Sultan Knish
Terrorism is a game. The rules are simple. You have three choices. 1.
Destroy the terrorists. 2. Live with terrorism. 3. Give in to the
terrorists.
There are no other choices.
The first choice comes from the right. The third choice comes from the left. The second choice is
what politicians choose when they don’t want to make a decision that will change the status quo.
Despite
all the explosions in Gaza, Israel is still stuck on the second choice.
The air strikes aren’t meant to destroy Hamas. They are being carried
out to degrade its military capabilities which will buy a year or two of
relative peace. And that will be followed by more of the same in the
summer of 2016 when Hamas will have deadlier Iranian and Syrian weapons
that will terrorize more of the country.
That doesn’t sound like
much of a deal, but these kinds of wars have bought more peace than the
peace process ever did. The peace process led to wars. The wars lead to
a temporary peace.
This status quo became the mainstream choice
ever since Israelis figured out that the peace process wasn’t going to
work and that their leaders weren’t about to defy the UN, the US, the UK
and all the other U’s by actually destroying the terrorists.
When
Netanyahu first ran against Peres, the difference between the
center-right and the center-left was that he campaigned on security
first and appeasement second, while Peres campaigned on appeasement
first and security second. The center-right has dominated Israeli
politics because most Israelis accepted Likud’s security first as a more
reasonable position than Labor’s appeasement first.
Living with
terrorism was a viable choice in the 80s. It stopped being a viable
choice after Israel allowed terrorist states to be set up under the
peace process. It’s one thing to manage terrorism in territories that
you control. It’s another thing to deal with entire terrorist states
inside your borders. Even physical separation isn’t enough. Not when
terrorist groups can shell all your major cities.
Israel
responds to that that threat with light air strikes which damage Hamas’
military capabilities. Hamas loses a few commanders, fighters and
rockets, but scores a PR victory. Israel buys two years of peace while
encouraging its enemies to attack it as a bunch of racist baby killers.
Then Hamas replaces the rockets and fighters and launches a new
operation and the whole thing begins again.
The left’s argument,
framed by Washington Post pundits, Israeli leftists, Obama, assorted
diplomats, retired security chiefs, activist busybodies funded by
radical billionaires and the entire gang of foreign and domestic
enemies, is that Israel has no choice except to default back to choice
three; appeasement.
Israel has to gamble on appeasement because
its situation is constantly worsening, they argue. What they neglect to
mention is that the situation is worsening as part of their pressure on
Israel to appease terrorists even though the current problems exist
because of earlier appeasement.
“Drink this poison,” the doctors
of diplomacy say. “It’ll cure you of all the aches and pains you’re
suffering from the last time we told you to drink poison.”
“If
you don’t drink more poison, you’ll get sicker and die,” they say. And
if you do get sicker after drinking more poison, they’ll say it’s your
own fault for not drinking enough poison. If only you had given away all
of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the terrorists wouldn’t be
attacking you again.
Israel has been caught between choices two
and three, either live with terrorism or make concessions to terrorists,
and it has been bouncing between these choices.
People
and politicians choose the option that causes the least pain at any
given time. Israel chooses appeasement in response to international
pressure. And when appeasement leads to terrorism, it does enough damage
to Hamas to serve as a temporary deterrent, without leading to too much
international outrage, again choosing the least painful option.
This is the true cycle that Israel is caught in. It’s not a cycle of violence. It’s a cycle of expediency.
The
first choice, destroying the terrorists, is the most painful option in
the short term, but the least painful option in the long term. The third
choice, appeasing the terrorists, causes the least pain in the short
term, but the most pain in the long term and the medium term. The second
choice, living with terrorism, is slightly more painful in the short
term, less painful in the medium term, but still quite painful in the
long term.
Israelis have accepted short term and long term pain
in exchange for a certain amount of relief in the immediate future. The
occasional terrorist attack and the more ominous escalating conflict, an
example of which we are seeing now, is accepted in exchange for a year
or two of relative quiet.
It’s easy to criticize Israel for not
finishing off Hamas, but let’s look at what is really standing in its
way. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin deported 400 Hamas terrorists,
including many Hamas leaders. In a Knesset speech he warned that, “We
call on all nations and all people to devote their attention to the
great danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism. That is the real and
serious danger which threatens the peace of the world in the forthcoming
years.”
Instead the international community decided that the
peace of the world was threatened by deporting Hamas terrorists. The
media spent months covering the “suffering” of the deported Hamas
terrorists. The United States voted for a UN resolution condemning
Israel and ordering it to “insure the safe and immediate return of all
those deported.”
The United States Ambassador to the United
Nations said that deporting Hamas terrorists does "not contribute to
current efforts for peace."
In
1988, Israel had deported a handful of Hamas and PLO terrorists. One of
them, Jibril Mahmoud Rajub, vowed that if Israel didn’t let them back
in that they would “infiltrate in as human bombs with explosives belted
around our waists.”
Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead warned Israel that if it didn't reconsider the
deportations "damage to our bilateral relations will occur."
If
that was the reaction by the Reagan and Bush administrations to
deporting a few terrorists, imagine the reaction by Obama and the EU to a
comprehensive effort to force Hamas and the PLO out of Israel. And yet
the inevitable can’t be postponed forever.
If Israel had not
folded in the peace process, it might have been able to maintain the
status quo of the intifada. But the second choice is no longer a viable
long term option. The attacks have long since passed the point of mere
terrorism and are taking place on a military scale.
Tolerating
terrorism has ceased to be a long term strategy. That is something that
both the left and the right agree on. The attacks are pushing Israel
into choosing either large scale conflict or large scale appeasement.
Appeasing terrorists has failed every time. Only destroying them can
work.
Israel has a left that is eager to embrace the destructive
policies of appeasement without regard to the consequences. It needs a
right that is equally heedless of consequences when it comes to war to
overcome that pain threshold which prevents it from doing the right
thing and reclaiming the future.
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