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The Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) describe their activities as “reducing violence by getting in the way”.

I am all for reducing violence. But the CPT have a history of getting in the way of people, if they happen to be Israelis, defending themselves.

The point of view is perfectly illustrated by this fragment of an email written by a CPT member named Jan Benvie:

On 28 December, 2007, two armed, off-duty Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian gunmen killed each other… The Israelis were from the settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, the Palestinians from Hebron.

Both communities have their narratives of why their young men are dead. Their narratives are similar, although I doubt either would agree with me, such is their enmity towards each other.

Part of the narrative goes like this: both believe the other wants to kill them and steal their land; neither thinks the other wants peace…

I think of the bereaved families in both Kiryat Arba and Hebron. As a mother, I feel particularly for the parents mourning their dead sons. [my emphasis]

Now a few facts, independent of ‘narratives’: three Israelis were walking down a road. A car carrying Palestinians drove by and sprayed them with bullets. Because the Israelis were off-duty soldiers walking in a dangerous place, they were armed and fired back. Two Israelis and one, possibly two, Palestinians died.

The thrust of Ms. Benvie’s email is that there is a symmetry here: both sides hate the other, both sides commit violence, both sides have grieving parents.

But this incident (which I wrote about in “The 35… and two more” ) is a perfect example of the asymmetry of the conflict.

Apologists for the Palestinians will say that the Israeli settlers had initiated the violence by living on ‘Palestinian land’. But even if you ignore the history of the Jewish presence in and around Hebron, and even if you think that the penalty for a Jew living on ‘Arab land’ should be death, the terrorists did not know who they were shooting. There is no doubt in my mind that any Israeli hiking on that road would have been shot.

If the victims had been unarmed, the only difference would have been that none of the terrorists would have been hurt. In that case, would Benvie still blame the Israelis equally? For what?

The CPT distribute a brochure entitled “No way to the Inn” which includes the line “If the Christmas story were to happen today, Mary and Joseph would have a hard time getting to Bethlehem”, because of the security fence.

The brochure suggests building a little wall around a nativity scene, and then calling the local media to explain why you are doing it. It compares the Jews of today to the Romans of Herod’s time, and talks about the hardships faced by Palestinians living near the barrier.

But nowhere does it mention that the barrier is being built in order to stop Palestinian terrorists from attacking and killing Israelis. The CPT ‘gets in the way’ of self-defense, but doesn’t seem to do much to get in the way of terrorism (although one CPT member did offer to ride the no. 18 bus in Jerusalem after it had been bombed twice in two weeks).

Technorati Tags: CPT, Christian Peacemaker Teams

I haven’t written anything about Benazir Bhutto’s murder because I wasn’t ready to deal with it. I wasn’t ready to face the fact that, in the Middle East, murder is the option of choice to achieve political ends, and death is more important than life. If so, is there hope for anything except war, poverty, and death?

The Profession of Death
By Barry Rubin

Much will be said about Benazir Bhutto’s assassination; little will be understood about what it truly means. I’m not speaking here about Pakistan, of course, as important as is that country. But rather the lesson–as if we need any more–for that broad Middle East which begins in Pakistan and ends on the Atlantic Ocean coast.

This is a true story. Back in 1946, an American diplomat asked an Iranian editor why his newspaper angrily criticized the United States but never the Soviet Union. The Iranian said that it was obvious. “The Russians,” he said, “they kill people.”

A dozen years earlier, in 1933, the Iraqi official Sami Shawkat, gave a talk which became one of the most famous texts of Arab nationalism. “There is something more important than money and learning for preserving the honor of a nation and for keeping humiliation at bay,” he stated. “That is strength….Strength, as I use the word here, means to excel in the Profession of Death.”

What, you might ask, was Shawkat’s own profession? He was director-general of Iraq’s ministry of education. This was how young people were to be taught and directed; this is where Saddam Hussein came from. Seventy-five years later the subsequent history of Iraq and the rest of the Arab world show just how well Shawkat did his job.

September 11 in the United States; the Bali bombing for Australia; the tube bombing for Britain; the commuter train bombing for Spain, these were all merely byproducts of this pathology. The pathology in question is not Western policy toward the Middle East but rather Middle Eastern policy toward the Middle East.

Ever since I read Shawkat’s words as a student, the phrase, “Profession of Death,” which gave his article its title, struck me as a pun. On one hand, the word “profession” meant “career.”

To be a killer–note well that Shawkat was not talking specifically about soldiers, those who fight, but rather those who murder–was the highest calling of all. It was more important than being a teacher, who forms character; more important than a businessperson, who enriches his country; more important than a doctor who preserves the life of fellow citizens. Destruction was a higher calling than construction. And for sure in the Arabic-speaking world what has been reaped is what has been sowed.

But also the word “profession” here reminds me of “to profess,” “to preach.” What is of greatest value is for an educator to preach and glorify death. What kind of ideology, what kind of society, what kind of values, does such a priority produce? Look and see.

