By Jonathan S. Tobin
It came as little surprise that when a gang of Islamist terrorists blew themselves up in three Jordanian hotels earlier this month, many in the Arab and Muslim world quickly blamed Israel.
As a New York Times correspondent discovered, there was no shortage of locals willing to see Israel as at the bottom of a horrific crime committed by Muslims in the name of their interpretation of Islam.
Like the seemingly imperishable canard that no Jews died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because their brethren were the perpetrators, it didn’t take long for the denizens of the “Arab street” to reassure each other that the Jews massacred a wedding party and other innocent Arabs.
That the Muslim fundamentalist terror organization Al-Qaida had already claimed responsibility didn’t diminish the willingness to blame Israel, nor did the capture of one member of the gang whose bomb had not exploded.
The immutable rules of the Middle East cannot be altered for facts, logic or even the faintest trace of common sense. Since the revival of Jewish sovereignty in a part of the otherwise all-Muslim region is a terrible humiliation for Muslims, anything can be blamed on it.
But the truth is, many in the West no longer pay much attention to the ravings of the “Arab street.” That’s why the enormous growth of anti-Jewish incitement and hate education (specifically in Palestinian schools) has always been a minor issue for the American foreign-policy establishment and for many writers who opine on the region for a living.
But we recently got a hint of yet another cause for the lack of outrage over the canards about Israel that have become so ingrained in Arab political dialogue. The clue came during the discussions over the negotiations that were concluded recently about the opening of border crossings to Gaza.
Worst possible light
During the talks, Israel sought to limit and control entry to Gaza while the Palestinians, strongly supported by the United States and the European Union, sought to minimize Israel’s involvement.
In the end, Israel buckled and, despite some symbolic gestures aimed more at bolstering Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s domestic support than anything else, the Palestinians got their way.
But what was interesting about the commentary on the talks was how mainstream American publications portrayed Israel’s position in the worst possible light.
According to Philadelphia Inquirer foreign-policy columnist Trudy Rubin, the fault for the failing Gazan economy was solely Israel’s. She wrote on Nov. 9 that even after Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal of every last Israeli soldier and settlement, Gaza was a “huge prison.”
Unless, Gazan “tomatoes and peppers” were freed from Israeli oppression and allowed to proceed to market, peace was surely doomed, she claimed.
But the question of how entry to Gaza would be managed is not merely one of economics or logistics. Even though Palestinian demands for an Israeli pullout have been satisfied, terrorists are still trying to infiltrate the border to cause mayhem and bloodshed in the parts of “occupied Palestine” that even the United Nations recognizes as territory of the State of Israel.
And the indiscriminate firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel has only paused because of the direct threat that Israel will reoccupy the area.
But the harbingers of a new intifada do not impress the likes of Rubin, or even U.S. officials otherwise sympathetic to Israel, like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and administration Mideast envoy James Wolfensohn.
Their focus in the talks seemed to be entirely on pressuring Israel to give in, so as to pump up the Palestinian economy. That is, on the face of it, a reasonable argument since development of the territories is rightly thought of as integral to the peace process.
But Rice and Wolfensohn forgot that the real obstacle to economic progress comes from the Palestinians themselves. If Palestinian terrorists didn’t attack Israel, Israelis wouldn’t demand tight controls on the borders.
But just as the State Department keeps ignoring the Palestinian Authority’s use of mosques, newspapers and its television station to incite hatred against Jews and Israel, so are some in the press ignoring the reality of Palestinian intentions and behavior.
Rubin was even willing to falsify the recent history of Palestinian tomato production. While carrying on about those vegetables being forced to wait in the sun while wicked Israelis refused to let Palestinian traffic proceed unimpeded, she forgot to mention a salient fact.
Though she noted that Wolfensohn had donated $500 million of his own money to purchase the greenhouses built by now-evacuated Israelis, she didn’t say that most of those facilities purchased by the envoy and other high-minded American Jews simply went to pot.
Rather than profit from the jobs and the produce that the Israeli-built farms could give them, Palestinian mobs destroyed most of them.
The moral of the story wasn’t that Israelis are causing Palestinian tomatoes to rot because of foolish fears of having their families slaughtered. The moral is that Palestinians would rather starve than make peace.
So ingrained is the reflex to blame Israel that even the most reasonable of its demands for security are automatically put down as heartless. Columnists and officials who do this are little better than the fools on the “Arab street” who blame Israel for the Amman bombings.
That they will, unlike the Arab mobs, lament the Israeli casualties that will result from their labors on the Palestinians’ behalf does not make them less culpable. Nor will it provide the victims with any but cold comfort.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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