By Mohamad Bydon '01
In her April 4 column in The Dartmouth,"Why Israel is Important," Ana Bonnheim '03 simplifies the current war between Israelis and Palestinians to one between democratic values and terrorism. I sympathize with Ms. Bonnheim's views. In the past month, we have seen horrific waves of suicide bombings coming from Palestinian terrorists, including an attack on Passover that killed over 20 innocent people. But I have to disagree with such a simplistic breakdown of a conflict that is over a century old and in which there are many actors.
First, let me clarify that I see no possible justification for terrorism. And I, like many people, pray for the emergence of a Palestinian Martin Luther King Jr. who can lead his people to freedom without such devastating violence. But a little history is important here. Ms. Bonnheim makes the false claim that every nationalist political movement in the past has achieved its goal without the use of terrorism. But history suggests the opposite: most movements of national liberation resorted quite heavily on an armed struggle that utilized guerrilla or terrorist tactics.
We are all familiar with the car bombings and hijackings of various guerrilla groups in Latin America and those of the Irish Republican Army in the United Kingdom. But there are other examples as well. In 1961, Nelson Mandela decided that in fighting apartheid, he would resort to the use of open violence, often directed at civilians. Even when the apartheid leadership began direct negotiations with him and it became clear that the regime would not survive much longer, he constantly refused to sign agreements that required him to condemn the use of violence before he actually saw the end of apartheid. His African National Congress was for years on the United States' list of terrorist organizations. When in 1983, Mandela's ANC conducted the infamous Church Street bombing in Pretoria (claiming the lives of 19 people and injuring 219 others), opponents of apartheid continued to support the struggle for South African liberation, even if they abhorred the violence.
From Northern Ireland to the Basque Country to the jungles of Columbia, conflicts have emerged that are far too complicated to deserve being lumped into a category of "terror versus civilization." As unjustifiable as it may be, terrorism has been used as a weapon by many groups. Today, the group responsible for the greatest number of suicide bombings with the highest death toll is a mostly Hindu group in Sri Lanka known as the Tamil Tigers.
Terrorism has also been a trademark of the conflict between Jew and Arab in the land of Israel. In fighting the British mandate over Palestine in the 1940s, Jewish militants in groups like the Haganah, Stern Gang and Irgun resorted to vicious waves of terrorism. On the so-called "Night of the Bridges," they blew up every bridge connecting Palestine to another Arab country. On the "Night of the Trains," Jewish militants blew up 156 train stations in Palestine.
Propagandists argue that those groups merely targeted military or infrastructural areas and never civilians. But some of them did, in actuality, show a lack of concern for the loss of civilian life. On July 22, 1946, the Irgun group led by Menachim Begin -- who later became Israel's prime minister -- blew up the King David Hotel in downtown Jerusalem, killing 92 people in a single day. On Aug. 10, 1947, Jewish militants fighting to establish the state of Israel killed five people in an explosion at Hawaii Gardens in Tel Aviv. On August 15 of that year, the Haganah (which later became the main arm of Israel's army) attacked the home of a grove worker near Tel Aviv, killing 11 Arabs, including a woman and her four children. Even if we are to accept the argument that Jewish groups did not target civilians, it remains clear that they used terrorism in their bid to establish the state of Israel.
It is also true that the world was a different place in 1948, that the Jews had just emerged from the Holocaust, that the Zionist movement is distinctly different from Palestinian nationalism and that this recent wave of Palestinian terror is occurring in the middle of a "peace process." But we must not be so quick to separate terrorism from its greater political context. The conflicts in Northern Ireland or Sri Lanka or Palestine cannot be boiled down to simplistic examples of good versus evil.
I deplore the terrorism unleashed onto innocent Israelis by Palestinian bombers and gunmen. But I also deplore Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Israel is not only guilty of serious human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians, but it is also a state that openly practices collective punishment on a mass scale. It is a state that is currently breaking more international laws than any other country on earth. It is the most censured state in the history of the United Nations. It is the only state that is barred from serving on the Security Council. It is also the only democracy without a constitutional human rights clause. The creation of Israel and the intransigence of its Arab neighbors have sustained a Palestinian refugee crisis that is currently the largest and longest lasting in the world. Because of his Jewish background, Wolf Blitzer can tomorrow go to Israel and he would immediately have more rights and freedom than the Palestinians who have inhabited that land for 13 centuries. Israel has maintained a military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that is now the second longest military occupation in modern times.
Israel has had 37 years to improve the living conditions of Palestinians. It has had 37 years to take them out of those miserable camps that have now become factories for suicide bombers. But it hasn't. Instead, it invested in a system of settlements (illegal under international law) that have now created growing injustice and inequity. Today, in the West Bank and Gaza, there are Jewish-only housing structures, Jewish-only restaurants, Jewish-only schools, Jewish-only day cares and Jewish-only roads. Palestinians, who live in some of the most miserable and densely populated areas in the world, have to watch as bulldozers demolish their homes and level their fields (making them homeless and stateless) in order to build more and more of these first-rate, wealthy, segregated enclaves. And these existed long before the Intifada or the suicide bombings. Israel is indeed the only democracy in the Middle East, but in its treatment of Palestinians, Israel is highly non-democratic. Palestinians have suffered for decades through Israeli sieges, bombings, checkpoints, random arrests, curfews, house demolitions, land usurpations and institutionalized discrimination. We cannot ignore the legitimate plight of the Palestinian people, an essentially conquered and defeated nation. Nor can we ignore the possibility that Israel's lack of security may very well be proportional to Palestinians' lack of freedom.
So, no. I do not support the terrorism. But there must be a middle ground between fear and occupation, between security and justice, between Israel and Palestine.
