Predictably, the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin has generated the usual storm of hot air, and even more predictably, TNR is at the center of it. I should say before continuing that in this rare case I agree with the substance of the TNR position; killing Yassin was among the justified actions that Israel has taken against the forces of Palestinian terrorism, as opposed to bulldozing houses and apartments. But
Martin Peretz's flatulence includes some puzzles and some absurdities.
Perhaps the world wants Israel to take the Spanish option: Wait for an enormity and then arrest some after-the-facts suspects.
This is a puzzle, but perhaps a God-sent one. If the Spanish option amounts to waiting around for terror to strike, that sort of contradicts the going Republican spin of the Spanish election. I thought we were supposed to believe that the Spanish electorate had punished their government for doing too much about terrorism, thereby attracting the attention of Al Qaeda. Peretz seems to tell an alternative tale: that the Spanish authorities simply crouched in terrified immobility with fingers crossed. All of the Republican hot air regarding the Spanish election spins an overly complicated, though self-serving tale; in fact, the Spanish voted out the ruling party because it did not protect them from terrorism. It sounds like Peretz agrees with me: the Spanish government deserved to lose.
All of the talk, from Peretz as from the rest of the Neo-conservative pontification squad, about the Spanish election points to the going illness on the American Right with regard to terrorism--tough talk equals tough actions. In fact, the Bush administration has fled at the first whiff of difficulty from every anti-terror initiative it has undertaken. That's why they changed direction to Iraq after the fireworks were over in Afghanistan. Now we're trying our darndest to get out of Iraq before the thing explodes in our face, instead of actually setting the country on the path we promised. In Spain's case, just because the government was willing to join the "Coalition of the Willing" doesn't actually vindicate some sort of "strong" anti-terror policy--and the bombings are prima facie evidence that whatever anti-terror policy the previous government undertook was woefully inadequate.
But the fact is, there has been no real peace process for years--largely because both the United Nations and the governments of Europe, nostalgic for the days when they actually mattered, have been propping up--both financially and politically--the Palestinian terrorism groups with the most blood on their hands.
Holy Shit. Is the New Republic actually alleging that European governments are supporting Palestinian terror groups financially? I think he needs to give us some details or that rhetoric is way, way over the top. We know that American allies like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan succor terrorists, to the silent acquiesance of Bush et al, but this is the first I've heard that Europe is also channeling money to our enemies. That would be mightily convenient for the American Right, so I think we'd better hear something more, or if I were Joschka Fischer, I'd sue Martin Peretz. I hear there's a lot to find there--maybe a cure for Germany's budget problems.
Furthermore, can we get past this childish "Europe doesn't matter" schtick? If we have learned anything from the last year of geopolitics, it's that Europe does matter. If Bush had been able to unite the world behind American foreign policy, would the terrorism in Madrid have mattered in the slightest? At this point, that terrorism just highlights the inadequacy of the current American foreign policy regime, inadequate (in this case) precisely because it has messed up in Europe.
The plight of the Kurds across the Middle East rarely garners much sympathy on the left, even though this mostly Muslim people has been persecuted by Arabs for more than 1,000 years--which is to say a millennium before anyone ever conceived of the term "Palestinian."
And finally, it's time to put the maniacal "Palestinians aren't real!!!!!" rhetoric to bed once and for all. Likudniks and their fellow travelers have claimed for decades that the Palestinians don't "count" as a group because that way of grouping people arose only in reaction to the creation of Israel. Even if that is true, it doesn't refute the fact that the people we now call Palestinians were, for instance, in some cases thrown off their land when Israel was created. Furthermore, earlier in the piece Peretz says that the deceased Yassin did not even bother to pretend to support a "two-state solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But of course Peretz's own suggestion that the Palestinians don't count undermines the argument for a two state solution as well. The soundest argument for that solution stems not from "group rights"--ie the Palestinians were wronged, so they deserve something now, just as the weakest argument for Israel's existence is that the Jews were wronged in the Holocaust, so they deserve something thereafter. The strongest argument for that solution, as for so many things, comes from individual rights: everyone deserves something on this earth, including all those people to whom the adjective "Palestinian" applies. It so happens (unfortunately) that the best way of accomplishing such a fair distribution is with a two-state solution.
In any case, Peretz's suggestion that the Palestinians are not a unit in the same sense that the Jews or the Kurds are a unit is just a self-serving interpretation of history. And it gets to one of my bete-noires, the idea that Judaism is an ethnicity. Let me shout now to Martin Peretz and to his compatriots: I am Jewish because of the God I believe in, not because I identify with you or with anyone else in any political sense.