YOU WANT TO SPEND the rest of your life in a futile debate? Get into a discussion of how the Middle East got to this point, beginning with the ancient Jewish kingdoms, through the Roman occupation, to the centuries during which resident Jews had no real authority in the Holy Land. Move on to the era when Muslim caliphs controlled the region through the dominion of the Ottoman Empire and then to the period of post–World War I British control, following the defeat of the Ottomans. From there go to the United Nations–proposed two-state solution in the mid 1940s through the 1948 war following Israel’s establishment of independence, when the Arabs were bent on pushing the Jews from their new state into the sea. Talk about Jordan’s control of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) from 1948 to 1967 and Egyptian control of Gaza during the same period. If you haven’t yet come to blows, go over the Six Day War launched by the Arabs against Israel in 1967, which resulted in Israeli occupation of Judea and Samaria, and then try to talk about our own time, when mass murderers routinely ply their trade to a chorus of praise by Arafat, the Jordanian queen, and the kept intellectuals and sycophants of the Arab world.
The Allied occupation of Germany and Japan was a legitimate action intended to pacify hostile populations and expunge murderous regimes. Also legitimate was the decision not to end occupation until those former enemies had proven they had abandoned their wretched policies of the 1930s and ’40s and erected democratic structures in their place. Today, the Israeli occupation of Judea and Samaria is also fully justified; it is the outcome of a war prosecuted against Israel. The Israelis must and will remain there until its Arab residents agree to abandon their commitment to destroy Israel. Of course, there’s no indication that the Palestinian Authority dictatorship under Arafat has any such intention. On the contrary, its statements in Arabic (visit www.memri.org for the English translation) reiterate the belief that the whole of what was once the mandate of Palestine, including all of pre–Six Day War Israel, must be a Palestinian-Arab state.
The simple principle that the victor in a war brought on by an attack against it has the full right and a moral obligation to pacify the enemy, including occupying territory from which the aggression was launched (and continues to be launched), makes scarcely a dent in the minds of folks who call talk shows, mine among them, or who trudge off to "peace" rallies. Nor does it influence those who take their cues from the manifestly anti-Israel news reporting on National Public Radio or the opinion pieces in many liberal newspapers and magazines — all of which view Israeli and Palestinian actions in terms of moral equivalence. With press coverage like this, it’s not surprising that Palestinian sympathizers see the Israeli presence in the territories as "occupation" in the most illegitimate sense of the term.
Nor is it surprising that they believe the entirety of the so-called West Bank — which is simply the area controlled by Arabs after the ceasefire of 1948 — is Palestinian territory. How quickly they forgot (or perhaps never knew) that the occupants of this land, formerly governed by the Jordanians, were never given the same rights accorded Jordanians and didn’t start referring to themselves as Palestinians until the mid 1960s. To describe this land as "Palestinian territory" betrays an ignorance of history (if knowledge of events occurring in just the last half-century can rightly be called "history"). This land is nobody’s territory, though it is held by Israel for good reason. Its final status and borders were to be determined by negotiation — as recognized by international agreement and reiterated in the Oslo accords. It has become popular over the past year to forget that fact.
But at this point, negotiation to determine the borders of a state run by Palestinians — before they abandon their irredentist fantasies, before they pledge full acceptance of Israel's legitimacy, before they abjure violence and commit to living in harmony with Israel — would be absurd. The United States would never have left Japan and Germany had there been hordes of Japanese militarist kamikazes and Nazi "suicide bombers" tossing themselves into American military camps, apartment buildings housing servicemen’s families, and restaurants and shops patronized by Americans. The "occupation" of Judea and Samaria must continue until their residents begin to act like civilized adults instead of rabid juvenile delinquents routinely employed in the slaughter of innocents. Indeed, this occupation must continue until Palestinians stop teaching their children how to turn themselves into projectile human explosives.
People unfamiliar with, say, the redrawing of the European map from the late 19th century to the present (owing to population shifts and war) believe with a passion usually reserved for revealed religion that the 1948 ceasefire line is the result of a settled agreement. They think that "pre-1967 Israel" may try to remain a Jewish state, if those pesky Jews really insist, but the part previously occupied by Egypt and Jordan absolutely must be — and in their minds already is — the State of Palestine.
The predominant goal of the Arab dictatorships — and the only one safely expressed — is the total elimination of Israel. The European attitude is one of hostility to Israel and renewed hatred of the Jews. You don’t need a Mensa-level IQ to get these points clear in your mind. But they elude our "intellectuals" and "peace"-mongers. And, as always, such facts don’t register with those bottom-feeding anti-Semites who need little rationale to scrawl swastika graffiti or leaflet Jewish neighborhoods with pamphlets that propound hatred and hint at oncoming violence.
In spite of these realities, Israel rightly intends to root out the masterminds of terror, to remove Arafat from his rancid "leadership" of the Palestinians, and to return, if need be — possibly repeatedly — to areas where Arabs live in Judea and Samaria until the violence ceases.
I BEGAN with Churchill, who nearly alone in late ’30s Britain, warned of what lay ahead. We have no Churchill today, but thanks to the Internet and other means of mass communication, we already know what’s coming: a combined Arab, European, and United Nations drive to delegitimize Israel and submit Jews to a 21st-century Final Solution. If you think I’m exaggerating the threat, listen to the talk-show callers and read the letters to the editor in mainstream newspapers and the essays published by "intellectuals" who embrace the theory of moral equivalence. They have one thing in common: they issue perfunctory statements of "concern" about poor Jews dying as a result of "wicked" Israeli policy, while crying gushers of tears over the sad fate of the Palestinians — who are never viewed as victims of Arab leaders’ half-century of miscalculation and perfidy.
To change course — to mount a Churchillian reversal before it’s too late — would require concentrating on facts, sifting through anti-Semitic propaganda, and insisting on consistency in American policy. But that’s exactly what we’re not seeing from our opinion-makers, such as James Carroll, who recently wrote that Israeli settlements have created "radical insecurity no matter what Palestinians do"; our religious leaders, such as the three Episcopal bishops who several months ago picketed the Israeli consulate in Boston to protest Israeli military action in the West Bank; or our scholars, such as the 80 MIT and Harvard professors who recently signed a petition calling for their schools’ divestment from companies doing business in Israel.
If Americans truly believe the West has a right to survive and that expunging Arab-Islamic-fascist international terrorism is justified, then surely Israel has the same right. And if they don’t, we don’t. And that leaves us — where?
David Brudnoy teaches in the College of Communication at Boston University and is a WBZ Radio talk-program host and film critic for the Community Newspaper Company.
