The Warped Mirror: The inevitable reaction

"What, exactly, is a decent person supposed to think?" That was Bradley Burston's question in an emotional piece published on the website of Ha'aretz shortly after an Arab resident from the southeast Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher killed three and injured dozens in a bulldozer rampage on Jaffa Road last Wednesday. A day later, a Jerusalem Post editorial critically reviewed what the international media were suggesting their readers should think about this terrible attack.

Among the reports and commentaries highlighted in the editorial was a piece that had been published just a few hours after the attack on the Guardian's website under the title "The inevitable overreaction." Once you start to read this piece, you quickly realize that, just a few hours after the carnage, the verdict was already clear: any Israeli reaction to the attack would be an "overreaction", because if Israelis found themselves "targeted by terrorist killers", there was an obvious reason: "Occupation breeds terror" - and if this was not a good enough explanation for terrorist attacks, there was still another one on offer: "the relentless oppressive tactics employed by successive Israeli governments since the very foundation of the state." As the first comment posted in response to this article aptly noted: "Before the dead are cold and buried their murder is 'explained' away. How sad."

The author of the article, Seth Freedman, is a former London stockbroker who made Aliyah a few years ago and has since established himself as a writer. He has attracted a devoted audience that applauds his often extremely harsh criticism of Israel which is supposedly motivated by a desire to help bring about peace. However, this particular piece actually ends with a somewhat enigmatic "there can be no excuses for what will happen tomorrow in the so-called 'steadfast pursuit of peace'." It turns out that Freedman has only disdain for those who have urged Israelis to remain "steadfast in their pursuit of peace", because for him, such comments are "inane"; indeed, in his view, "comments like that are the reason my life, and the lives of my peers in Jerusalem, are under constant threat" - a rather bizarre view that apparently results from Freedman's conviction that such comments are only attempts to paint "Israel's persecution of the Palestinians as the 'pursuit of peace'".

It seems that in Seth Freedman's world, it doesn't take two to tango, and it doesn't take two to make peace. In much of his writing, the Palestinians are reduced to the role of Israel's victims, without any agency or responsibility of their own. It is precisely this approach that the Jerusalem Post editorial takes issue with by arguing that the prospects for peace are not helped by those who insist on ignoring "more than 60 years of Palestinian rejectionism, intransigence, self-defeating violence and denial of Jewish rights."

Bradley Burston made a similar point when he called on his "sisters and brothers on the left" to be for once "every bit as hard on their comrades the Palestinians for taking a bulldozer and crushing Jews, as they are on Israel for bulldozing homes." He voiced despair about the quick response of "the public relations and marketing department of Hamas" which issued a statement declaring that the carnage at Jaffa Road was "a natural reaction to the daily aggression and crimes committed against our people in the West Bank and all over the occupied lands." And in view of several eager claims of responsibility for the attack, Burston asked again: "What's a decent person to think when Palestinian groups fall over one another trying to claim the bulldozer attack? And when one of the groups is the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade?"

Burston concluded grimly that it might be time to acknowledge that, for a sizeable proportion of Palestinians, the priority was not really a state of their own; instead, he suggested "what a critical mass of Palestinians want most, perhaps even more than statehood, may be as simple as the vile thrill of vengeance, as straightforward as nothing more than seeing Jews dead and gone."

It is indeed not difficult to find confirmation for such a pessimistic view in Palestinian polls, which clearly show that acts of "resistance", including attacks on civilians and the indiscriminate shelling of Israeli towns, still have considerable popular support. This support is tacitly acknowledged whenever Palestinian leaders hesitate to condemn acts of terrorism as wrong per se, emphasizing instead that such acts are not in the national interest of Palestinians. Such carefully qualified condemnations of terrorism are criticized by many people as completely insufficient; yet, they are arguably a step in the right direction, because they do imply an acknowledgement that terrorism will do little to advance Palestinian statehood.

However, it is certainly interesting that one recent poll revealed an obvious contradiction: while some 55 percent of Palestinians approve of rocket and terror attacks against Israeli civilians, some 71 percent also describe themselves as supportive of the peace process. In the real world, it is of course not possible to have it both ways, but in the fantasy world created by a media coverage that pretends the Palestinians have only rights and no responsibilities, the man who cheers a Kassam strike in the morning will hardly be challenged when he tells a credulous reporter in the evening that he is all for peace.

What gets lost in all the media coverage that offers little more than variations on Hamas's mantra of terrorism as "a natural reaction" is a very crucial point that Yaacov Lozowick recently highlighted in his superb blog "Ruminations", where he reflected in one post on a statement by Hamas announcing that, even during a truce, the group would not feel responsible to "protect Israel from attacks by other factions". As Lozowick noted:

There is nothing new about this idiotic line of reasoning ... it has been one of the standard canards ever since Israel began disbanding its occupation and transferring power to the Palestinians in 1993. The question is not if the PLO, or PA, or Hamas, or anyone else, will protect Israel from the more extreme Palestinian forces that will always continue with their anti-Israeli violence ... The question is if whatever Palestinian government it may be [it] will take upon itself one of the most basic of all tasks of government, the monopoly of waging violence. As long as they don't understand that this is a fundamental need of their own, irrespective of Israel, no peace agreement with them will ever hold."

Palestinians might be pleased by a media coverage that blames the lack of peace on Israel, and writers who come up with ever new variations of the "it's the occupation"-theme may get much applause for offering their audience just what they want to hear. Yet, as Gaza has shown in the past three years, it's not really the occupation that prevents Palestinians from building a peaceful society that offers its members a chance to prosper. As long as Palestinians favor politicians who tell them that going on a murderous rampage is somehow "natural", their hopes for a better life may not be easy to fulfill. And it would also seem very questionable if Palestinians can benefit much from the advocacy of those who were prepared to see anything "natural" in the mindless death and destruction wrought by a disturbed killer who may not have had any political motive whatsoever.