[(Continued from p.5)]
settlements, with no PLO quid pro quo, is an open declaration that no act of violence by Arabs will ever go unrewarded. It sets the most dangerous precedent imaginable. Eviction of Jews from large swaths of their homeland while never evicting a single Arab from anywhere has become the guiding principle for all future diplomacy.14. While criticizing the PLO's "lack of action" to stop the Holocaust, the joint announcement does not explicitly denounce Arafat for leading, ordering and initiating most of the terrorism. There are no American sanctions against the PLO for its non-compliance with any of its previous commitments, nor any sanctions against it for the endless mass murders it has committed.
15. The plan envisages Palestinian "refugees" being resettled in Arab states, including the future "state" of "Palestine." The word "only" is conspicuously absent.
16. Nothing in the agreement is conditioned upon the PLO ending its campaign to destroy Israel, nor upon its acknowledgement of Israel's right to exist.
17. The "plan" abandons the "Land for Peace" formula imposed on Israel by its leftist governments of the past, and replaces it with "Land for Nothing."
18. The plan is anti-democratic. Sharon ran for office opposing just such a plan being touted by the Labor Party under Amram Mitzna. Voters elected Sharon on that platform and because they opposed Mitzna's plan, yet here is Sharon implementing it by fiat.
19. Ma'ariv, on April 16, reports that the plan has secret unpublished clauses involving Israeli agreement to additional concessions not stated in the public "deal." The White House knows the contents of this document. Israeli voters do not. What does that suggest to you?
20. Sharon, President Bush, and Prime Minister Blair all still describe this "new" plan as a stage in the "Road Map" that will install an armed terrorist state in the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Steven Plaut is professor of economics at Haifa University.
Four American civilians were captured by a mob, tortured, lynched, cut up like pieces of meat, their amputated bodies dragged along the ground and then hung in public. As these infernal scenes unfolded, twelve year old children shouted "Hurrah for Islam." All this happened in Falllujah, an Arab Sunnite city in Iraq, a former stronghold of Saddam Hussein's regime. And it was an identical replay of another lynching three and a half years ago, this one of two Israelis gone astray in Ramallah at the beginning of the current Israeli-Arab war. These two people also were captured by a Palestinian Arab mob, tortured, lynched, disemboweled. Their executioners plunged their hands into their blood, in the name of Islam, and then, in a sign of victory, brandished their palms dripping with blood.
Paul Bremer, the chief of the allied administration in Iraq, has promised that the murders of Falujah will be avenged. Certainly, but how? When the Israeli army retook control of Ramallah in 2002, it did not destroy the city or engage in other forms of collective reprisal. It was content with searching for those directly responsible, who could be identified with certainty, and turning them over to a tribunal. Will Americans do the same? It's probable. I understand the Israeli response. I can understand the American response if it is of the same kind. But I ask myself questions. And I put them before you.
The first question: What does Islam do? What do Muslims do? What do the authorized and recognized representatives of this religion and this civilization do, in the Near East or elsewhere, and notably in Europe? Fallujah and Ramallah were commited in their name. Have they protested? Have they protested in a clear, loud, convincing and unambiguous manner? On Fallujah, a little, just enough not to make the U.S. too angry. As for Ramallah, virtually not at all, since Israel is merely Israel and the Jews are only Jews. Not one fatwa launched from the height of the mosques, not in 2001, not in 2004, against the lynchers, no curse, no excommunication, no call for contrition, no ceremony of repentance. Yes, certain Muslims, and even a few countries with large Muslim populations, including some religious leaders, have dissociated themselves from these acts, but not the most powerful and most listened-to scholars and princes of the Islamic world.
One can, one ought, to derive a simple conclusion from this. If all religions, all civilizations, including Islam, are worthy of respect, the current leaders of Islam do not conform to what one would expect from them, given the behavior of most other religious and spiritual leaders, or even simply the elementary universal rules of morality and the rights of man. Islam is going through a profound crisis, and it must be helped, in its own interest as well as that of other religions and civilizations, to reform itself, to help true Muslims, the children of Abraham, to take spiritual power over the hearts of their peoples and communities. Such a true Muslim, the iman of Rome, Abdul Hadi Palacci, two years ago put out a warning concerning French public opinion: "Your Islam will be in the image of
[(Continued on p.7)]
Outpost - 6 - May 2004