Barry Farber
Monday, April 1, 2002

This may start with a consumer price anecdote, but I assure you I'm not here to discuss economics.

There may be many items that cost less today than they did in the 1940s, but the only one I can readily think of is long-distance phone calls.

Long-distance calls used to cost a lot more way back then. And I don't mean they cost more "adjusted for inflation." I mean they just plain old cost MORE – a lot more dollars – than they do now.

I'm staggered every time somebody on the phone to Europe, or even Afghanistan, suddenly says, "Lemme call you back. I want to go get some more ice."

In the 1940s we used to plot our long-distance call strategy the way corporate executives plot savings in raw material shipments.

We couldn't afford to call the relatives in Baltimore and in Miami Beach the same week. Which ones, we wondered, might we catch before THEY called the others, so we could pass on family greetings and information to one and all.

The cost of most things has, of course, gone up. And one thing certain people in the world can't seem to get used to is that the cost of killing Jews has gone up. It's gone up tremendously since the 1940s. It's skyrocketed!

Back then millions of Jews did, indeed, go "meekly like sheep to their slaughter." However stretched and unlikely the clichι appears, it's true. Look at the body count.

Back then Jews depended completely upon others for their safety and rescue. As the Jews of Warsaw were herded like cattle into the ghetto by Hitler's swastika-bedecked cowboys, there was much complacency – even laughter, in the early going.

"The League of Nations wouldn't allow them to harm us," went the mantra from Jew to optimistic Jew. "President Roosevelt wouldn't let them harm us. The POPE wouldn't let them harm us!"

A cobweb is as good as a cable when there's no strain upon it. The Jews conquered by Hitler thought they had cables. They didn't even have cobwebs.

The fact that there is today a militarily competent Jewish state complicates the task of the Jew killer. Israel's existence drives that price upward.

The escalation of Israel's response to the proliferation of suicide bombings over the last weekend in March made it easy for media – even if determined to be fair and balanced – to portray Israel as a reckless giant that lost its temper and now smashes its armor against the hapless cinder blocks of Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah in an attempt to rub him out.

Nice try, media. Very nice try. Now, is anybody interested in what's REALLY going on?

It was amusing listening to the female anchor on one of the news channels Sunday, March 31, who obviously wanted to portray Israeli Prime Minister Sharon as a Mafia hit man with a lot of tanks out to bump off Chairman Arafat.

Arafat and his associates were on the second floor working a faltering cell phone by candlelight. There came a point after Israeli soldiers occupied Arafat's first floor AND his third floor when Arafat's continuing survival presented a problem for the anti-Israel propagandist.

Meanwhile, Arafat is the safest person in the whole Middle East.

While trying to come up with the direst interpretation of Arafat's peril at the hands of the rampaging Israelis, the anchorwoman literally gulped and gagged while realizing, live and on the air, that the worst she could truthfully say was "Even Chairman Arafat's ELECTRICITY was cut off for a while."

Put down the Jew Hater's Handbook for a minute and pick up the Bible. Remember when King David discovered his rival, King Saul, asleep in a cave. He could easily have killed him. What did he do instead? He took his sword and cut Saul's robe so Saul would know that David had spared his life.

That's part of what's going on. You can't find one military expert, no matter how stupid or anti-Semitic, who will tell you that Israel is trying to eliminate Arafat but, gee, just can't seem to get the job done.

The rest becomes clear only after you concentrate on the actual developments on the ground instead of what media commentators themselves THINK about those developments.

The agreement, the deal, from Madrid through Oslo to the present, is that Arafat would exert maximum effort to halt terrorism against the Israeli population.

Israeli military intelligence sees what so much of the world media choose NOT to see. Arafat condemns the suicide bombings in English – and praises them in Arabic. Arafat swears he's doing his best to curb them – and issues textbooks to Palestinian children with math problems such as: "If you kill one Jew on Monday, three Jews on Wednesday and five Jews on Friday, how many Jews have you killed for the week?"

Arafat thanks Israeli military intelligence for handing over roll calls of the actual suicide bombers-in-waiting, and then does nothing to apprehend them before they act.

Israel decided, probably after the Passover Massacre on Wednesday, March 27, that too much is enough. Israel is now going in and doing the job Arafat has consistently promised and equally consistently refused to do.

Arafat hoped a world friendly to him would continue to certify his rhetoric and phony crackdown gestures as "maximum effort."

Arafat hoped that all he had to do was say, after each act of terrorism: "I'm shocked. SHOCKED. Round up the usual suspects!'

And the gag worked into many shameful periods of overtime.

Now it's over. Now it's Sharon's turn to go in and do his best to live up to Arafat's broken promises.

One lightning-and-thunder question lets you grade your own knowledge of the Middle East. If there were no further acts of terrorism from the Palestinians, would there nonetheless be more Israeli tanks barrelling though centers of Palestinian population and more Israeli targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders?

Answer "No" and you're right. Regardless of any other disagreements between us, you and I can argue amiably into the night.

Answer "Yes" and I'd rather not deal with you. You're misinformed, and quite likely a bigot to boot.

Will Sharon's plan work? Who knows. There will always be willing suicide bombers.

But effective assaults on their training camps, bomb factories, explosive-belt-assembly workshops, leadership, finances, etc., may depress their numbers and their spirits.

Just as al-Qaeda hasn't been able to hit America since it's been on the run, maybe the suicide bombers will suffer some of that same impediment. Until Israel finds a peace partner willing and able to deliver on agreements, it may be in Israel's best interest to continue to do in the West Bank and Gaza exactly what America is doing in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Here's something even the fair and balanced commentators never get around to telling us. History offers many cases of enemies who overcame hatred and became friends. England and America come to mind. So do France and Germany. So do Italy and Yugoslavia.

But in all those cases, NEITHER SIDE EVER SOUGHT THE TOTAL EXTERMINATION OF THE OTHER.

England didn't want all the colonists slaughtered. America didn't want all the people in England slaughtered. America wanted independence and England wanted America.

Neither France nor Germany in three wars 20 years apart wanted the demise of the other's entire population. Both wanted territory.

After World War II, Italy and Yugoslavia both wanted Trieste at the top of the Adriatic Sea – Trieste, and that was all.

Oh, would that it were so in the Middle East. Israel wants to live peacefully within secure borders. The Palestinians, however, genuinely seek nothing less than the UTTER OBLITERATION of the Jewish state.

Arafat is good at denying it, at least in English. Palestinian leaders, their clergy, their teachers, their media and the so-called Arab Street, however, are not very good at concealing it.

Swagger? Hubris? Arrogance? I swear, not one millisquidgen of a molecule of any of these finds a home in my heart.

I will admit, however, to pride and gratitude that Jewish troops and Jewish tanks can at last drive up the world market price of killing Jews.

I see today.

And I remember the 1940s.

And today's plight, catastrophic as it is, beats those upbeat therapists in the Jewish ghetto shouting, "Oh, boy; just wait 'til the League of Nations and Roosevelt and the pope hear about this!"

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Israel
Middle East
War on Terrorism

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