Family Security Matters, NJ
Jan 24 2009

Exclusive: The Gaza Lesson Plan: Our Insane View of the Conflict

by Nicholas Guariglia

The Israelis have withdrawn from Gaza seemingly faster than they
entered it. This particular round of violence between Hamas and Israel
is over. Yet judging from what the international press has printed,
and what the academia has published, I fear our present debate over
Israel and the Gaza Strip transcends collegiate-level discourse, and
trespasses on the emotionally irrational and intellectually infantile.

Historical precedent is nonexistent. Palestine, the ancient home of
Jewish peoples, has been conquered and subjugated by Persians,
Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Arabs, Ottomans, and the
British Crown ‘ amongst others ‘ but is now `occupied by the Zionist
entity.’ Israel, it seems, is an unparalleled example of supremacist
colonialism. Lesson No. 1: World history started in 1948.

Relativity is abundant. God, as it were, apparently told the patriarch
Abraham that the Jews could have Palestine. Centuries later, God,
wheelin’ and dealin’ as always, sends the winged-stallion Buraq to
lead his noble warrior-messenger Muhammad on a `night journey’ across
the sky, Aladdin-style. The flying horse takes a rest stop at the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Walah! ‘ the Islamic claim to the
neighborhood is born.

These two divinely-guaranteed, irreconcilable real estate deals are,
on their face, equally illogical. But whether in a New York Times
op-ed piece, the BBC green room, or a post-modern Western faculty
lounge, the Judeo-Christian claim brings rolled-eyes; the Islamic, all
the `respect’ and `deference’ mandated by multicultural
etiquette. Where else in the world do we consider granting an
unsubstantiated theological claim territorial dominion and state
sovereignty? Where else is the supernatural considered the
geopolitical? Lesson No. 2: Pat Robertson is, in fact, nuts; Hamas
killer and detonations-expert Ismail Haniyeh, however, is a
theological scholar.

Concerns about `occupation’ are selective. China swallowed up
Tibet. Greek Cyprus was ransacked by the Turkish. Morocco controls the
Western Sahara. Syria occupied Lebanon for three decades, killing its
bravest and brightest. Egypt occupied Gaza, Jordan the West
Bank. Kurdistan is the property of four states. Russia has yet to hand
over the Kurile Islands back to the Japanese from World War II.

The whole history of state relations is littered with examples where a
perpetually defeated adversary acquiesces and concedes because, to the
sane and sober, a settled resolution is preferable to unending
war. Germany reconciled itself to the loss of Prussia. Armenia dealt
with losing Azerbijian; Azerbijain, the loss of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Indonesia gave up East Timor; Tanzania, large swaths
of Uganda; the Serbs, and their beloved Kosovo; Argentina gave up the
Falklands.

The West Bank, Gaza, southern Lebanon, and the Golan were all captured
by Israel ‘ and subsequently withdrawn from ‘ as `buffers,’ after a
defensive war others started. It seems only the Arab world thinks
these rules don’t apply. Everywhere else on the planet, lost territory
is the bastard child of losing a conflict you started ‘ let alone as
an oil-rich subcontinent, humiliated in a half-dozen wars against
tiny, barren Israel.

But no, not here, not in the Middle East. The Madrid Conferences, Oslo
I and II, the Hebron Agreement, the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, the
Camp David summits, the `Road Map,’ the Taba diplomacy, the talks at
Annapolis, etc., are all prerequisites to attacking the Israelis. In
this moral calculus, when a PLO leader is offered 97% of what he
demands, like Arafat was offered in 2000, the natural counteroffer is
an immediate intifada. Lesson No. 3: The only ongoing `occupations’
Americans should care about are the `illegal’ ones in Iraq ‘ legalized
by Res. 1546, 1637, 1723, of course ‘ and in Hamas-controlled,
Israeli-vacant Gaza.

Moans and whines over `atrocities’ expose misplaced moral
outrage. Russia raids Muslim Grozny, massacring everyone. Syria
bulldozes the Muslim city of Hama, flattening more than 10,000. Jordan
green-lights Black September, killing upwards to 25,000 Palestinian
nomads. Angry Kuwaitis ethnically cleanse a third of a million
Palestinians, after their 1990-`91 alliance with Saddam
Hussein. Nothing much is said anywhere, by anyone. One could go on for
hours detailing Arab atrocities committed against the Middle East’s
own unfortunate `untouchables’ ‘ the Palestinian people ‘ whereby the
region’s leaders are their brethren in rhetoric, their overlords and
oppressors in practice.

