Ravings of the Occasionally Opinionated

What's With This Species?

I once saved a Boston Globe editorial. Every once in a while I come across it, and decide to save it once again. I don't have my hands on it at the moment, but it was titled something like, "Cornered, Arafat Returns to Violence". It was written shortly after Yassar Arafat had stormed out of the mideast peace talks with Israel in Washington. The author took exception with the media who were writing that fighting had "broken out" in the middle east. Arafat, having been offered everything he had always claimed he wanted, including a capital in Jeruselem, could no longer continue to negotiate when what he really wanted was the complete destruction of Israel. Thus, he left the peace talks, and fighting "broke out" in the sense that a well-orchestrated war began, organized by the PLO and leading Muslim religious figures.

The recent Palestinian election victory of a terrorist organization devoted to the destruction of Israel, Hamas, caused great consternation. To me, it can possibly be viewed as a good thing. Oh, I am appalled and saddened that the majority of Palestinians would actually vote for those candidates. But as far as the actual government, a terrorist organization that denied being such has been replaced by one that freely admits it. That is progress for the world view. At least all the cards are now on the table.

A few years ago on Yom Kippur, the rabi at my congregation gave a moving sermon about her recent visit to Israel. Whereas Israelis debate and agonize over the ethics of every issue concerning their relationship with Palestinians, Palestinians can be seen celebrating in the streets after a successful suicide bombing. Mothers in the street dancing, celebrating the death of men, women, and children. (I cannot forget the same scenes on television on 9/11. ) And, since the message of Yom Kipppur is supposed to be one of hope, how difficult it is to hold on to any hope when faced with the dicotomy of the two cultures. I don't remember the small message of hope which she held out, but I remember the feeling of hopelessness that anything can be resolved.

I also once saw on television a show about a journalist, the daughter of a rabi who had been shot (but not killed) by a Palestinian. She had taken it upon herself to discover why the individuals involved had done such a thing. Without their ever knowing she was the daughter of the man who had been shot, she visited them, as a journalist, and got to know them. I remember her description of her reaction when the mother said something like, "My son is in jail for shooting someone. But it was only some Jew." She felt revulsion. The mother thought her son should be honored for shooting a Jew. She was in the mother's house, drinking tea the mother had made, and it made her feel unclean. She wanted to leave and wash. (But, in what is not relevant here, she stuck it out, and later argued for the release of the man who had shot her father.)

Yossi Alpher, writing in a recent edition of Forward, disagrees with the perception that Israelis have shown resilience in the face of the suicide bombing campaign and that attitudes have not changed. There has been a change from the early 1990's, when suicide bombers were considered a religious aberation, or troubled youth recruited and trained to not lose their nerve, to a Palestinian culture where normal, untroubled youth eagerly volunteer for suicide bombings and the public at large applauds their heroic acts. (My comment: the election victory of Hamas reflects that culture.)

Alpher continues, "The reaction was and remains revulsion and rejection. We pay lip service to a negotiated two-state solution and extend a hand toward cooperation on humanitarian issues because that is what civilized people should do. But in our hearts we are so appalled at Palestinian mothers who joyfully sacrifice their sons to kill Israeli mothers and children that we want to completely divorce ourselves from what appears to be a fatally sick people. In our gut we perceive the bombings as a quasi-existential, primordial threat, even as our statisticians tell us that more Israelis die in traffic accidents than in the suicide bombing campaign at its worst." And in speaking of the fence between Iraelis and Palestinians, which he correctly points out Palestinians fail to grasp was brought on them by the bombings, Alpher describes it as "a fault line between civilizations: one that celebrates life, the other death."

That's just some thoughts on Israel's little terrorist problem. As 9/11 demonstrated, we also have our own. And as has been demonstrated since, the rest of the world has the problem too. Less near, and less constant, but ever present. It could be worse. We could live in Darfur.