After two more suicide bombings on Sunday, the situation in
Israel couldn't be clearer. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell is
on board. "We have spoken out clearly and do so again now for
Chairman Arafat to act against those responsible for these acts,
and to make clear to the Palestinian people that terror and
violence must halt now."
And though he added that "we deplore the killing and wounding of
innocent Palestinians there," he also recognized Israeli's right to
defend itself when he noted, "we understand the Israeli government
need to respond to these acts of terror." Never has the argument
the U.S. has used to justify its war on terrorism been more in
harmony with Israel's justification for its war against terror. For
those who since 9/11 were insisting that what was good for the
American goose would not be good for the Israeli gander, that's an
alarming development.
Listen to what some of them had to say on the weekend talk
shows. Candy Crowley sat in for Wolf Blitzer on CNN Late Edition
yesterday.
Clearly she sounded troubled. So did former Carter National
Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. He said it was Israeli's
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon strategy to make it appear that "the
American struggle against global terrorism should be synonymous
with Israel's struggle against Mr. Arafat and the
Palestinians."
Which led Crowley to ask former Reagan National Security Adviser
Robert McFarlane, not quite as articulately as Blitzer might have:
"[I]sn't that sort of a problem for the Bush administration, having
said 'If you support a terrorist, if you house a terrorist, you are
a terrorist'? So Israel comes out and says, 'Well, this man's a
terrorist.' Hasn't the Bush administration put itself in a kind of
rhetorical box that will not let them reach out to Yasser
Arafat?"
Reach out to Yasser Arafat?! Does this woman even watch the news
on her own network? To be fair, it might be that she's influenced
by what she hears from her guests. McFarlane, for instance,
condemned Sharon as strongly as he did Arafat. "But sides are
afflicted with awful leadership," he said. He added: "I don't
believe we're going to be able to get out of this, until we see a
change of leadership on both sides." It wouldn't dawn on this wise
man that Sharon is in power precisely because his predecessor, Ehud
Barak, had been prepared to give Arafat everything the likes of
Brzezinski, McFarlane, and Bill Clinton wanted -- only to see
Arafat reject his offer outright and unleash new terror against a
state he will never recognize until it's pushed into the
Mediterranean. And even then he'll unleash new demands that the
Mediterranean be drained until all traces of Jewishness are removed
from its sea bottom.
Most people can now see Arafat as he wants and deserves to be
seen. TV trots out the exceptions. Unaware of any history beyond
what was said just before the last commercial break, Crowley posed
this question: "Mr. Brzezinski, what went wrong here? How did this
suddenly explode in a way that we haven't seen for a couple of
decades?"
Brzezinski, for his part, thinks of Arafat as a Nobel Prize
winner for supporting the Oslo peace process that Sharon has
opposed for years. In his words, "[D]on't forget Rabin and Arafat
both got the Nobel Peace Prize. And Mr. Rabin was assassinated, in
the context of an atmosphere of hate and hostility that was
stimulated in Israel by Mr. Sharon, Mr. Netanyahu and others." Kind
you reminds you of the knee-jerk liberals who will forever blame
the assassination of JFK on right-wing Texans.
Nonetheless, Brzezinski knows what has to be done just as he
knows the Bush administration is not doing it. "We need," he later
said, "...an American initiative for peace that is comprehensive,
articulate, specific, and which we're prepared to back with our
political resources and, if necessary, guarantee if the parties
agree, with our own forces on the ground, so that peace and
accommodation eventually between the Israelis and the Palestinians
can be enforced. Nothing less than that will do." You've got to
like his ability to string words like comprehensive, articulate,
and specific together.
He also warned we have no choice: "Our ability to conduct the
war against terrorism is going to be in jeopardy as a consequence
of this. America will be more a target of hatred. And if things get
really bad in the Middle East, we could even face an oil embargo.
So the stakes here are enormous, and the failure of leadership
could be very costly."
That might be understood to mean: We have to appease terrorists
to fight terrorists. Standing our ground will make us weaker. It
could even bring about a revival of OPEC. What next, a hostage
situation in Iran like the one that Brzezinski resolved so
deftly?
But that's not what Candy Crowley had in mind. She responded to
Brzezinski's remark with this: "I think in very undiplomatic terms,
if I can translate what I've just heard, that is that the Bush
administration thus far, you believe, has blown it. Is that fair,
unfair?" Maybe if they reach out anew to Arafat he'll tell them it
was fair.
By the way, it would be unfair to leave the impression that Ms.
Crowley is the only bubblehead in CNN's employ. The network State
Department correspondent, Andrea Koppel, was a guest last Saturday
on Capital
Gang. Her anti-Sharonness was stunning. To cite just one
priceless example:
"What Ariel Sharon is doing by keeping his troops in Ramallah,
by terrorizing Yassir Arafat's Palestinian Authority and the
Palestinian people, is to essentially shake up a hornet's nest.
There are three million Palestinian people who have nothing more to
do than to strap bombs around their bodies ..."
You get the picture. Sharon is a terrorist, just like John
Ashcroft to others in the media is Osama bin Laden. And whatever
Palestinians do in response is all a reaction to Israeli activity,
not a product of the leadership Arafat has provided.
But as Ted Koppel's daughter, Andrea Koppel was entitled to
speak with unimpeachable insight and authority.
topics:
Bill Clinton, Iran, Israel, Oil
