Palestine not blameless victim in conflict

Rubin is a senior administrative analyst at the School of
Medicine.

By Lisa L. Rubin

I do not know from where Michel Chaghouri gathered his
“facts” for his diatribe “U.S. turns blind
eye on Palestine“ (Daily Bruin, Viewpoint, Oct. 16). What
I do know, however, is that at best his assertions are faulty. At
worst, they are deliberately provocative and constitute yet another
form of stone-throwing against the Israelis.

First of all, he is quite wrong in his contention that “no
person ““ Israeli or Palestinian ““ would deliberately
kill a 12-year-old boy cowering in fear.” In refutation of
that statement, I would like to offer a very personal, albeit
truncated, chronology of four deliberate attacks perpetrated by the
Palestinians against Israeli citizens.

Oct. 19, 1994: A Hamas suicide bomber set off an explosion on a
Dan bus traveling north along Dizengoff Street in the heart of Tel
Aviv’s shopping district. The blast killed 22 people and
wounded 42 others. I was there watching local news reports in
fascinated horror as the Hevra Kaddisha Society responded to
telephone calls from families living in second- and third-story
apartments more than 200 yards away from the blast site. The calls
were to ask for the removal of the countless body parts that
splattered their balconies, windows and outside walls.

Jan. 22, 1995: Two Palestinian suicide bombers detonated
explosions at the Beit Lid intersection between Netanya and Tulkarm
in Israel proper, killing 22 and wounding 60 others. I was there
weeping in collective sorrow with the mothers who buried their
18-year-old “soldiers” who had been at that bus stop
waiting to go home.

Feb. 25, 1996: A Hamas suicide bomber blew up a No. 18 bus near
Jerusalem’s central bus station, killing 26 people and
wounding 48 others. I was there. Often times in my nightmares I
still am. Still waiting for the housemother of my daughter’s
dormitory in Jerusalem to answer my frantic phone call and tell me
that by some miracle my daughter hadn’t gotten on the No. 18
bus as she did every morning to go to school.

Mar. 4, 1996: In Dizengoff Center where small children in
costumes, parents and teenagers have gone to celebrate the Purim
holiday, a suicide bomber, aided and abetted by Palestinians in the
territories and Israeli Arabs, detonated a bomb which killed 13,
including children, and wounded 130 others. I was there waiting
with my neighbors during the long hours of uncertainty until we
would know whether our sons who had set out for Dizengoff that
morning would return home that evening unharmed.

I would like to remind Chaghouri that all of these attacks were
after the Oslo Accords. All of these attacks were sanctioned by
Israel’s “peace partner.” Pushed and prodded by
the Israeli government to denounce the killings, Yasser Arafat gave
lip service to the request in halting English in front of the
American media.

In his mother tongue of Arabic, he hailed the bombers as heroes
and martyrs on Palestinian-owned and operated radio stations.
Unfortunately, the deliberate randomness of the suicide bomber does
not provide the “photo-ops” of a sustained riot.

With regard to the allegation that the United States sanctions
Israel’s actions because of some misplaced guilt due to the
Holocaust ““ that notion is beyond contempt. The Jews of the
Holocaust were victims. Israelis in particular do not see
themselves as victims. Nor do they wish to be viewed as such.
Israelis long ago realized that to appear weak is to invite attack
from hostile neighbors.

No one, including the United States government has said that
Israel “can do no wrong.” Israelis themselves are more
often than not quite vocal about and critical of their own
government’s actions. The peace process, or lack thereof, has
divided the country in a way that no single issue in the history of
the state of Israel ever has.

I am surprised, given Chaghouri’s benevolence in having
befriended Israelis who “are, for the most part, kind and
caring people,” that his new friends have not exposed him to
the oft quoted, self-deprecating axiom of the Jews: “Two
Jews. Three opinions.”

If the United States refuses to slander Israel for its response
to the violent provocation of the Palestinians, it is because it
recognizes that Israel is, and will continue to be, the only
democratic government in the entire Middle East.

As a democracy, Israel allows the world to see it, warts and
all. The fact that Chaghouri, as well as countless others around
the globe, can point a finger at the Israelis after seeing the
mind-numbingly tragic demise of Muhammed al-Durah is the touchstone
which vividly depicts the vast difference between the two peoples
which share the tiny space called Israel.

Were it not for the quick action of the Italian news team in
Ramallah on Oct. 12 , it is unlikely that any of us would have been
aware of the brutality inflicted upon the Israeli reservists by the
citizens and police of that city.

Last, but not least, Chaghouri should have checked the labor and
immigration statistics in Israel before making the assertion that
the Palestinians earn their living from building “gleaming
new homes” for Israeli settlers. The importation of laborers
from Thailand, the Philippines and North Africa to do construction
work began in the late 1980s during the “Intifada.”

Israelis learned the hard way that extending a hand to the
Palestinians by providing them with jobs and income could often
result not only in the loss of that hand but the loss of
one’s life as well. In refusing to renounce violence against
the citizenry of Israel the Palestinians literally and figuratively
“sealed” their own fate as Israel closed its borders
against their attacks.