More fences, assassinations plz
Ah good. It looks as though the Wall Street Journal has taken advantage of yesterday's suicide bombing in Israel to remind us that Israel's most expensive and dangerous anti-terrorism tactics are also brave and awesome and effective.
[T]he difference has come because of Israel's increasingly successful antiterrorist efforts. Key to that success has been the construction of its ostensibly "illegal" security fence, its equally "illegal" targeted assassinations of key terrorist leaders, its "disproportional" attacks on terrorist enclaves in Jenin and elsewhere, and other actions that saved innocent lives but which much of the international community deplored.
Of course, that requires totally ignoring reports like this one:
The Shin Bet's statistics on terror attacks confirm the public perception that terrorist activity in 2005 dropped considerably compared to the previous four and a half years. The main reason for the sharp decline is the truce in the territories, the security service said yesterday....The Shin Bet and the Israel Defense Forces attribute the reduction mainly to the improvement in their joint capability to foil terrorist attacks and to act against terrorist organizations.
The security fence is no longer mentioned as the major factor in preventing suicide bombings, mainly because the terrorists have found ways to bypass it. The fence does make it harder for them, but the flawed inspection procedures at its checkpoints, the gaps and uncompleted sections enable suicide bombers to enter Israel.
Still, there's no denying the inherent logic. If Israel were to, say, deploy an infinite amount of aggression in the territories and in Gaza, Palestinian violence would eventually disappear. And that, I suppose, is actually the Journal's preferred program.
Comments
The Haaretz article that Brian cites is not the least bit inconsistent with the WSJ opinion piece. The Israelis have been forced to cope with murderous fanatics since the birth of their state, and have struggled to do so in many different ways. These include the construction of security barriers, targeted assassination of terrorist leaders (mentioned by the WSJ) and also joint actions by the Shin Bet and the Israel Defense Forces to foil terrorist attacks and to act against terrorist organizations (cited by Haaretz, and here we may read arrests and again, targeted assassinations). This is not to say that any individual method is useless. Sometimes to treat high blood pressure, we must both prevent vasoconstriction AND limit cardiac output.
As to the justice of Israel's strategy, just what are the Israelis supposed to do? Invite Hamas and Islamic Jihad to mingle freely with them in Israel proper and hope that they'll be nicer? Give up statehood and flee back into the diaspora? It seems to me that the Israelis have a perfect right to defend themselves against terrorists, and they are going about it the right way, using enormous restraint in the face of unending provocation.
Now just who is "deploying aggression" here? Israel leaves Gaza completely and two years later is still taking rockets up the butt. Israel leaves Lebanon completely and seven years later is still taking rockets up the butt. It's enough to give one pause about leaving the West Bank. So let's pay a bit of attention to the facts and not reflexively blame the Israelis. They are not the ones who are taught to hate and kill from their earliest years. They are outnumbered hundreds to one by an almost uniformly hostile Islamic world, and want only to live in peace. Got that straight?
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