Lies Of Desperation

Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves or your parents and kinsfolk.

Qur’aan (4: 135)

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

John (15:13)

As the ratio of fatalities between Palestinians and Israelis has narrowedduring the past few months, the media mills in the United States that havedemonized Palestinians for the past 50 years have been going into higher gear.

One of the honored captains of this industry, the honorable Mr. ThomasFriedman, has now struck a high note in this campaign with his "Suicidal Lies,"in New York Times of March 31, 2002. His objective is to raise the alarmfor Americans. The Palestinians "are testing a whole new form of warfare,using suicide bombers," and if this "new strategy of liberation" isallowed to succeed--presumably in forcing the Israelis to end their occupationof West Bank and Gaza--the consequences will be cataclysmic for United States,and indeed, for all civilization. The imperative for United States is clear. Inorder to save Civilization, it must fight Israel’s war as if it were a war forits own survival.

This indictment of Palestinians is built cleverly, but it is the kind ofcleverness that substitutes for facts and logic. Mr. Friedman opens hisindictment by wiping the slate of history clean of the daily, unremittingstruggle that Palestinians -- men, women and children -- have waged over theyears against Israeli terror, massacres, executions, expropriations,deportations, house demolitions, sieges, curfews, and myriad new forms ofintimidation and humiliation. This long, hard, constant, unflagging and valiantstruggle over more than 50 years is equated with the acts of ‘suicide’bombers. In the words of Braveheart, this is history written by those who havehanged heroes.

After completing this demolition job -- accomplished with a wave of his hand --Mr. Friedman proceeds to build his penitentiary for the Palestinians. Hisimmediate objective is to prove that the Palestinians "have adopted suicidebombing as a strategic choice, not out of desperation." There are severalsteps in the argument that Mr. Friedman employs to arrive at this devastatingconclusion. I have to admit that this charge ought be devastating -- if it canbe proved.

Mr. Friedman does not deny that the Israeli occupation has caused "desperation"(the quotes are not mine) amongst Palestinians; what he rejects is that there isa necessary link between their desperation and ‘suicide’ bombing. First, "thereare a lot of people in the world who are desperate, yet they have not gonearound strapping dynamite to themselves." Surely, Mr. Friedman must have heardof Samson, Guy Fawkes, the Kamikaze pilots, the Hizbullah and the Tamil Tigers:since almost everyone else has. The Palestinians can scarcely be credited withinventing this "new form of warfare."

But there is another way of posing the question that would shift the onus tothe Israelis. A quick glance at the recent history of settler colonialismreveals that there have been many episodes, both long and short, of occupationand resistance to occupation, but it is not too often that the oppressed haveemployed ‘suicide’ bombing against their occupiers. Is it mere happenstance,then, that every time the Israelis occupy another people -- whether it isSouthern Lebanon, Gaza and West Bank -- they have had to face ‘suicide’bombers? Might the fault lie in the occupiers, and not the occupied?

Mr. Friedman presses on with his indictment. President Clinton "offered thePalestinians a peace plan that would have ended their "desperate"occupation, and Mr. Arafat walked away." We are back to the canard about the‘generous’ peace plan, so perversely rejected by the Palestinian leadership.In return for municipal control over a few Bantustans, dominated by armedsettler encampments, the Palestinians were asked to forego their sovereignty,their right of return, the right to defend themselves, control over theirborders, and rights to their own water resources. A ‘generous’ peace plan itwas indeed -- generous to the Israelis. Is it surprising that the Palestiniansare castigated ad infinitum for rejecting this plan?

The Palestinians must account for another sin of omission. They had theoption of engaging in nonviolent resistance -- à la Gandhi -- thatwould have won them an independent Palestine 30 years ago. But, instead, theychose the path of violent resistance. Oops! I mean, ‘suicide’ bombing. Mr.Friedman writes as if Israeli occupation had somehow earned the right to expectGandhian nonviolence from its victims -- as if this was part of the divinepackage which gave them exclusive rights to historic Palestine.

A presumption so brazen demands a response. One must ask if the Zionists toohad chosen this Gandhian alternative to appropriating historic Palestine: if atany time their dreams embraced the Palestinians as associates, equal partners,in return for sanctuary in their country. Instead, all that the Zionistvisionaries saw was "a people (themselves) without a land, and a land(Palestine) without a people." The Palestinians did not exist: and if theydid, they would be "spirited across the borders" with some small inducement.

This was a dream of settler colonialism: quite commonplace amongst Europeansin the nineteenth century. But since the Zionists did not have their owngunboats, they would contract out the job to Britain, the arch imperialist powerin those times. In 1917, even before it had acquired Palestine -- in the BalfourDeclaration--Britain generously offered to create a Jewish state in Palestine. Ayear later, when the British had occupied Palestine, the European Jewsestablished their first settlements in Israel, their heads full of dreams ofmessianic colonialism. It is these dreams, resurrecting archaic and arcaneprophecies, that would eventually create a new colonial settler state in 1948 --when, in other parts of the world, such states were being dismantled.

