Ariel Sharon and his government were probably congratulating themselves last night on a good day for Zionism. Mossad agents had planted a bomb beneath the car of a senior Hamas official in Damascus and assassinated him. Israeli troops had poured in to the refugee camp at Jenin in a further demonstrative clench of the iron fist in which Sharon holds the occupied territories. Two hundred Palestinians had been made homeless in the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, their houses crushed beneath the blades of massive armored bulldozers. To cap the fine day, Israel soldiers used teargas and rubber bullets to break up a 1,000— strong Palestinian demonstration against the security wall at Beit Awwa.
Each of these acts was notable for the fact that they not only display the implacable amorality of Sharon’s Zionist administration in which the means will always justify the end, but each have also involved Israel in the flagrant flouting of international law. The extra-judicial slaying of political opponents is illegal. The occupation of Palestinian lands is illegal. The deliberate destruction of civilian homes is illegal. Israel’s security wall is illegal because most of it is on Palestinian, not Israeli, territory. Yet successive governments in Tel Aviv have not shrunk from throwing over all convention and legality whenever they deem it necessary. Shielded by the United States, the Israelis have brought state-sponsored gangsterism to a fine art and have proved themselves unparticular about where they commit their crimes — fraud in New Zealand, bombs in Iraqi-Jewish cinemas, even spying on Washington, its supporter and protector. Other states that try such tactics such as the French frogmen’s attack up the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor or Washington’s Iran-Contra gambit in the days of President Reagan have rightly been exposed and condemned.
Yet Israel is uniquely a law unto itself — the one country that appears to do whatever it likes with complete impunity. Zionist supporters will no doubt have joined Premier Sharon yesterday in chuckling at another day of buccaneering Israeli aggression against its enemies. However perhaps they should pause and ask themselves where Israel’s consistent flouting of international law is leading it and an international community that seems prepared to tolerate it. If all governments followed Israel’s example and murdered their enemies, what sort of a world would it be? The similarities between the state-sponsored terrorism of Israel and those President Bush alleged against Iraq are strong. Yet Israel was not invaded by America and no US troops pulled Ariel Sharon out of a hiding hole in the ground.
Israelis do not even have the comfort of knowing that the illegal behavior of their politicians is actually making their lives safer. Indeed it is doing the precise opposite. The now almost ritual humiliation and brutalization of the Palestinians by their immensely more powerful neighbor is building a mountain of fury and bitterness. Every militant activist the Israelis assassinate produces a clamor among dozens to replace him. Palestinians have gone beyond fear and nervous self-interest. This is a people almost entirely radicalized by Israel’s illegal behavior toward them. They are no longer to be quelled by the destruction of their homes and the assassination of their leaders.
Key Zionists of course know this. Their fear is not the suicide bomber but the peace table. As long as they can avoid real negotiations they can stay as gangsters and do precisely what they like.
