Prof. Paul Eidelberg
Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes in The Gulag Archipelago: “In
keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it
appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand-fold
in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply
protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of
justice from beneath new generations. It is for this reason … that they
are growing up ‘indifferent.’ Young people are acquiring the conviction
that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.
It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country.”
President George Bush does not hesitate to call Muslim terrorists “evil-doers,”
and he labels the regimes that harbor them an “axis of evil.” He
refrains, however, from denouncing Islam as the seedbed of international terrorism,
lest he denigrate the religion of 1.2 billion Muslims and arouse unruly passions
within and beyond the United States.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also reticent on this inflammatory issue. In his July 10, 1996 address to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Netanyahu gratuitously declared: “[We have no quarrel] with Islam. We reject the thesis of an inevitable clash of civilizations [the position of such eminent professors as Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis]. We do not subscribe to the idea that Islam has replaced Communism as the new rival of the West, because our conflict is specific. It is with those militant fanatics who pervert the central tenets of a great faith toward violence and world domination.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s reference to Islam was misleading as well as unnecessary if not disarming. Anti-American as well as anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda floods the Arab-Islamic world makes Der Sturmer tame by comparison. Despite Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, Cairo’s state-controlled media denigrate anything Jewish, including “Old Testament.”
The military spearhead of Islamic hatred of Jews is none other than Yasser
Arafat, who praises suicide bombers as “martyrs” and is currently
waging jihad against the Jewish state. His schools indoctrinate Arab
children to hate Jews and to emulate homicide bombers.
Supported diplomatically and militarily by Egypt and other Arab-Islamic states,
and aided financially by the US and the EU, Arafat’s goal—facilitated
by the Oslo accords—is to depopulate and demoralize as well as truncate
Israel so as to hasten its coup de grace by Egypt, Syria, and other
members of the Arab League.
All this is well known to Mr. Netanyahu, who reminded Congress of the autocratic nature of Arab-Islamic states. Israel, he said, can have “peace arrangements” with such states, but this must be a “defensible peace,” that is, “we must retain assets essential to the defense of our country and sufficient to deter aggression.” However, the most important element of deterrence, as any military scientist knows, is the morale or spiritedness of one’s people. The morale or spiritedness of any people will be undermined when peace is divorced from justice, that is, when people see that evil not only goes unpunished but is rewarded.
The people of Israel have seen countless Arab crimes go unpunished. Even before the outbreak of the current war in September 29, 2000, hundreds of helpless Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by the PLO under orders of Yasser Arafat. Yet the people of Israel have seen this arch-murderer rewarded with money, land, and power. They have seen their own political leaders hobnobbing with Arafat and now or trivializing his horrific crimes by calling him “irrelevant.” By keeping silent about this monster, they have obliterated the distinction between man and beast.
Nietzsche defined man as a beast with red cheeks. Unlike a beast, man blushes—he has a sense of shame. It seems, however, that many politicians in the democratic world are shameless, else they would never have consorted with Arafat and dignified this godfather of international terrorism.
Come with me, then to Rumania. General Ian Pacepa, head of Rumanian Intelligence
under the former Ceaucescu regime, had this to say when Arafat visited Bucharest:
“I’ve never before seen so much cleverness, blood, and filth altogether
in one man.” Yes, Arafat’s hosts shook his hands, but Pacepa reports
they could hardly wait to repair to the lavatory!
If Israel’s political leaders remain silent about the evil personified
by Arafat—it is stamped on his face—nay, if they fail to bring this
war criminal to justice, they will implant evil in the souls of countless men.
They have already done so. The price, as Solzhenitsyn would understand, is horrible
to contemplate.