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| August 29, 2006
TAKING THE "T"-WORD BACK FROM B'NAI BRITH
by Dave Himmelstein Frank Diamant, a man who knows what's right and wrong, wants to get proactive about "pro-terror sympathies." As reported by the redoubtabe Israpundit, the Executive Vice President of B'nai Brith Canada, is outraged at "an alarming trend whereby elements within Canadian society are openly challenging Canadian law to express support for terrorist groups like Hezbollah that are banned in this country." Diamant wants to deal with such reckless thought by closing "loopholes" in existing anti-terrorism legislation that permit "glorification of terrorism". (With unintended humor, he invokes protection of "Canada's multicultural values of tolerance and respect" as justification for turning loose the thought police.) Staking a broad claim to monitor public discourse, Diamant is even prepared to rewrite commonly held vocabulary. For example, maybe you thought you knew what "Neo-Cons" meant. It's a widely employed term to describe a new breed of conservatives – hawkish, staunchly pro-Israel – who enjoy enormous sway in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, and have been key in driving United States policy on Iraq. But Diamant's only characterization of "Neo Cons" consists of this: "often used as code for Jews." Diamant and his colleagues are never shy about brandishing the bugaboo of terrorism, and it's certainly a hot ticket these days when combating terrorism is seen as Job 1. But there may be a note of desperation in their attack on free speech. Israel's defenders now have a serious "image problem" on their hands. A clearer picture is starting to emerge of the destruction visited upon the landscape and society of Lebanon. Adding to the work of teams still clearing mines left over from Israel's previous incursions into Lebanon, the terrain is now booby-trapped with thousands of cluster bombs. Even in the days immediately before the cease-fire, Israel sought rush delivery of 1,300 M-26 rockets, representing a total payload of 800,000 cluster bomblets. Meanwhile Amnesty International says Israel of war crimes, based on the extent and systematic nature of attacks, scale of civilian casualties and statements by Israeli officials. In AI's view, "such destruction was deliberate and part of a military strategy, rather than 'collateral damage.'" So it's not surprising as Israel's defenders try to take the offensive by trotting out the T-word, which has become their signature issue. But although Israel has long seemed to own the issue of terrorism, that hegemony is becoming harder to defend in the wake of its battering of Lebanon. Defenders of Palestinian rights can dip into the same classic sports strategy that underlies the pro-Israel approach: the best defense is a good offense. When it comes to terrorism, Israel offers a rich lode to mine. It pervades Israel's current and past behavior in Lebanon, as well as its decades-long treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The pomp and prestige of established government cannot disguise the functional equivalence of ''official'' and ''unofficial'' terror. An occupying army's tanks and helicopters are capable of wreaking at least as much havoc on innocent civilians as a suicide bomber. And no hairsplitting can obscure the continuity between big-bang and slow-motion terrorism. The latter is exemplified by what U.S. Mideast envoy William Burns once described as Israel's ''chokehold'' on the occupied territories, where Palestinians' access to food, medical care, employment, personal security and family contacts is arbitrarily throttled. Steadfast defenders of Israel try to write off mention of Israeli (and pre-State) terrorist links as the exclusive province of antisemites and "self-hating Jews." Yet this unthinkable linkage is spelled out by no less a supporter of Zionist toughness (and whitewasher of its 1948 expulsion of three quarters of a million Palestinians) than popular historian Paul Johnson in his best-selling A History of the Jews. Trying to explain how a relatively small force of Zionist guerillas succeeded in ousting the British mighty British empire from Palestine, Johnson says this: "The answer lies in yet another Jewish contribution to the shape of the modern world: the scientific use of terror to break the will of liberal rulers." He excuses this practice as "a by-product of the Holocaust, for no lesser phenomenon could have driven even desperate Jews to use it." But he acknowledges its milestone quality: "It was to become a commonplace over the next forty years but in 1945 it was new." Actually, it wasn't so new. By the late 1930s, armed conflict was already in progress between native Palestinians and Jewish settlers, marked by sporadic attacks and counterattacks. In 1938 a member of the Irgun, one of the Zionist guerilla groups, was hanged by the British for a retaliatory attack on an Arab bus. That summer the Irgun carried out a number of deadly terrorist attacks. On July 6, in the downtown Arab market in Haifa, an Irgun operative disguised as an Arab porter left two large milk cans filled with TNT and shrapnel—parcels which soon exploded, killing 21 Arabs and injuring 50. On July 15 a bomb in Jerusalem's Arab quarter killed 10 and wounded over 30. On July 25 a second bomb in Haifa's Arab market killed 39 and wounded 70. A month later, August 26, a bomb in Jaffa's vegetable market killed 24 and wounded 39. It is notable that two Zionist guerillas renowned for their terror tactics, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, went on to become Israeli Prime Minister. The currently comatose Ariel Sharon had a half-century military and political record of lethal mayhem. Much more could be said. But the point is that defensiveness is not required in responding to the B'nai Brith VP's implicit warning to watch your language. On the contrary. ******** Dave Himmelstein is a writer and teacher in Montreal. |