Barry Farber
Monday, April 29, 2002

Can we forget that for a while and concentrate instead on "word" inflation.

Grade inflation can cause dummies to look smarter on their resumes than they really are.

Word inflation can kill.

Word inflation became seriously noticeable in the 1960s. Vulgar publications began to appear on newsstands and cheering youth hailed the bold new freedom of what they decided to call the "underground press."

Excuse me! The underground press was the crudely mimeographed sheet of paper giving the captive peoples of Nazi-held Europe the genuine war news from the BBC shortwave – not a multicolored tabloid with explicit pictures of genitalia flapping in all directions and costing 10 times the cost of a good news magazine.

The underground press existed to teach oppressed populations how best to rise up against Hitler and exhort them to do so – not to teach young people how best to seduce each other into group sex and exhort them to do so.

Those caught producing the real underground press were shot against stone walls in Nazi prisons – not interviewed approvingly on talk shows. Those involved in the real underground press knew they were likely to wind up dead – not rich.

Likewise, the word "ghetto." Ghetto is the word all Europe glommed onto to describe an enclosed area of a city into which Jews were clustered for the purpose of, at best, segregation and, at worst, extermination.

Ghetto was never intended to describe an American urban community less affluent than neighboring areas and populated by minorities. You didn't get out of the Warsaw Ghetto by taking the A-train.

And that brings us now to the word "occupation," usually modified by the two adjectives "brutal" and "Israeli."

Hollywood gets some things right, among them German occupations and Japanese occupations. (Hollywood developed some kind of fatigue after World War II and never depicted many Russian occupations.)

An "occupation" goes like this. The occupier enters the town with a motorcycle vanguard, followed by armored cars, personnel carriers, tanks and support vehicles. The cowed inhabitants of the conquered town gingerly approach the newly erected bulletin board in the village square to read what it was the jack-booted conqueror just nailed up there.

It turns out to be a long list of things they hereinafter MUST do and must NOT do in virtually all aspects of life. And if the conqueror later thinks of additional musts and must-nots, those afterthoughts will be nailed up alongside the initial "verboten" decrees.

Classically a summary execution or two by pistol in the hands of occupying officers and a few public hangings set the mood the occupier prefers. "Humiliation," you say? In real occupations the subdued population never has the luxury of worrying about humiliation. They're too busy concentrating on their fear.

During the Six-Day War, when Israeli troops stormed Jordanian-held east Jerusalem, they were closely followed by agents of Histadrut, the Israeli labor federation, demanding parity – that means EQUALITY – for the Arab workers in what had just become "occupied" by Israel.

There was absolutely no – none, zero, nada – order, mandate, ruling, ukase or guideline as to how the Arabs now under Israeli control had to modify their lives or behavior.

Israeli General Moshe Dayan went from mosque to mosque, removed his boots, and assured the imams they would be respected and protected and, by the way, they would be perfectly free to denounce Israel from their pulpits. "Say what you please to your congregation," said Gen. Dayan as he took his leave. "You're in a free country now!"

Have you ever heard anything like that in all history?

I could stop right there. But it would short-change Israel to stop right there.

Every Arab who fell under Israeli "occupation" was free to live his life exactly as he had when the flag overhead was that of Jordan, Egypt or Syria – with a few exceptions. He had to put up with such "humiliations" as better job opportunities, education and medical care in Israel. He was suddenly free to enjoy the First World facilities and advantages of West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv or, if he preferred, leave with his family for Paris, Tunis or Dearborn, Mich.

The Arabs of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and Golan were actually LIBERATED by the Israeli occupation. They could at last move freely, talk freely, deal freely in business, complain freely about alleged Israeli misdeeds regarding their property, or whatever. They could also sue freely in fair and independent Israeli courts, even if the defendants were Israeli officials.

Could a Pole – forget a JEWISH Pole; could a CATHOLIC Pole – have spoken freely against the Nazi occupation? Could he have said, "I don't like it here anymore. I want to go to America"?

Could an Indonesian under Japanese occupation have said, "I want compensation for the mess the Japanese troops made of my inn after they took it over"?

