- "History Isn't on
Palestinians' Side"
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
-
- The Wall Street Journal - April 2, 2002
-
-
- For all the efforts of our contemporary
theorists to harness and sometimes refashion
history, the facts of the past belong to no one -- and won't go away.
Those who
conjure it up often discover to their dismay that they themselves are
subject to its
brutal laws of truth. The Palestinians are fast learning of history's
ironies and
unintended reminders, as they seek to invoke the past to convince
Americans of the
righteousness of their present plight.
-
- Take the idea of the occupation of Arab lands
since 1967, which the Palestinians now cite as a singular historical
grievance that
needs immediate rectification through intervention of the U.S. But
sadly occupation
and partition are the bastard children of war; and history, rightly or
wrongly, is not
kind to states that repeatedly attack their neighbors -- and lose.
-
-
- History's Harsh Calculus
- Ask the millions of poor Germans who had their
ancestral lands confiscated
by Poland and France -- and their country subsequently partitioned for
a half century.
- Why do the Russians still occupy portions of
the old Japanese homeland decades
after the surrender? How is it that the British won't give up
Gibraltar long after their
successful battles against the Spanish fleet? And why must the world
give far more
attention to Palestine than it does to Tibetans, Irish and Chechens?
-
- The situation on the West Bank is not only
commonplace in history's harsh calculus, but prevalent
even throughout the Arab world today. Right next door in Lebanon,
Syria controls far
more Arab land than does Israel. And if Palestinians suffer
second-class citizenship
under Israeli occupation, they are worse off in occupied Lebanon
where, as helots,
they are denied basic rights to employment, health care and government
services.
- Kuwait ethnically cleansed all Palestinians --
perhaps a third of a million -- just a
decade ago. Well after the 1967 Six Day War, the Jordanians themselves
slaughtered
thousands. Before the intifada more Palestinians sought work in a
hated Israel than in
a beloved Egypt. History suggests that there is more going on in
Palestine than the
morality of occupation.
-
- The Palestinians have turned to suicide
bombers -- terrorists
boasting of a new and frightening tactic that cannot be stopped. But
they should recall
the kamikazes off Okinawa that brought death, terror and damage to the
American
fleet -- before prompting horrific responses that put an end to them
for good and a lot
more besides. In general, the record of terrorist bombers -- whether
Irish, Basque or
Palestinian -- who seek to reclaim "occupied" lands is not
impressive in winning
either material concessions or the hearts and minds of the world.
-
- Palestinian spokesmen decry asymmetrical
casualty figures, as if history has ever accorded
moral capital to any belligerents that suffered the greater losses in
war. Again, ask
imperial Japan or Nazi Germany whether the ghosts of millions of their
dead today
carry moral weight when their governments once sought war against
their neighbors.
Deliberately trying to blow apart civilians will never be seen as the
moral equivalent
of noncombatants dying as a result of the street fighting in the West
Bank. Afghans
accidentally killed by errant bombing in Kandahar are different from
those deliberately
incinerated on Sept. 11. Somalis killed in Mogadishu by American
peacekeepers --
far more civilians dying there in two days than in two years on the
West Bank -- are
not the same as those murdered by thugs in jeeps trying to steal food
from the
starving.
-
- Americans learned in Vietnam and Mogadishu
that it is hard to distinguish
civilians from soldiers when gunmen do not always wear uniforms and
take potshots
from the windows of homes: They are real killers when alive, but
somehow count as
"civilians" when dead. The problem is not that the
Palestinians are losing more than
the Israelis due to their greater victimhood or morality, but rather
that they find
themselves losing very badly to a military far more adept at fighting.
-
- Nor do the Palestinians' cries for justice
exist in an historical vacuum. True, the current
Arab-Israeli war -- at least the fourth since 1948 -- is fought over
the West Bank;
but that is only because the theater of operations has changed
somewhat since the
Arab world lost the first three wars to destroy Israel proper. Less
than two years ago,
Yasser Arafat was offered almost all of the West Bank and would now be
the
unquestioned strongman of his own tribal fiefdom had he taken such a
generous
Israeli offer. His own scheming and the intifada -- not Israeli
extremism -- brought
back to him his old nemesis, Ariel Sharon.
-
- Again, the problem for the Palestinians is not
that Americans are ignorant of the historical
- complexities of the Middle East, but that we
know them only too well.
-
- Palestinian spokesmen give us moralistic
lectures
about remaining disinterested as "honest brokers" -- even as
they appeal to Arab
anti-Semitism and racial solidarity on grounds of national, religious
and ethnic
empathy. That double standard puzzles America, because by any such
measure we
also find affinity in shared values, and so have almost none with the
Palestinians,
who, like the entire Arab world, do not embrace real democracy, free
speech, open
media and religious diversity.
-
- Nor is it good public relations for
illegitimate
dictatorships of the Arab League to shake fingers at democracies in
America and
Israel on issues of equality and fairness. The problem is not that the
Palestinians
object to the idea of displaying preferences per se, but that their
own biases and
prejudices have so little appeal to Americans.
-
- We are told that the Palestinians have a long
memory of, and reverence for, the past -
- - especially the injustice of 50 years of lost
homelands. But Americans are not ahistorical.
- We remember Sept. 11, and the Palestinians who
cheered our dead before being admonished by a terrified Arafat.
-
- For the last three decades Palestinian
terrorists and their sponsoring brotherhoods have
murdered Americans abroad. Palestinians embraced Saddam Hussein's
cause and
clapped as Scuds plunged into Tel Aviv and blew apart American
soldiers in Saudi
Arabia. An entrapped Arafat now calls for American succor, but a few
months ago
scoffed that the U.S. was irrelevant as far as he was concerned. The
problem, again,
is not that Americans have forgotten Palestinian acts, but that we
remember them all
too well.
-
- The Arab world warns of its martial prowess
and deadly anger -- as American
flags burn, threats to kill us are issued, and "the street"
shakes its collective fist. But
we Americans remember 1967, when we gave almost no weapons to the
Israelis --
but the Russians supplied lots of sophisticated arms to the Arabs. In
the Six Day
War, the state radio networks of Syria, Egypt and Jordan boasted to
the world that
their triumphant militaries were nearing Tel Aviv even as their
frightened elites
pondered abandoning Damascus, Cairo and Amman. And we recall the
vaunted
Egyptian air force in 1967, the invincible Syrian jets over Lebanon,
the Mother of All
Battles -- and the Republican Guard that proved about as fearsome as
Xerxes'
Immortals at Thermopylae.
-
-
- Peace After Defeat
- A beleaguered Arafat now wildly works
his Rolodex for support for his autocracy. But history answers cruelly
that strongmen
in their bunkers are as impotent as they are loquacious -- and as
likely to receive
disdain as pity. Moammar Gadhafi was a different man after the
American air strike
proved his military worthless and his person no longer sacrosanct. The
rhetoric of the
Taliban in September promised death; in October they and their minions
went silent.
In wars against bombers and terrorists, the past teaches us that peace
comes first
through their defeat -- not out of negotiations among supposedly
well-meaning
equals.
-
- We all would prefer, and should strive for,
peaceful relations with the
Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Syrians -- and all the other
20-something
dictatorships, theocracies, and monarchies of the Middle East -- as
well as a state for
the Palestinians. But the day is growing late; our patience is now
exhausted; and
sadly an hour of reckoning is nearing for all us all. The problem is,
you see, that we
know their history far better than they do.
-
- Mr. Hanson, a military historian, is author
most recently of "Carnage and Culture" (Doubleday, 2002).
|