One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter

By J. Zel Lurie

J. Zel Lurie
J. Zel Lurie

DELRAY BEACH, Florida — Some random thoughts on recent events in Israel and Palestine.

The Jews and Terror. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, dedicated a square in Ramallah to the people that perpetrated the massacre at the Munich Olympic games in 1972. The Palestinians called them martyrs. Other Arabs called them freedom fighters. We call them terrorists.
Right-wing Israelis immediately pounced on this event to prove that Abbas supported the terrorists and was a foe of peace.

We have honored a Jewish terrorist, Menachem Begin, whom we call a freedom fighter. His Irgun blew up a wing of the King David hotel in 1946, which housed the secretary of the British Mandatory government of Palestine. This act of terror killed 91 civilians, many of them members of the Yishuv which is what we called the Jews in Palestine.

In the same period there were other acts of Irgun terror. Two volunteers went to Egypt to assassinate a high official of the British government in London. These shocking acts of terror were cited by the British government when it told the United Nations in 1947 that it was getting out of Palestine and giving up the mandate.

These acts of Jewish terror, which we now call freedom fighters, have been honored in many ways by Israelis. Should we attack Mahmoud Abbas for remembering the perpetrators of the Munich massacre because they have not been as successful as the Irgun and therefore have not yet earned the title of freedom fighters?

The Klinghoffer Opera at the Metropolitan. This opera tells a story of Fatah terrorists, who have not earned the title of freedom fighters, hijacking a cruise liner in the Mediterranean and threatening to kill a passenger every 15 minutes unless the Israeli government freed a number of Fatah prisoners.

They separated the Jewish passengers and put their names in a container. This can be called an anti-Semitic act. The first passenger to be picked happened to be an elderly American Jew named Klinghoffer in a wheelchair. He was shot on deck and his corpse was dumped into the sea. The news media portrayed a man in a wheelchair being dumped into the sea. They did not know that the terrorists were burying a corpse in a traditional burial at sea.

The opening of the opera at the Met last month was greeted by demonstrators crying anti-Semitism. Abe Foxman, the veteran head of the ADL, shouted “Anti-Semitism” in a TV interview. “Have you seen the opera?” asked the interviewer. “No,” he replied. “Have you read the libretto?” “No,” he replied.

But he knew that it was anti-Semitic. Actually, the goal of the Fatah hijackers was not to attack American Jews, but to free their fellow prisoners.

How the Fatah terrorists became Fatah peacemakers. Fatah was founded by Yassir Arafat, who signed his letters “yours for the revolution”. It became the dominant faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). There were other acts of Fatah terror. There was the brutal murder of Israeli school children in Maalot and there were over a score of suicide bombers “incidents” as the Israelis call them.
The Fatah charter calls for the destruction of Israel as does the Hamas charter today. Yassir Arafat gave up the “revolution” and under intense pressure of the United States Secretary of State he announced that the clauses in the charter calling for the destruction of Israel were “nullified”. We would say “null and void”.

In the same announcement he said that a committee headed by Hanan Ashrawi had been appointed to draft a new charter.

I am unaware if this committee has ever met, but Ashrawi is still the spokeswoman for the PLO.

So it might be said that the Fatah charter is still in effect and is similar to the Hamas charter. From this angle it would seem that the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas is natural but Hamas has not adjusted to it.

Last week was the tenth anniversary of Arafat’s death. The Palestine Authority and Fatah thought it would be an appropriate time to try to move back into Gaza. They called for a rally commemorating Yassir Arafat and built the stage for the rally. This stage was bombed. The PA cancelled the rally, blaming Hamas. A Hamas spokesman said the cancellation was an internal PA decision. How dare they blame us?
While remembering Irgun terror before the state was born and Fatah post-state terror, I recall some acts of Jewish terror. I recall that Jewish terror has continued to this day by a faction of the Jewish settlers. They label it price tag and is supposed to be retaliation for minor acts against settlement. Prior to the price tag error, there was a serious attack on mayors in Arab cities. The mayor of Nablus lost his legs when his car blew up and another Arab mayor noticed a device attached to the lock of his garage and he called the police. A Jewish mine detector lost his life in neutralizing the bomb.

Naftali Bennett in the New York Times. Naftali Bennett represents the Jewish settlers in Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government. Bennett had threatened to leave the government and force new elections if Netanyahu agreed to Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace proposals. Whether Netanyahu would have agreed to the American proposals if he was not faced with the threat of new elections is not clear.
On Friday, November 7th, Bennett brought his case to the American public in an op-ed piece in The New York Times, headed “For Israel, Two-State Is No Solution”.

He presents a four step solution which might appeal to an American who is ignorant of the real situation in the West Bank or is a right-wing American Jew who prefers to be ignorant.