These are the mechanics of Mr. Friedman’s argument. He does not reject some"desperation" amongst Palestinians, but this is not why they engage in ‘suicide’bombings. They do this out of a perversity, "because they actually want to wintheir independence in blood and fire," and this has led them to adopt "suicidebombing as a strategic choice." Mr. Friedman forgets -- I admit, it ishard to feel the enemy’s pain -- that while the first ‘suicide’ bombingsagainst Israeli occupation began in 1993, the Palestinians have been goingthrough "blood and fire" since at least the 1930s.

What this means is that Palestinians are now engaged in a most dangerousinnovation in the strategy of liberation. "A big test is taking place ofwhether suicide terrorism can succeed as a strategy for liberation." It istruly extraordinary that Mr. Friedman, writing on the op-ed page of the NewYork Times, can assume that his readers have never heard of the Kamikaze,the Tamil Tigers, or the Hizbullah. There you have an index of the power of NYT.

It would appear that the deployment of ‘suicide’ bombers was a strategicchoice made by Japan when the odds against them appeared to be mounting. It wasa choice they implemented massively, mobilizing tens of thousands to launch ‘suicide’missions using airplanes, torpedoes, mines and small boats. They were also quiteeffective. Warner and Warner, in The Sacred Warriors, show that theAllies lost 65 naval and merchant ships to these ‘suicide’ missions, and 370more were damaged. By comparison, the recent ‘suicide’ bombings are minorleague distractions. At least until February 2000, the Palestinians were not thebiggest players even in this minor league. Hamas claimed only 22 ‘suicide’missions compared to 168 strikes by Tamil separatists.

So why does Mr. Friedman raise this alarm about Palestinians "testing""a whole new form of warfare," "a new strategy of liberation?" Facedwith a second intifada against their deepening control over the West Bank andGaza -- an intifada that was slowly replacing stone -- throwing children withguerilla warfare--the Israelis made a strategic choice. On February 6, 2001,they let loose Ariel Sharon, convicted by his own courts of personalresponsibility for the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, to crush the new intifada.But the Palestinian resolve, tested for 33 years under the occupation of theworld’s most efficient military machine, refuses to capitulate before yetanother round of warfare. The people who should have been "spirited across theborders" by beads and baubles have shown yet again that their spirits will notbe cowed: that they will rise to match and neutralize the power of Israelimilitary.

Mr. Friedman admits this. The Palestinian resistance -- he calls it‘suicide’ bombing -- "is working." That is what alarms him. He thinksthat Israel now "needs to deliver a military blow that clearly shows thatterror will not pay." In other words, he wants United States to give Israel afree hand in dealing with the Palestinian resistance. This might mean morePalestinian deaths, more house demolitions, more incarcerations, and may be evendeportations on some significant scale. Everything that is necessary to crushthe resistance. Yes, the Europeans will make noises--and there will be somenoise in the Arab streets. But with solid American backing, none of this shouldmatter. At least, that is Mr. Friedman’s fantasy.

I have been placing ‘suicide’ in ‘suicide’ bombings within quotes.This requires an explanation. The Oxford English dictionary defines a suicide as"one who dies by his own hand." This definition is clearly inadequate. Inthe absence of a motive, we cannot distinguish between (i) a person who takeshis life because he wants to die and (ii) a person who takes his lifebecause this will save her soul -- or her honor, her family, her friends,her community, or her country. The first suggests suicide; the latter isordinarily regarded as a martyr. Judge for yourself then whether thePalestinians are suicides or martyrs.

Although the Jewish tradition considers suicide reprehensible, it admitsexceptions. According to the Talmud--Kaplan and Schwartz, A Psychology ofHope--"suicide can be permissible and even preferred" when thealternative is forced apostasy or torture that is beyond endurance. Imaginably,the Palestinians who choose to ‘sacrifice’ their lives might argue that thepain and indignity of life under Israeli occupation exceeded their capacity forendurance.

Use your imagination again. Consider a different history of Germany andEurope--one without the Second World War, without the Final Solution, withoutAuschwitz -- all because a lone Jewish ‘suicide’ bomber in 1938 hadpenetrated the inner chambers of Nazi leadership and blown them to smithereenswhile also killing herself. Would this ‘suicide’ bomber -- and her likes --also be regarded as a threat to all civilization? What would Mr. Friedman sayabout her?

M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University, Boston.His recent book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations was published byPalgrave (2000). Copyright: M. Shahid Alam