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Last week I received a note from an old friend, the writer Stephen
Vizinczey. It came in response to one of my columns dealing (among other
things) with Israel's security fence. The United Nations had recently
condemned Israel for building a wall to keep out terrorists. Canada voted
with the majority. I wrote that condemning a country for trying to protect
its commuters, shoppers, or restaurant patrons from being ambushed,
maimed, and murdered is standing morality on its head.
"I watched a documentary about Palestinian orchards destroyed to build the
wall on the family's farm, with children, women crying," Vizinczey wrote
from London. "You cannot say that destroying these people's livelihood is
all right because of Hezbollah or Arafat or whoever. What could those
people do about any of it?"
My friend, the author of such bestsellers as In Praise of Older Women and
An Innocent Millionaire, isn't anti-Israeli, let alone anti-Semitic. His
father, a schoolteacher, was murdered by the Nazis. Vizinczey has no soft
spot for terrorists; he simply feels that ruining some Palestinian fruit
farmers will not enhance Israel's security. "If you take away their
farms," he asks in his note, "what will they do?"
Vizinczey's views are shared by a substantial minority of Israelis. They
include Lieutenant-General Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli army's chief of
staff. The general has reportedly infuriated Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz in recent weeks by publicly questioning
Israel's tough policies in the West Bank and Gaza, including the security
wall. Lt.-Gen. Yaalon is concerned that such policies will aggravate
Palestinian hatred and drive ordinary people into the arms of the
terrorists. He all but poses the same question as Vizinczey: "If you take
away their farms, what will they do?"
Many Jews have become ultra-sensitive about any criticism of Israel, for
excellent reasons. Anti-Semitism, either undisguised or thinly disguised
as anti-Zionism, has turned from a trickle into a flood in recent years.
It's important to retain perspective, though. Vizinczey and Lt.-Gen.
Yaalon illustrate that it's possible for people to disagree with Israeli
government policy without being anti-Semitic or even anti-Israeli. Whether
they're non-Jewish observers like my friend, or active Jewish defenders of
Israel like the army's chief of staff, dissenters deserve to be heard
without having their motives questioned. But while it's possible for
dissenters to be honest, it's equally possible for honest dissenters to be
wrong -- as I believe both Vizinczey and Lt.-Gen. Yaalon are in this
instance.
The views of credulous and impressionable people are shaped by the last
image that flashes across their TV screens, but news clips or
documentaries make an impact even on analytically minded skeptics.
Vizinczey is no exception, and neither am I. If my friend's views are
influenced by TV images of the crying family of a fruit farmer, mine have
been influenced by TV images of the grieving family of an Israeli
teenager.
The Palestinian fruit farmer's wife and children are crying because, under
the policies of the Sharon government, their orchard is being destroyed to
make room for Israel's security wall. The Israeli teenager's parents are
grieving because their son has just been killed by a suicide bomber. The
date of that news clip is 2000. There's no Sharon administration yet, no
tough measures, no security wall. There's only Ehud Barak in the Israeli
prime minister's office, pursuing the most conciliatory policies.
Mr. Barak -- the man described by the BBC's Gerald Butt as "a dream come
true" for those voters "who admired and supported the late Yitzhak Rabin"
-- did none of the things during his tenure as prime minister that
Lt.-Gen. Yaalon is now cautioning Israel's government about. On the
contrary. Between 1999 and 2001 he attempted most of the things my friend
Vizinczey would recommend. He did so to no avail. The violence continued.
It was only after two years and a civilian death toll of more 370,
including the teenager in the news clip, that Israel's voters turned to
Mr. Sharon.
The belief that Mr. Sharon's intransigence has been fuelling suicide
bombers is an illusion. The truth is the opposite: It has been the
intransigence of terrorists that has brought Mr. Sharon to power.
Peace eludes the region because the Arab (and Muslim) world cannot come to
terms with Israel's existence. Whether or not Arabs are justified in their
rejection of the Jewish state may be disputed, but the fact of their
rejection is beyond dispute.
The liberal fantasy of Yasser Arafat as "a partner for peace" with Israel
has been farcical all along. Mr. Arafat himself has only occasionally
bothered to hide his ultimate aim, which he described in a 1972
conversation with the Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci: "Peace for us
means the destruction of Israel and nothing else."
Mr. Arafat and his colleagues may have changed their tactics in the
intervening years, but there's no evidence that they've changed their
strategy. Mr. Barak's failed attempts at concessions illustrate this
convincingly. It's futile to make concessions to someone who isn't
interested in the deal itself. The devil for such a person isn't in the
details, but in the whole. It isn't a Jewish Jerusalem that is anathema to
Mr. Arafat, but a Jewish Tel Aviv.
This is the reality of the Middle East. It doesn't make Mr. Sharon's
government immune to criticism. Questioning the wisdom or utility of a
defensive measure, as Vizinczey or Lt.-Gen. Yaalon are doing, is one
thing. Condemning Israel, as Canada did in the UN, is quite another. A
country cannot be condemned for trying to wall out terrorists.
© Copyright 2003 National Post
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