From the Editor

Shimon Rations Terror

Alas, this came in after our new pamphlet What Shimon Says went to press. Peres said in an interview broadcast on Palestinian Television on November 23 that "if there are only two or three shooting incidents a day Israel would not bring it up with the Palestinians on condition that the PA makes 100% effort to prevent such incidents." (Reported in Haaretz, November 25, 2001) Consider: Peres directly informs the population of the Palestinian Authority that "two or three" terror attacks a day are O.K. This raises some important questions, of course. Does Peres also intend to ration how many people can be killed in those incidents? Is it only one person an incident? Two? Three? Twenty? Can one average out? If there are no incidents one day, do these count as unused vacation days, so that six "incidents" are permissible the next day? How about averaging out over a week? A month? We predict, under Peres' new rationing system, the Anthony Zinni "ceasefire," unlike the preceding Mitchell and Tenet ceasefires, will "hold." Hey, three incidents times, an average of eight victims a day, equals 168 "allowed" victims a week. The Arabs have never scored that well.

Advocating Evil

Haifa University economics professor Steven Plaut offers the simplest and best explanation why the U.S. administration's advocacy of a Palestinian state is so misguided. After listing some obvious reasons why a Palestinian state should be prevented (it will increase, not decrease violence; it will be an oppressive Third World kleptocracy; it will seek war with Israel, not peace), Plaut writes: "But perhaps the best reason why a Palestinian state should never be created was offered in George Bush's speech, without his realizing it, indeed in the very speech in which he demanded that a Palestinian state be created. Bush insists three times a day that the war against the Taliban and bin Laden is a war against evil. Yet the creation of a Palestinian state would be the rewarding of absolute evil. It would be the rewarding of decades of atrocities and Nazi xenophobia and aggression by Palestinians. And while there are plenty of other reasons why it should not be done, preventing that is the best reason."

The New vs. the Old Sharon

Aaron Lerner of IMRA (Independent Media Review and Analysis) points out that many years ago, Ariel Sharon made a name for himself when he cleaned out the Gaza Strip of terrorists. He marked it out with a grid and went through it cell by cell. Sharon seems to think that the IDF activities today represent a continuation of that very successful campaign. But there is a crucial difference: the younger Sharon didn't pull out from cleaned cells so that the terrorists could reorganize--the new Sharon is constantly giving the enemy a chance to regroup. The result? Each time around, the Palestinians learn the tactics of the IDF and develop ways to respond to them. Says Lerner: "Sharon isn't crushing Palestinian terror--he is training it."

Carville?

Is Sharon nursing a sex scandal? That's the only possible reason we can think of why Israel should be considering, as reports indicate, hiring Clinton's attack dog James Carville to guide Israel's public relations. On any other ground, it is madness. This is the man who, as Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden points out, has an unmatched ability to get under the skin of Republicans. But perhaps Sharon is caught in a time warp and thinks Clinton is still in the White House. Certainly his own policies suggest Barak is still sitting in the Prime Minister's chair.

The Everlasting Peace Process

September's Atlantic Monthly had a first-rate article by Samantha Power subtitled "Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen." The article carries a powerful message for Israel.

In a mere hundred days in 1994, Rwanda's Hutu government oversaw the murder of some 800,000 members of the Tutsi minority. Power lays a good part of the

(Continued on p.12)

Outpost               - 2 -               December 2001