As of November 20, 2002, there had been a total of 15,298 Palestinian terror attacks against Israel since the start of the "intifada" in September 2000. The number increased by one a day later, on November 21, when a Palestinian bomber blew up a bus filled with elderly women and young children in Jerusalem. Not surprisingly, the world has likely taken more angry notice of Israel's defensive actions to prevent further terror than of the grotesque cowardice of Palestinian terrorism. Murdered Jews, after all, are an old story.
Israelis have endured nearly one terror attack every hour of every day for twenty-five consecutive months. These attacks have had nothing to do with self-determination or freedom-fighting. Rather, they have targeted, almost exclusively, the most vulnerable and defenseless civilians. And while Palestinian propaganda, funded heavily from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, always seeks to suggest equivalence between Arab terror and Israeli counterterror, there is a longstanding and meaningful difference between premeditated murder and unintentional casualties of essential self-defense against murder.
Nonetheless, the world chooses not to notice. At best, public opinion refuses to blame the Palestinians or supporters of Arab/Islamic terror in other countries. At worst, public opinion openly supports such terror as "national liberation."
Universities, at best, are unmindful. The scholars are busy with more weighty matters, especially those that do not pertain to real life in any way. In academe the truly fashionable concern is now for "diversity," "strategic planning" and "multiculturism." Understandably, there is no time for Jewish agony, anguish and suffering.
Who is to blame for cowardly forms of terror? If the Palestinians are to be blamed at all, we hear from almost all educated quarters, responsibility belongs only to Hamas, or to Islamic Jihad, or perhaps to Nobel laureate Arafat's Fatah. But surely it does not belong to the broader Palestinian community. Surely only the Arab "extremists" are blameworthy.
Yet, as we learn from all reliable survey research, an enormously disproportionate share of Palestinians fully supports the bus bombings, the burnings, the lynchings, and the shootings of Jewish noncombatants. Enjoying the now open support of Al Qaeda - support which is often accepted gratefully and without embarrassment - Palestinians in Israel as well as in Judea, Samaria and Gaza revel proudly in shedding the blood of Jewish children. And why not? Most of the "civilized world" argues that they may wage their particular armed struggle "by any means necessary." And the killing of Jews always buys them and their families a secure place in Paradise.
What could be easier to understand? Of course they could earn such a piece of immortality just as confidently by targeting Israeli military personnel, but they avoid such an option wherever possible. That course, after all, would require courage.
The cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist is unparalleled in the history of insurgent warfare. Although there is no shortage of examples of revolutionary fighters who disregard humanitarian boundaries in battle, the record of fighters who purposely and consistently seek utterly innocent and defenseless targets is actually very small. Several weeks ago, when a Palestinian terrorist machine gunned two Jewish infants still sucking on pacifiers (after stabbing the mother), the image of the murdered children was a source of feverish exaltation throughout the Palestinian communities in Jenin, Ramallah and Gaza. When, a year earlier, a newborn Jewish child was shot deliberately by a sniper, Palestinian celebrants hailed the murder as "yet another military victory against the Zionist occupation." When, several years ago, two Russian-Jewish Israelis who had not yet learned to speak Hebrew took a wrong turn into Ramallah, they were torn apart - literally - by howling mobs of frenzied Palestinians. When, after blinding and disemboweling the two Israelis, several young men in a Palestinian "police station" held up the still-dripping eyes and internal organs for all to see, THOUSANDS of ordinary Palestinians began to dance and chant wildly. And when, so very recently, a terrorist from Bethlehem entered the Jerusalem bus on November 21, he waited, patiently, until it was fully loaded with schoolchildren. Only then, only then - did he turn his wretchedly defiled body into a bomb.
What kind of people are these? What boundless levels of cowardice are they willing to undertake and sustain? What manner of fear can occasion such an utter lack of human regard for life? What vision of "Jihad" can transform schools, nurseries and buses into exploding altars of human sacrifice? Are there no limits, no limits at all, to Palestinian terrorism?
I don't know the complete answers to these questions. I do know, however, that it is not despair. There are many, many other peoples on this planet whose conditions of daily life are much, much worse - indescribably worse - and these people never resort to pure barbarism. I know, also, that Palestinian schools and mosques systematically demonize "The Jew" and emphasize his or her alleged subhumanity. It is far easier to kill "the sons of pigs and monkeys" than it is to kill a fellow human being.
But this still does not explain the incomparable cowardice of the Palestinian terrorist. I suspect the truest answer has something to do with this murderer's overwhelming fears of death. Let us not forget that the suicide/homicide bomber does not really feel he is giving up his own life in his terrible deed. Rather, he murders Jews to ensure his absolute freedom from death - and also, according to the latest authoritative rulings of Arab clerics, the immortality of his closest relatives - by "dying" for the sake of Allah. "Do not consider those who are slain in the cause of Allah as dead," says the Koran. "They are living by their Lord."
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LOUIS RENE BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of this article.
Louis Rene Beres
Professor of International Law
Department of Political Science
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN 47907
USA
TEL 765/494-4189
FAX 765/494-0833
E MAIL BERES@POLSCI.PURDUE.EDU
Many thanks to Naomi Ragen for sending this.
