Israel Matzav

The terrorists all learned from the 'Palestinians'

Of all the uses of terror, none in the past several decades has been more faddishly popular (at least on the left), and none has been accorded more respectful media coverage, than that of the Palestinians. Yes, Palestinian terrorists and terrorists on behalf of the Palestinian cause murdered innocents -- but that was understandable, the argument went. The Palestinians had been wronged. They were oppressed. They were weak. What else could they do?

Here is where we end up, with murder on a mass scale of people whose sole sin was, apparently, that they were Americans. Immediate suspicion focused on anti-Israeli (and therefore anti-American) terrorist groups. Yasser Arafat, who has championed the legitimacy of anti-Israeli terror his entire career, nonetheless was quick to express himself "completely shocked," at an attack he said he condemned, and he offered the American people condolences on behalf "of the Palestinian people."

I don't doubt Arafat's shock. And I don't think he had anything directly to do with the monstrous evil of Sept. 11. Indeed, it is possible that what happened yesterday had nothing to do with the Middle East. But this evil rose, with hideous logic, directly from the philosophy that the leaders and supporters of the Palestinian cause have long embraced and still embrace -- a philosophy that accepts the murder of innocents as a legitimate expression of a legitimate struggle.

If it is morally acceptable to murder, in the name of a necessary blow for freedom, a woman on a Tel Aviv street, or to blow up a disco full of teenagers, or to bomb a family restaurant -- then it must be morally acceptable to drive two jetliners into a place where 50,000 people work. In moral logic, what is the difference? If the murder of innocent people is for whatever reason excusable, it is excusable; if it is legitimate, it is legitimate. If acceptable on a small scale, so too on a grand.

In the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday afternoon, the Associated Press reported, thousands of Palestinians greeted news of the slaughter in New York and Washington with an impromptu street party, cheering "God is great" and distributing candy in a traditional form of celebration.

The revelers must have greeted their leader's words with some puzzlement. Was this not the ultimate expression of President Arafat's very own philosophy? Was this not a great blow -- the greatest ever -- against oppression? Was this not a necessary and good thing, as they had been taught, as they had been taught to teach their children? Is not a great good better than a small good?

Labels: 9/11, Michael Kelly, Palestinian terrorism, Yasser Arafat

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:27 PM