Yet a few dozen Hamas hoods are mowed down by Israelis in the town
Jenin, and we have `Jeningrad.’ A few hundred Hamas dead? `Palestinian
holocaust.’ Lesson No. 4: We are to reserve our brave criticism of
slaughter only when it is committed by the under-siege democracy which
purposefully attempts to avoid it, which does so the least, most
infrequent, and most reluctantly; only when committed by those who can
legitimately call it self-defense and counterterrorism.

Intentions mean nothing, `proportionality’ everything. Israel’s
precision-guided missiles are targeted at Hamas leaders, like the late
Nizar Rayan (now in paradise). Hamas fires rockets at Israeli civilian
centers indiscriminately with intent on killing as many non-combatants
as possible, and then hides behind the human shields of their own
families and civilian population ‘ both of which are war crimes, in
their own right.

Anyone who has studied the basics of intentionalist and
consequentialist ethics can decipher the moral difference more or less
immediately: one seeks to kill unsuspecting civilians in peace, the
other avoids civilians in war ‘ indeed, going so far as to endanger
the lives of their own to avoid civilian deaths. With Israel and the
international press, however, this distinction has gone the way of the
dinosaur. That standard is so everybody else. (And I mean, what kind
of standard is it, really, if the Jews are not held to another one?)

Rather, for Israel, abstract notions of `proportionality’ are more in
vogue. The logic goes something like this: the Palestinians have
suicide-vests and the occasional rock-thrower, the Israelis have a
deadly Westernized-military (the beneficial fruits of an alliance with
the Great Satan). Therefore, since the Israelis invariably kill more
than their weaker adversaries, they are engaging in `disproportionate’
measures. Of course, according to this mode of thinking, by 1944-`45
it was the surrounded Axis powers who were in the right; the far
deadlier Allies, in the wrong.

The lethality of weaponry cannot be separated from the morality of the
society which devises and fields the arsenal itself: if the Dark Age
theocrats in Hamas were open to secular inquiry, scientific
deliberation, and equal-opportunity egalitarianism, they too would be
able to offer their people weapons of far greater worth. Ironically,
such liberality would defang the Palestinian polity to such an extent
that they would, alas, put down their weapons and begin to conduct
themselves like every other defeated adversary in history Lesson
No. 5: The justification for Israel’s wars rest no longer on issues
such as culpability, or questions as to who struck first, but rather
on a strange tit-for-tat fairness, whereby Israel must not kill a lot
‘ or get killed that much either ‘ lest they exercise the full might
and potential of their arms, and actually go do something crazy like
triumph over their enemies.

Victimization is paramount. In 2005, the international community gave
Gazans everything they requested: an Israeli withdrawal, economic
assistance, and free and fair elections. In return, the Palestinians
democratically elected anti-democratic Jihadists who swore they would
demolish the democratic mechanisms that brought them to power ‘ and in
2007, they did just that. Hamas subsequently declared a temporary
`truce’ (or hunda) with Israel, the country their founding charter
swears to destroy.

Since then, it’s been rocket attacks on the Israelis all day, nearly
every day. Tyrants like Hamas, of course, need external enemies to
maintain internal vulnerability, and to keep a lid on any possible
dissent. Who better than Israel? When confronted with an enraged
populace, it is far easier to publicly blame one’s own self-induced
failures on the Israelis, even as on the sidelines Hamas feebly asks
the evil Jews for their chemotherapy and dialysis machines.

Hamas blows up innocents with impunity, and then boasts to its
domestic audience for doing so. But to the international news cameras,
they give us crocodile-tears as Israeli war planes rein hell over
their safe-houses. Poor babies, huh? To quote Victor Davis Hanson, `At
least the Japanese militarists did not cry out to the League of
Nations for help once mean Marines landed on Iwo Jima.’ Lesson No. 6:
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter ‘ regardless of
any terrorist tactics used, or the `freedom fighter’s’ own
totalitarian views and objective hatred of democratic ideals. In this
view, the downtrodden Samir Kuntar, who crushes Israeli toddler’s
skulls, is more Mandela than Zarqawi, more Lech Walesa than bin
Laden. Western holy-rollers like Rick Warren are bigoted threats to
secular liberal democracy, yet murderous, homophobic, religiously
fanatic, rabid anti-Semite racists like Khalid Mashal are merely the
oppressed `other’ lashing out at the excesses of Western
globalization.

These are just some of the peculiar academic views regarding the
current situation in Gaza. I do not expect them to change, nor does
anyone who has any sense of moral and political clarity. Until then,
our allies in Israel will be held to a different standard than
everyone else in a comparable position. We have these historical
precedents, but not the intellectual capacity, moral fiber, and
backbone to state them aloud. What a shame.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Nicholas Guariglia is a
polemic and essayist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern
geopolitics. He can be reached at nickguar@gmail.com.

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