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Looks like the ‘moderate’ wing of the PA is taking some heat:

Fatah’s armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, on Sunday called for the murder of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad for “collaboration” with Israel and the US…

Fayad has been under heavy criticism from some Fatah leaders and activists, who accuse him of denying them public funds and plotting to undermine Fatah’s grip on power. — Jerusalem Post

Fatah, of course, is the basket the US has been putting all of its eggs into. And Fayad is almost singlehandedly responsible for the recent international pledges to donate more than $7 billion to the Palestinian authority.

The so-called moderate PA has not been getting much support from the Arab states lately, either. Last month at the UN,

Riad Mansour, the PA’s [UN] observer, wanted to include a clause in a draft resolution condemning Israel at a Decolonization Committee meeting. It would have expressed “concern about the takeover by illegal militias of Palestinian Authority institutions in June 2007” and called for its reversal, but under Arab state pressure this was toned down to “concern about an illegal takeover.” Mansour himself was subjected to a barrage of insults, led by the representatives of Egypt, Syria and Libya, who claimed that his initiative would be interpreted as a UN condemnation of Hamas, thereby easing Israel’s cutting of electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza. —Daniel Pipes [my emphasis]

What seems to be true is that there is very little support for the Abbas/Fayad PA except in the US State Department.

If I thought it was prepared to struggle with extremists, reach a negotiated settlement with Israel, and create a peaceful Palestine, I might feel bad about this.

But since I think that compromise with Israel is not a popular point of view among Arabs (to say the least), that Abbas and Fayad have exactly as much real support as the US will pay for, and that the PA ‘government’ is a Potemkin village, I am not heartbroken. There’s no possibility of success anyway.

I think the government of Israel knows this and is doing the only possible thing right now: killing the Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorists. Why doesn’t the US understand the situation, stop wasting money on the corrupt Fatah organization, and let it fall of its own weight? Any services delivered to West Bank residents come from their local minor warlords anyway.

But, you say, “Hamas will take over!”

The only thing preventing a Hamas takeover in the West Bank today is the IDF. If the US policy continues — if we succeed in stage-managing a ‘peace’ agreement with those who, it has been said, “couldn’t deliver a pizza in Jerusalem”, and the IDF leaves the West Bank as a result — then Hamas will take over.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Fatah, Hamas, Salaam Fayed

The Orthodox Union Public Affairs blog has recently published a statement by presidential candidate Barack Obama on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:

“I start with the premise that Israel is a stalwart ally of ours and their security cannot be compromised. I also start with the premise that the status quo is unsustainable and that what would be good for Israeli security will be the kind of two-state solution that allows the Palestinians to live and prosper in their own state and allows Israel to maintain the security of its state.”

“I think everyone knows what the basic outlines of an agreement would look like. It would mean that the Palestinians would have to reinterpret the notion of right of return in a way that would preserve Israel as a Jewish state. It might involve compensation and other concessions from the Israelis but ultimately Israel is not going to give up its state.”

This is carefully worded and nuanced, and it’s worth thinking about what it means. The first paragraph represents the conventional wisdom on the two-state solution, and is true in a tautological way: obviously a solution that “allows Israel to maintain the security of its state” will be good for Israeli security.

However, the implication is that a two-state solution is necessary for Israeli security, because the status quo is unsustainable. What Obama does not deal with is the fact that the Palestinians do not want — in any way, shape or form — a state alongside Israel in which they can live and prosper. Forcing Israel to make concessions that are intended to lead to a two-state solution in this situation could certainly compromise Israel’s security.

The second paragraph is even more interesting. Shmuel Rosner, writing in Ha’aretz, suggests that it means that “Barack Obama backs Israel remaining a Jewish state“. Well, it means that he does not think that the Palestinians should be able to flood Israel with ‘refugees’, but it also does not mean that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

“Compensation and other concessions from the Israelis” implies that the Palestinian nakba story is legitimate, that Israel created the refugees, and is responsible for them. Otherwise, why should Israel owe them anything?

The war that ended in 1948 was a continuation of the struggle to throw the Jews out that the Palestinian Arabs began in the 1920’s and was taken up by the Arab nations when they invaded Israel. There would have been no Arab refugees if they had accepted the partition resolution, instead of choosing war. The fact that the refugees weren’t resettled, but kept in misery for 60 years was the fault of the Arab nations and the compliant West — not Israel.

Accepting the principle of compensation is accepting the principle that Palestine actually belonged to the Arabs, the Jews took it, and now they need to compensate the Arabs for their loss.

The right of return does not require reinterpretation. There is no such right. The refugees have a right to resettlement in the Palestinian state or perhaps their present host countries, and a right to compensation from the Arab nations for the way they have been treated.

Here is what I think Obama, or any presidential candidate, should say:

“I start with the premise that Israel is a stalwart ally of ours and their security cannot be compromised. I also start with the premise that the status quo is unsustainable and that Palestinians must accept Israel’s right to exist unmolested as a Jewish state in the Middle East.”

“Part of any two-state agreement must be that the Palestinians agree that there is no right of return to Israel, but only to the Palestinian state. Refugees may receive compensation or other benefits (from Arab nations or the West), but they are not in any way the responsibility of Israel.”

Technorati Tags: Obama, Israel