The welcome carpet laid out by the US to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when it refuses to do the same to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is offensive and undermines America’s credibility as an honest broker. With enough evidence to indict him for war crimes, Sharon should be in handcuffs, not feted by the Bush administration. Washington would not have treated Slobodan Milosevic in the same way.
But what makes this particular visit stick in the gullets of not just Arabs and Muslims, but of anyone with a sense of justice, is Sharon’s blatant attempt to equate the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington with what has been happening in Israel and the occupied territories. His hope is to present the Israelis to the Americans as fellow victims, joined in solidarity in a moral struggle against the terrorists of this world — a group to which he wants to add the Palestinians.
The Americans must surely see that this is nothing but an evil, and for them dangerous, propaganda ploy. Morality does not come near it. There can be no comparison whatsoever between the terrorist outrages of Sept. 11 and the violence in Israel and the occupied territories. In the former, innocent civilians who had done nothing wrong to anyone were slaughtered by the thousands. What is happening in Israel and the occupied territories is a war — and anyone who pretends otherwise is a liar or a fool. And who are the terrorists anyway? Have the Israelis had their lands seized, their homes blown up, their livelihoods stolen? Do they suffer humiliation and oppression every single day? If what the Israelis have suffered is to be labeled "terrorism" — and undoubtedly some innocent individuals have suffered — it is a two-way affair, but a grossly uneven one. The Palestinians are the victims of state terrorism day in and day out — and it has worsened immeasurably since Sharon became prime minister.
This charade of trying to equate Israel’s situation with that of the US since Sept. 11 ought to offend Americans. They should be angry when they see at Ground Zero in New York, supposedly sympathizing with firefighters and policemen, a man whose own hands are covered with blood. They should be angry because the lie that Israel’s war against the Palestinians has a moral equivalency with the war against international terrorism, rather than strengthening Israel’s standing, debases America’s. Sharon has been trying it ever since Sept. 11: first trying to claim co-victim status when rushing to express solidarity in the immediate aftermath of the attacks; then when the tourism minister was assassinated, deliberately copying the language of the Bush administration, that "nothing would be the same again". Not even the Israelis, let alone the Americans, were taken in. So presumably the ploy will not work now.
Yet, the mere image of Sharon in New York damages the US. His presence sullies and diminishes the symbolism with which the city has been invested since Sept. 11. It undermines America’s victimhood and weakens its moral high ground — and just when it is so involved in the war in Afghanistan — a war which many Muslims view with mixed emotions. It is incredible that the Americans even allowed him near New York at this sensitive time.
