No Straw Men

Published on the blog of Capitalism Magazine, Dollars and Crosses, March 25, 2004; on the blog of the Web site, Israel Is Moral, March 25, 2004; and in the Spectator (Hamilton College), April 2, 2004.

It was enough that when Yasir Arafat promised his people gender equality, he meant that the fairer sex should take part in suicide bombing. Now, 13 months later, we learn that the Palestinians are manipulating 11-and 14-year-olds into that same twisted fate—to blow themselves up.

If having children only so they can strap shrapnel and TNT to their chests, to massacre as many Israelis as possible, does not make the world condemn the Palestinians as as a whole, what must one do today to warrant condemnation? Is there no shame? No self-worth? No love for one’s family and friends that trumps one’s hatred for one’s enemies?>

Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, answered as follows a year ago. “The world must understand that the Palestinians have not chosen suicide bombing out of ‘desperation’ stemming from the Israeli occupation. That is a huge lie.” The Palestinians “actually want to win their independence in blood and fire. All they can agree on as a community is what they want to destroy, not what they want to build. Have you ever heard Mr. Arafat talk about what sort of education system or economy he would prefer, what sort of constitution he wants?”

To be sure, there are individual Palestinians who condemn suicide bombing. But since the Palestinian Authority is a dictatorship, those courageous individuals are usually the régime’s first victims (“political prisoners”), and are drowned out by leaders who glorify such “jihad” and “martyrdom” as a religious duty. If the Palestinians as a people truly condemn suicide bombing, why does it continue? Tom Friedman again explains. People tolerate terrorism, and terrorism is successful, because terrorists “are almost always acting on the basis of widely shared feelings or yearnings. As Israeli political scientist Ehud Sprinzak rightly put it, these so-called extremists are usually just the tip of an iceberg that is connected in a deep and fundamental way to the bases of their respective societies.”