The moral Disneyland revisited

Twenty years ago Charles Krauthammer wrote The Mideast as Moral Disneyland. (Washington Post, February 5, 1988). What set Krauthammer off was a complaint by Woody Allen about how Israel wasn’t so lovable as it once was. In the middle of the article Krauthammer diagnoses Woody Allen’s complex (and that of many other deep thinkers):

Why loved then, not now? Because, as Oriana Fallaci once complained to Ariel Sharon, “You are no more the nation of the great dream, the country for which we cried.” Israel as victim, Israel on the brink of annihilation was so easy to love. It required only pity and a handkerchief. It is, after all, no moral effort to love a charity case. “My goodness!” writes Woody Allen. “Are these the people whose money I used to steal from those little blue-and-white cans after collecting funds for a Jewish homeland?”

And of course going along with that concern for Israel’s moral well being, there’s absolutely no concern for the moral character of Israel’s adversaries:

So much concern for Israel’s Jewish soul. Do Arabs, too, not have souls? When they prick, should our hearts not bleed? When the government of Syria killed 20,000 people in the 1982 Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama, where were the anguished editorials about the Arab soul? In 10 days in 1970, plucky little King Hussein killed 3,400 Palestinians in putting down a PLO uprising. (In the last two months about 40 Palestinians have died at Israeli hands.)No concern about the state of his soul. Or that of the Palestinians themselves. After Sabra and Shatila 400,000 Israelis turned out to protest. How many Palestinians protested the murder of the Israeli Olympic athletes?

And yes, I know the response to this argument: We hold Israel to a higher standard. But that, of course, isn’t true. Israel is held to an impossible standard by the moral vacationers; and its enemies to none.

It’s worthwhile to revisit that old column in light of today’s column by Krauthammer, Moral clarity in Gaza.

Guess what? The “moral Disneyland” still exists:

First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage — or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb — will kill large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.

So for those who are so easily swayed by the machinations of Hamas, Krauthammer provides a succinct recent history lesson:

That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal clarity regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective in Gaza — peace: the calm, open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005. Doing something never done by the Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers of Palestine, the Israelis gave the Palestinians their first sovereign territory ever in Gaza.

What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin building the state that is supposedly their great national aim? No. No roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at all. The flourishing greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and abandoned. Instead, Gaza’s Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their resources to turning it into a terror base — importing weapons, training terrorists, building tunnels with which to kidnap Israelis on the other side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.

Krauthammer, who favored the withdrawal from Gaza, doesn’t seem to regret that position but he faults Ariel Sharon for what he failed to do:

Israel’s only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza withdrawal. The unpardonable strategic error of its architect, Ariel Sharon, was not the withdrawal itself but the failure to immediately establish a deterrence regime under which no violence would be tolerated after the removal of any and all Israeli presence — the ostensible justification for previous Palestinian attacks. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire, implicitly acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.

Hamas’s rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire (during which the rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave Israel a rare opportunity to establish the norm it should have insisted upon three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping, no acts of war. As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring cease-fire. If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost yet another war. The question is whether Israel still retains the nerve — and the moral self-assurance — to win.

And that’s why the preening of the moral vacationers is so dangerous. They don’t just hold Israel responsible for the damage it causes in defense of its land; they absolve Hamas from all responsibility of committing acts of unquestioned terror against Israel’s population. I can’t believe that fear of being judged by these morally obtuse people leads Israel to be too diffident in defending its people.

Krauthammer’s argument works well against the likes of a moral idiot like Ezra Klein (via memeorandum).

There’s truth to this. But it can also obscure more than it can reveal. One important disconnect in Israel/Palestine debate is that Israel’s supporters tend to focus on what the Palestinians want while Palestine’s supporters tend to focus on what the Israelis do. Israel’s defenders, for instance, make a lot of Hamas’s willingness to kill large numbers of civilians. Palestine’s defenders make a lot of the fact that Israel actually kills large numbers of Palestinian civilians.

To make it more concrete, in July, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reported that 123 Israeli minors had been killed by Palestinians since the second intifada began in 2000, compared with 951 Palestinian minors killed by Israeli security forces. Israel’s supporters emphasize that the children were not killed purposefully, but were collateral damage of targeted operations. By contrast, Palestinian suicide bombers have targeted children directly. Israelis define their struggle in contrast to the intentions of Hamas. Palestinians define their struggle in terms of the actions of the Israelis.

Without understanding this distinction, it’s hard to understand the two sides of the conflict. Hamas survives because Palestinian society is radicalized against Israel. Palestinian society is radicalized against Israel because Israel’s operations have devastated their society. Be assured that when Palestinians look at the 1,000 or so children killed by the Israeli armed forces, they do not comfort themselves with the fact that those deaths were accidental. And, indeed, a case can be made that collateral damage from air strikes in dense urban areas are not accidental. They are expected.

Of course quoting B’tselem figures doesn’t exactly clear things up as B’tselem’s definition of civilian is a bit creative. Nor does Klein explain why it is if Palestinian youth are so valuable to its society that the Palestinian Authority’s media regularly encourage children – not just Hamas – to become martyrs.

Or as Barry Rubin observed recently:

There is, however, an important difference. Israel uses its time not only for military preparations but to educate its children, build its infrastructure, raise its living standards. Hamas doesn’t.

“We believe in death,” Hamas says, “You believe in life.”

Klein ignores the years of Hamas expressing its hatred of the Jewish state and provides a pretext for its hatred, when in fact that hatred is independent of Israeli actions and dependent on Israel’s existence.

Klein and his fellow travelers are in an amusement park, but they are the ones doing the distorting not mirrors.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.