Sunday’s New York Times Magazine carried an article about the — What should we call it? The Fence? The Wall? The Barrier? The Ghetto? The Buffer? The Buffy? — that Israel is building between itself and the — What should we call it? The West Bank?
Judea and Samaria? Occupied Palestine? The Israel Administered Territories? The Schwartz (with apologies to Mel Brooks)?
The Arab-Israel conflict is so contentious, polarizing and corrupting that there aren’t even neutral words to describe it. Nearly all of the usual words have connotations that appear to favor the perspective of one side or the other. This carrying of war into language itself would be funny if this phenomenon didn’t also reflect warped moral values and if people didn’t get killed over it.
Many of the protests I have been reading about the “whatever” appear to reflect warped values. The Times Magazine records complaints from Arabs living in the territories about how the “whatever” will mess up their lives. They will have to go through gates controlled by Israelis to get to their fields, their children’s schools, even their grocery stores, they said.
Well, gee whiz. Suicide bombers have been coming from the “wherever” to murder and maim Israelis, sometimes busloads of them. Yet to Arabs — and to an awful lot of their allies and sympathizers — it is better that Jews should suffer and die than Arabs should experience inconvenience or “humiliation.”
To me, this diseased idea is the leitmotif of the whole conflict. Therefore I can’t take seriously most of the objections to Israel building the “whatever,” whether they come from the Bush Administration, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board or Jewish peace activists; and most assuredly not when they come from — What should we call him?
Palestinian Authority President? Palestinian Terrorist-in-Chief? Premier Anti-Semitic Mass Murderer? — Yasser Arafat and his followers.
But we should take seriously the case for the “whatever” presented by Robert Satloff in an article published in Wednesday’s Journal Sentinel. Satloff, director of policy and strategic planning at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, displays real insight into Middle East mentality and reality.
For one, he says the “whatever” may actually give the Palestinian Arabs an incentive to control their terrorists. They certainly don’t seem to have much now. Mahmoud Abbas — What should we call him? P.A. Prime Minister? Arafat’s Front Man? — is unwilling or unable (perhaps both) to disarm and arrest terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But there have been recently reported instances of Palestinian civilians chasing off terrorist gunmen out of fear that the gunmen would provoke Israeli retaliation. Israel’s building the “whatever,” wrote Satloff, “sends a clear message that their failure to fight terrorism … comes at a steep price.”
Moreover, Satloff wrote, the “whatever” could force Israelis to do some rethinking as well. Its route will encompass some of the — What should we call them? Imperialist settlers? Zionist pioneers? Seekers of affordable housing? — in the “wherever” living near the Green Line, but not the smaller and more remote outposts and communities. This result “may force Israelis to think more dispassionately about the costs and benefits of maintaining outlying settlements,” Satloff said.
I would add one more observation. Some of the objectors claim that the “whatever” is actually marking the borders of a future Palestinian state, which should be determined by negotiations, rather than by Israeli unilateral action. This is nonsense. From all I have read, much of the “whatever” is made in such a way that it can be taken down or restructured if negotiations so determine. Besides, anything people build can be removed if necessary. Even the Berlin Wall — to which Palestinian foes of the “whatever” unfairly liken it, with typical demagoguery — came down eventually.
But the bottom line remains that the “whatever” will protect Israelis from terrorism, and most of the objectors to it are people for whom something else is always more important than Jewish lives. Whatever it is called, it is a good idea.
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