With the noblest of intentions, students last week stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of the Palestinian Authority. I have seen Palestinian children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks; I have seen the damage done by Israeli bulldozers-and I am sympathetic. But I have also seen the Israeli father who lost his wife and two children on an Israeli Kibbutz when a gunman burst in, sprayed the dining hall with automatic rifle fire, and then ran into another room and shot his two children. And after seeing this, I wonder why students would continue to stand with the Palestinian Authority. If there is one party in this mess that is guilty of the gravest of crimes, it is the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, who have done next to nothing to control the spread of terrorism in their country and nothing to ensure that Israeli civilians will no longer be killed in acts of terror in the name of religious fundamentalism.
Support for the Palestinian cause has picked up momentum at other universities as well. At Harvard and MIT, students and faculty members have been leading a crusade to encourage their universities to divest from companies that do business with Israel. Palestinian Solidarity Week, held last week at WU, was part of a resolution adopted by the Second National Student Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement. WU’s events-including the speaking invitation to Robert Fisk-were part of an attempt to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
But we cannot be naive about what support for the Palestinian cause amounts to. Palestinian terrorists do not want to engage in debate; they do not want peace. What they demand is the complete destruction of the state of Israel. I am not suggesting that every Palestinian person is a terrorist, but the responsibility must lie somewhere. A poll taken in June of this year by the independent Jerusalem Media and Communication Center found that 69 percent of Palestinians surveyed were in favor of suicide bombings.
If the Palestinian people were so opposed to the use of terror as a means of achieving political goals, they would be in the streets, calling for the arrest of members of Hamas or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade or for a change of government. If Palestinian civilians are not to blame, let us point the finger at their security forces or at Yassir Arafat. Can we honestly say that we support only the “good” Palestinians, those that do not support terror? How does one make such a distinction?
One cannot simply support the Palestinian people without supporting the Palestinian state. Palestinians are obviously dissatisfied with their life of curfews and violence. But that does not justify the killing of civilians. We should not tolerate in any way the killing of civilians as a means of redressing human rights grievances. The Palestini-ans have pursued a diplomatic solution only sporadically. They could have had a state in 1948, at the Camp David Accords, or at talks with President Clinton in 2000. At every opportunity, they have turned down the offer of statehood. What makes their claim more viable now, in light of recent violence on both sides?
Those who suggest that Israeli violence and Palestinian violence are interchangeable make dangerous assumptions of moral equivalence. Israel, though it tends to overreact, is nonetheless trying to defend itself against people that seek its destruction. At worst, Israel kills civilians by accident in the process of attacking suspected terrorist targets.
Palestinian terrorist organizations, however, kill civilians at random, targeting men, women and children regardless of their role in the present conflict. Such actions should be abhorrent to every student on this campus. There should be no excuses made for these cowardly actions, and no solidarity should be expressed with the people or government of a nation that condones terrorist tactics.