Imprimir
Jerusalem – The unspeakable atrocity of Sept. 11 left the democratic world facing a difficult challenge and a unique opportunity. The challenge derives from the enormity of the malice that threatens the free world; the opportunity lies in the very possibility of eradicating it.
After the tragedy, President Bush announced: «Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.»
This is no modest ambition. Any grand plan to destroy evil in our globe will require moral clarity. No sound policy will last unless it rests on conceptual and moral coherence. To define the enemy as «the terrorists and those who support them» was, for instance, a crucially correct first step. To warn the entire world «either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists» was another positive step. However, to guarantee the success of its global anti-terror policies, the United States must ensure that its philosophical positions match its political behavior.
This is why Secretary of State Colin Powell’s recent call to Israel to engage in “political dialogue” with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat looks so dangerously inadequate. It does not seem right for the United States to engage on a military operation that will result in Osama bin Laden’s meeting Allah Himself and at the same time demand of Israel to talk to its own Osama bin Laden — to use Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s characterization.
Like Afghanistan, the Palestinian Authority shelters well-known terrorist. Like Afghanistan, the PA tolerates – even encourages — terrorism. Like Afghanistan, the PA is viscerally anti-American.
For those who may not regard the usual burning of U.S. flags on the Palestinian streets as proof of popular hatred of America, consider this:
- A Sept. 11 editorial in the official PA daily, Al-Hayat al-Jadeeda, reads: «The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of their noble predecessors … the Lebanese suicide bombers, who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson [in Lebanon]. . . . These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history. . . . They are the most honorable [people] among us.»
- Last month the Palestinian mufti, Ikrima Sabri, an Arafat appointee, called for the destruction of America, England and Israel and asked Allah to «paint the White House black.»
- The current PA textbooks extol the virtues of jihad.
- A November 2000 poll conducted by Beir Zit University in Ramallah showed that 73 percent of the Palestinians supported suicide attacks against the United States. (Translations from the Palestinian media courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch).
Thus it comes as no surprise that Palestinians flocked to the streets to celebrate the carnage. They honked their horns, fired live ammunition and handed over candy. An embarrassed Arafat ordered his police to detain the photographers who had captured the event and to confiscate their films. He then orchestrated a public-relations gimmick that included offering his forces to take part in the international anti-terror coalition as well as a donation of blood by the rais himself.
This would be comical were it not so cynical. So confident are the Palestinians that they are fooling America, they even advertise their deceit. A cartoon published Saturday in the PA’s Al-Ayyam shows a Palestinian man, wearing an «I Love NY» T-shirt and waving a U.S. flag, telling a Palestinian woman, «To annoy the bastard taking our picture from above,» as a helicopter with wide-open eyes is flying over their heads.
You may say many things about the Palestinians, but chutzpah they lack not.
The U.S. government could ignore, as it did for years, this ongoing anti-American animosity. It also could demand of Israel to engage in fruitless talks with the leader of a people who has conducted a war of terror for the last 12 months. It even could ask its ally to stay out of the anti-terror coalition, out of deference to Arab and Muslim sensitivities. And it could do much more. But what it won’t be able to do is to grandilocuently declare that it is ridding the world of evil.
Julián Schvindlerman is a political analyst and journalist in Jerusalem.