Sometimes these terrorist initiatives were “successful,” resulting in deaths, sometime not. But they were intended to kill. If IDF soldiers responded by killing or neutralizing the assailants, was this “overly aggressive”? Perhaps, in some cases, after the fact, these split-second decisions by IDF soldiers could be deemed overly aggressive. Even if so, the State Dept. shifts the onus from the aggressor to the defender. To the State Dept., an act of defense by the IDF is worth calling a “driver of violence” if it is “overly aggressive.”
• As to whether the IDF is “overly aggressive” at checkpoints: As much as we sympathize with innocent Palestinians, free of violent intentions or acts, facing a royal pain in the neck in traveling relatively short distances, we must fall back on the same essential point: There would be no checkpoints if there were no Palestinian terrorism. Even an implicit critique of Israel for defending itself is outrageous, a violation of all American norms, which the US State Dept. should uphold.
III.
So, Ms. Heather Nauert, you can denounce the terrorist murder of Israelis all day and all night. We are not impressed, since your denunciation coexists with the legitimation of violence by Palestinians due to what they, and by implication, you, deem to be “overly aggressive” acts by the IDF in defense of Israel and Israelis.
Ms. Nauert, we would like to believe, charitably, that either you or your boss, Sec. of State Rex Tillerson, do not grasp the implications of your own report. If so, you have ample opportunity to clarify. A good start would be to urge Congress to condition future aid to the PA on its cessation of all direct and indirect payments to the families of Palestinians terrorists.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
