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Stand Steadfast, on the Sidelines
David Horovitz

Terrorism may have finally smashed itself into the Western consciousness on that one, cataclysmic day in September, but it will not be defeated in any corresponding single counterstrike.

Publicizing the faces of the world�s 22 most evil men may be designed to comfort an utterly traumatized American public with the subliminal suggestion that when this rogues gallery is eliminated terrorism will have been overcome, but the reality is that even as some of these 22 are tracked down, others, just as dangerous and callous, will spring forward to succeed them. With others waiting in the wings. And still others after that. And their attacks will go on and on and on, as long as gullible have-nots allow themselves to be seduced into committing murder by charismatic megalomaniacs who distort religious imperatives. The Cold War is over; the similarly era-defining War on Terrorism has begun.

Assuming that America keeps its nerve � and the alternative is unthinkable � the war will be bloody, controversial and replete with Pyrrhic victories. There will be more atrocities. Count on it. And because it is a war in which America rightly feels its very essence to be under siege, there will be no sympathy for any nation or organization that is deemed an obstacle to American victory. In the new world order, as it is being reconstituted in the aftermath of September 11, old enmities are judged afresh, old alliances re-examined. And that goes for Israel�s relationship with the United States as well. The Jewish state has to prove its strategic value all over again.

This shouldn�t be too difficult. No cynical, fair-weather friend, seeking political advantage from a grieving America, Israel is the most genuine of allies, a bloodied victim of decades on the front line of the war against terrorism. More Americans recognize that now, and sympathize accordingly, than ever before.

But as the struggle against terrorism drags on through weeks, into months and years, that sympathy could be offset by irritation at perceived Israeli stubbornness over peacemaking � if Israel allows it to be.

Already there are those, in the American media and even on the fringes of the Bush Administration, who would have their public believe that, if only Israel had retreated to its 1967 borders, Osama Bin Laden would not have targeted the symbols of America, and that if the Israeli government can be pressed into �righting that wrong� even now, further terrorism will be prevented. It may be self-defeating and short-sighted. It may require the blatant misinterpretation of Bin Laden�s own publicly stated revulsion for the presence of �infidels� anywhere in the �lands of Mohammed.� But it is an assertion that will likely gain ground as the anti-terror assault proves itself far more complex and demoralizing than most Americans are allowing themselves to anticipate.

In that context, Ariel Sharon�s self-drafted October 4 verbal attack on the Bush Administration was about as damaging to Israel as any speech could be. While I have already written of my misgivings at the coalition�s apparent readiness to whitewash some of the terrorism directed against Israel, both Sharon�s overt comparison between Israel and Czechoslovakia, and the implied comparison between Bush and Neville Chamberlain, were counterproductive and unwarranted. Bush is plainly leading the fight against the strategic threat of his era, not seeking a delusional path of capitulation before it.

And Sharon�s intimation that he was abrogating all existing agreements with the Palestinians, and forgoing all attempts to forge new understandings with them, played right into the hands of those in the U.S., elsewhere in the West and in the Arab world who are trying to brand Israel as an arrogant opponent of conciliation, or worse still, as being determinedly engaged in terrorism itself, the �terrorism of occupation.� (That line about Israel, henceforth, relying �only on ourselves,� was a harmful misrepresentation by the prime minister of his relatively moderate policy of tentative attempted partnership with the impossible Yasser Arafat.)

Far from preemptively castigating the Bush Administration out of fear of some future pressure from Washington to compromise with the Palestinians, Sharon and successor Israeli governments need to place themselves firmly at Washington�s right hand. We must be the steadfast ally, ready to stay on the sidelines of battles in which Israel can play no useful role, lead the charge when the challenge arises, and direct the coalition�s attention to sources of terror it might otherwise find temptingly convenient to ignore.

And rather than seeking to head off an American peace initiative in the Middle East, Israel should be welcoming Washington�s involvement, perhaps even preempting a Bush plan with one of its own. Israel should be highlighting its desire to partner the Palestinians toward statehood, compromise and peaceful coexistence.

This might sound rather like opting for hope over experience, since Arafat has already turned down the most generous offer of partnership, during the Barak prime ministership, that Israel can ever propose. But Sharon, in his abiding skepticism towards Arafat, is presumably confident that the Palestinian leadership would continue to reject reasonable terms for a permanent settlement, producing a deadlock which would boost Israel�s peacemaking credentials and undermine Arafat�s purported new thirst for conciliation.

And were Palestinian leaders to belie their record of intransigence by publicly responding with an acknowledgment of Jewish claims in Jerusalem and a mechanism for solving the refugee problem without undermining Israel�s Jewish majority, then all sides would have cause to rejoice. Wouldn�t they?