William Raspberry is one of the most insightful columnists in the country on domestic affairs. His foray into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an unfortunate disaster - an effort to blur the distinction between Palestinian terror and Israeli counter-terror.
Here's a sampling...
Are they terrorists? Certainly. But is Israeli President Ariel Sharon any less a terrorist because he does his thing through a uniformed military, with tanks and machine guns? There's terror -- and intransigence and duplicity -- on both sides, and precious little value in trying to determine which side owns the preponderance of guilt
Raspberry starts from the soundest of moral premises: that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to have self-government, physical security and basic socioeconomic needs. The problem is that he slides from the moral equity of the lives of Israelis and Palestinians to the questionable moral equivalence of Israeli and Palestinian political stances (while an overwhelming majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, such a position is hotly disputed in Palestinian society) to the unconscionable moral equivalence of the means being used by each side. Deliberate targeting of civilians through suicide bombing is an illegimate means to any end, no matter how legitimate. Using one's own civilians as human shields when the other side retaliates is as reprehensible.
Contrary to Raspberry's claim, the most "salient" fact about the Palestinian suicide bombers is that they are not acting out of desperation. There has never been a sustained effort to achieve the goal of a Palestinian state through negotiation and nonviolent protest. Such means would most surely produce a two-state solution (a right-wing Israeli leader who spurned such advances would be voted out of office). That however, may be precisely the reason that Arafat and other so-called Palestinian "leaders" choose to employ the tactics of terror instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment