June 15, 2003

UTOPIAN FANTASIES: DREAMS OF REASON COST REAL LIVES

Prof. Steven Plaut explains why it's better to be realistic than nice.

Subject: The Oslo Ratchet

1. It is one of those glaring, obvious points that are so seldom mentioned in polite circles. The simple fact of the matter is that the level of violence that Israel needs to use to suppress Palestinian savagery is constantly being ratcheted up because of Israeli niceness and restraint.
        It may not be diplomatic to say so, but that does not make it any less true. The simple fact is that if Israel had shot down 100 (or even 50) violent rioting Palestinians on the first day when the first "intifada" was launched in the late 1980s, thousands of Jews and Arabs who have died since would be alive today. Israel would have paid a fleeting public relations price for the violent suppression of the fascist hordes, forgotten by the world a few weeks later. And the Middle East would have been plunged into a new era of peace and stability, truly a New Middle East.
        The Palestinian war of barbarism could have been ended instantly 15 years ago at the cost of fleeting bad public relations and 100 Palestinian lives. Instead, Israel responded to the Palestinian pogroms with "restraint".
        Quickly, the Palestinian savagery escalated to the point where killing 100 terrorists would barely make a dent in the violence. The violence had ratcheted up. It would continue to do so.
        Israel continued to produce further ratcheting up because it continued to use "restraint". The longer it restrains itself, the higher the ratchet. What could have been achieved at the cost of killing 100 rioters in the late 1980's quickly became impossible to achieve even at the cost of killing thousands of Palestinians in the "Al-Aqsa" atrocities and pogroms, starting in 2000.
        The iron law of Arab violence is very simple. The longer one waits to suppress it with military force, the greater the actual amount of force and violence required to end it. The only way to end it at low cost is to do so with overwhelming superiority and unambiguous determination at the very start, the moment it raises its head. The "restraint" strategy favored by the entire world when it comes to Israel - including by Israel's own leaders - does not offer an alternative to using force to suppress Arab violence. It is merely a delaying tactic that makes the amount of force actually needed to achieve the goal several orders of magnitude higher.
       Every time Israel responds to suicide bombings and similar atrocities with restraint, it is simply making the ultimate death toll of Palestinians required to end the barbarism so much higher. There is no serious question any longer about WHETHER Israel will ultimately have to suppress Palestinian savagery with military force, only over how many Palestinian dead will be required to achieve that goal. What could have been achieved at the cost of 100 lives in 1988 cannot be achieved today even by killing thousands of Palestinians. The longer Israel plays Oslo games, the longer it agrees to "goodwill concessions", Road Map posturings, make-pretend negotiations with Abu Mazen, unilateral ceasefires, and Open-Fire orders to its soldiers based on endless "restraint" in the face of nearly all provocations, the higher will be the price the Palestinians will ultimately pay.
        And let us not delude ourselves, this is no zero-sum game. It is a negative sum game, with only losers. Not only will the toll of Palestinian dead needed continue to ratchet up, so will the price paid by Israel in terms of Israeli lives and in terms of the ever-worsening costs of fighting Palestinian savagery. Whatever price Israel now pays in terms of its pariah status and its demonization by the world's anti-Semites is nothing compared to what will befall it when it eventually needs to take military action against the ratcheted violence of the Palestinians.
        Let us note that Arab and Islamofascist savagery DOES in fact respond to the use of overwhelming force against it. Note how smoothly the liberation of Iraq went and recall those crowds of Iraqis cheering the Americans and smacking Saddam's posters with their shoes. The cost of liberating Iraq, and ESPECIALLY the cost in terms of dead Iraqis, was so modest for the simple reason that no one let things ratchet up. Had the Americans entered Basra half-heartedly at the start of the campaign, pulling out quickly and then re-entering only when locals engaged in terrorism against them, had the Americans announced endless goodwill
gestures towards the Republican Guards, the ultimate cost of liberating Iraq in terms of dead Iraqis would be far far greater.
        History is full of many other examples of lives being saved by the use of overwhelming military force. When overwhelming force was used to achieve unambiguous total victory over Arab forces, the costs were low, the suffering by the Arabs themselves small, and the accommodation to the victors rapid and enthusiastic. This is what happened in Sicily, Andalusia, the Alexandretta area of Syria seized by Turkey, and elsewhere.
        Recently, one of Israel's columnists at the daily Maariv, Ben-Dror Yemini, wrote that there is a popular stereotype that "Arabs only understand force". But he challenges this, saying Hey Look even FORCE they do not understand! Well, he is half right. They do not "understand" force when it is used against them with timidity, fear, half-heartedly, and with obsessive attachment to "restraint". The only force they
"understand" is the sort of irresistible and overwhelming force that makes it clear resistance is futile. That certainly "works". Just look at Iraq.
        The Oslo Ratchet Effect works not only among West Bank and Gaza "Palestinians" but also among Israeli Arabs living inside Green-Line Israel. In the fall of 2000 thousands of them attacked Israeli police with weapons and firebombs, while beating passing Jewish motorists at random. The police used low-level force against them and killed 13. Later, Leftist Prime Minister Ehud Barak from the Labor government issued the Arab pogromchiks an official "apology" for the 13 dead.
        Barak's apology did not buy any good will nor moderation among Israeli Arabs. This past weekend 30,000 rallied in Umm al-Fahm to support the Islamofascist fundamentalists and to scream "In Fire and Blood we will Redeem Jerusalem al-Quds". If a serious level of force had been used at the first signs of Israeli Arab fascist terrorism years ago, that rally would not have taken place this weekend. Israeli Arabs would not be enlisting in the terrorist brigades and blowing up Israeli buses.
        Israeli restraint stirs Arab violence and is a catalyst for Arab nazification. It signals to the Arabs that the Jews are on the run. It signals weakness and destructibility. It does not induce corresponding niceness and reciprocal moderation from the Arabs. It produces extremism and violence. Israeli Arabs were not exactly a bastion of pro-Zionism even before Oslo, but they were by and large pacified, willing to play by the democratic rules, willing to restrict the manifestation of their anti-Jewish sentiments to voting for the communist party, and otherwise maintaining correct and often cordial relations with Jews. Oslo changed all that, producing violent radicalization of Israeli Arabs. Indeed, in the long run history books may recall this as the very worst destructive damage of all achieved by Shimon Peres and his legions of the Oslo Left.
        This radicalization is yet another manifestation of the Ratchet Effect.
        Every time Israel orders its troops to exercise "restraint", every time it foregoes killing or deporting the families of suicide bombers, every time it releases imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, every time it opens its borders to Palestinian day workers, every time it turns funds over to the PLO, every time Sharon male-bonds with Abu Mazen, every time Sharon says "occupation is bad", every time a Jewish settlement is removed, every single goodwill gesture - EVERY one of these things ESCALATES the level of violence that will be needed to suppress Palestinian savagery. EVERY single one of these will cost the Palestinians an unknown increment in terms of lives lost. Every single one represents a sharp escalation of the Arab-Israeli war with all the destruction this implies, if not immediately evident today then unavoidable in the longer run.
        Politicians have trouble seeing beyond the next public opinion poll, and cannot see anything at all beyond the next election. Israeli "moderation and restraint" are the gasoline being sprayed upon the bonfire of Middle East violence.
--Prof. Steven Plaut

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