Could a Lithuanian under Russian occupation have said, "You people are impossible. I'm out of here. I'm going to Sweden"?

Far from denouncing the "brutal Israeli occupation," how can honest people who know the facts resist PRAISING Israel's treatment of those from whose land was launched the repeated attempts to destroy Israel itself.

It would be instructive to know how many who criticize "Israeli occupation" in free-world media are familiar with the story of the Allenby Bridge. Please don't yawn. You've got to know about the Allenby Bridge.

From the instant of Israel's birth in 1948, to 1994, Israel and King Hussein's Jordan were always at war – sometimes actually, always officially. That didn't change when Israel took the West Bank from Jordan in 1967. When Israeli troops took the entire West Bank, the economies of both Jordan and the West Bank were threatened.

There was crucially important trade between Jordan and what had been theirs, the suddenly-Israeli West Bank. Israel acted immediately to help those Arabs threatened by the changeover of power. (Did Nazi, Japanese, Russian or other conquerors ever think about things like this?)

There was, mind you, a state of WAR between Israel and Jordan. Nonetheless, at the Allenby Bridge connecting the Israeli-controlled West Bank and Jordan, the Israelis permitted NORMAL TRAFFIC ACROSS THE BRIDGE! (Almost normal, that is. The vehicles coming into Israel from Jordan had to be stripped-down skeletons with no hiding places for bombs or weapons.)

The Jordanian merchants of goods and vegetables were allowed by their Israeli "enemies" to cross to the Israeli side of the bridge. Their vehicles were inspected. They were then allowed to proceed TO AN ISRAELI CUSTOMS HOUSE where their cargo was quickly inspected and cleared if innocent, whereupon they were waved onward INTO TERRITORY WITH WHICH THOSE JORDANIANS SAID THEY WERE AT WAR!

Speak up, you surviving German, Japanese, Russian and other occupiers of conquered territory! Did your folks ever do anything like that? Was a Latvian ever allowed to sue the Soviet Union for confiscation of property? Was a Norwegian merchant ever assured that Nazi troops would keep open his trading channels to Sweden? Were occupied Belgians allowed by Berlin to continue selling their chocolates to England?

Interesting stuff, huh? Apparently, there are occupations … and there are OCCUPATIONS!

The Israeli treatment of captured populations had a lot in common with the American treatment of post-war Germany and Japan.

America and Israel both brought good things to those who had attacked them and tried to destroy them. And so it would have remained in the Arab-inhabited territories had not the car bombers and suicide-killers gone to work.

Can anybody seriously allege otherwise? Will anybody step up to a microphone under his own name and say, "Okay, Israel was generous and humanitarian after the fighting. But whether or not their citizens were subsequently attacked, they would eventually have said, 'Wait a minute. We forgot something. Let's go in and mess up Jenin! ' "

Remember how Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, Mike Dukakis' running mate, demolished Sen. Dan Quayle in the vice presidential debate of 1988? It looked spontaneous, but it was a well-planned ambush.

Quayle, running with George Bush Sr., was known for bringing up his Senate attendance record, which compared favorably with that of John F. Kennedy, whenever he had a chance.

Bentsen's handlers crafted a riff guaranteed to be the debating equivalent of a nuclear device, and it was. Bentsen rehearsed and mastered the bit to perfection and let it fly on time and on target.

The minute Quayle began comparing himself to Jack Kennedy, even on a pedestrian matter like attendance, Bentsen smiled laconically and said, "I knew Jack Kennedy. I worked with Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was my friend. Senator, YOU'RE NO JACK KENNEDY!"

I have a dream that some supporter of Israel on some TV talk show will wait until his Palestinian adversary starts railing against the "brutal Israeli occupation."

Then I want to see that same laconic smile and hear a Bentsen-like voice say, "Mustafa, I've known occupations. I've seen occupations – German occupations, Japanese occupations, Russian occupations. "Mustafa, what you're living under is no occupation!"

Dan Quayle didn't deserve it.

Mustafa does.

Barry Farber's daily radio program can be heard on Talk America Radio Networks, www.talkamerica.com.

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