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Sunday, August 12, 2001
By Jack Kelly
As Americans and Europeans get ready to go to the beach, Israelis wonder if violent death will greet them on the way to work, at the shopping mall or in the schoolyards where their children play. The suicide bomb attack Thursday in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, six of them children, is the latest grisly example.
Friday, Aug. 3, was what has become a typical day in Israel. These were among the stories in the Jerusalem Post:
"BUS DRIVER THWARTS BOMBING. The alertness and courage of an Egged bus driver yesterday prevented what police said otherwise would have been a horrific bomb attack by a teen-age Palestinian south of Beit Shea'n.
"TERRORIST BOMB EXPLODES HARMLESSLY IN GALILEE. A large gas canister placed in a burning tire exploded at the Zayit Hajash junction in the Galilee this morning.
"TERRORIST KILLED BY OWN BOMB. Soldiers shot at two Palestinian terrorists, after spotting the two planting a bomb on the road to Mount Ebal outside Nablus.
"MORTAR SHELL WOUNDS THREE IN GUSH KATIF PLAYGROUND. Palestinian terrorists fired two mortar shells at Kfar Darom in Gush Katif, lightly wounding a man and two boys.
"PALESTINIAN STONETHROWERS WOUND BORDER POLICEMEN. Palestinian stonethrowers lightly wounded two border policemen during disturbances in Hebron.
"BOMB SCARE AT TEL AVIV CENTRAL BUS STATION. Security forces have evacuated the central bus station in Tel Aviv after detaining a resident of Nablus who said he had placed a bag with an explosive device in the building."
Friday, Aug. 3, was a good day, because no Israelis were killed. It wasn't like May 18, when five were killed and 100 wounded in the bombing of a shopping mall in Netanya, or July 10, when 20 young Israelis were killed and 100 wounded in an attack on a Tel Aviv disco, or July 16, when two were killed and 11 wounded when a bomb exploded at the bus stop near the Binyamina train station.
There has been international condemnation of the violence in Israel. But most of it has been directed at the Israelis.
Israel has a policy of killing the leaders who plot terrorist attacks. On July 31, missiles from an Israeli helicopter destroyed an office of the militant Hamas organization. The raid killed eight, including Jamal Mansour, thought to be the mastermind of the disco attack. But it also killed two brothers, 8 and 10 years old, and unleashed a firestorm of international criticism.
"Israel's missile attack . . . undermines any chance of a cease-fire with the Palestinians," said The Washington Post in an editorial.
"The effect . . . is to increase Palestinian rage -- and make it politically impossible for [Palestine Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat to crack down on Hamas or other terrorists," said New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis.
But Arafat is better at making agreements than he is at keeping them. In the eight weeks after CIA Director George Tenet negotiated a cease-fire June 15, 20 Israelis have been killed and 101 injured in 519 terrorist attacks. Though he promised Tenet he'd do it, Arafat has refused to arrest the terrorist leaders who plan these attacks.
Israel is lambasted for attacks on terrorist leaders in which innocent people are accidentally killed. But Palestinians largely escape condemnation for attacks in which innocent people are the targets.
Suppose we had been able to fight World War II by assassinating Nazi leaders. Wouldn't that have been morally superior to carpet-bombing German cities?
So why are the Israelis who killed Mansour regarded as villains?
Perhaps because in the comfortable editorial offices of The Washington Post and The New York Times, where there is little likelihood of a terrorist bomb exploding, the war in Israel seems remote.
Since the intifada began last September, 139 Israelis have been killed, and 1,405 Israelis have been injured in terrorist attacks, according to the Israel Defense Forces. If this isn't war, it's a reasonable facsimile of it.
Jack Kelly is national affairs writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com).