Bennett never mentions the 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank who are living under the daily humiliation perpetrated by their Israeli army rulers in the name of security. Bennett says that Israel can never withdraw from the West Bank and feel secure.

My counterargument which is shared by many European governments, and millions of Israelis, and American Jews is that Israel will never feel secure while the occupation continues.

Only peace and the strong Israeli army ready to act against violators of peace can make Israelis feel secure.
*
Lurie, a centenarian still writing about world affairs, has had a long journalistic career in Israel and the United States.  He may be contacted via jzel.lurie@sdjewishworld.com

4 thoughts on “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”

  1. Lurie says “My counterargument which is shared by many European governments, and millions of Israelis, and American Jews is that Israel will never feel secure while the occupation continues.” Fine, but what does he suggest they do to feel secure then? Just giving in to Palestinian demands with no guarantees regarding Israelis’ security is sheer suicide, i.e. idiocy. It’s one thing to clamor that the occupation is what is making Israel unsafe, but if you don’t have anything tangible and credible to suggest to replace it, you’re better off keeping quiet. If I were an Israeli, I would be extremely offended by these Americans, Jews or not, who think they’re so smart they know what’s best for them to live with the Palestinians. From the comfort and safety of Florida or California, any moron can be an armchair general, but when the results of their suggestions are Israelis being killed, they should have the decency to shut up. The central problem, which people like Lurie and other delusional liberals never want to face, is that the Palestinians not only do not want to make peace with Israel, but are also utterly incapable of running their own country-to-be. They have a lot of growing up to do in order to behave like adults rather than the spoiled brats they are. In the meantime, Israel is doing fine despite it all and the occupation can last as long as the Palestinians don’t get their act together. Stop berating Israel for merely defending itself from unrelenting Arab rejectionism and focus instead on educating the Arabs that Israel is there to stay and will remain the only Jewish State in the world, whether they like it or not. These are non-negotiable facts that they need to internalize and accept. Finding excuses for their inexcusable behavior is not helping anyone, least of all the Palestinians themselves.

  2. Arafat, the Fatah terrorist, didn’t became a peacemaker, he just fooled the jews, especially those who begged to be fooled up. The entire “peace-process” hoax had just been concocted so as to bring terror into our land and homes.
    But this is only just one instance of screaming untruth, the entire oped is overflowed with, and makes it impossible to specifically comment on.

  3. The following was received from the Religious Zionists of America:

    November 13, 2014

    Letters to the Editor
    San Diego Jewish World

    To the editor:

    Jesse Z. Lurie (November 12) refers to what he calls “the 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank who are living under the daily humiliation perpetrated by their Israeli army rulers in the name of security.”

    Mr. Lurie does a disservice to the memory of the late Yitzhak Rabin. Back in 1995, Prime Minister Rabin withdrew Israel’s forces from the cities in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) where 98% of the Palestinian Arabs reside. Later, in 2005, Israel withdrew from all of Gaza. Thus virtually all of the Palestinian Arabs live under Palestinian rule, not under “Israeli army rulers,” as Mr. Lurie erroneously claims. They run their own affairs, and vote in their own elections. They enjoy self-rule in every significant respect but two: they do not have total control of their borders, and they do not have a full-fledged army.

    If Mr. Lurie wants to argue that the Palestinians should be given an army and control of their borders, let him make that case. But don’t pretend that this is a debate over the “occupation” of the Palestinians–that occupation ended long ago. It’s a debate over whether Israel should be restricted to its old 9-miles-wide borders; whether it would be safe to have a sovereign Palestinian state with an army next door; whether Jerusalem should be torn in two; and whether the historic homeland of the Jewish people, including some of the holiest sites in Judaism, should be returned to the Arab forces that desecrated and destroyed them prior to 1967.

    As for Mr. Lurie’s claim that the Palestinian endure “daily humiliation,” that too is a canard. He is evidently referring to the checkpoints that the Israeli Army maintains in various parts of the territories. Those checkpoints are not an act of oppression or persecution. They serve exactly the same legitimate purpose as the checkpoints in every American airport: to capture terrorists. Does Mr. Lurie feel “humiliated” every time he has to remove his shoes while going through the Fort Lauderdale Airport? Do the editors of the Jewish World feel humiliated every time they pass through the security checkpoint at John Wayne Airport? Somehow I doubt it.

    Sincerely,

    Moshe Phillips
    Member of the Board, Religious Zionists of America
    New York, NY

    1. Donald H. Harrison, editor of San Diego Jewish World, responds: Moshe, we hardly ever go to John Wayne Airport. San Diego is served by Lindbergh Field which is right on San Diego Bay! And, no, most of us don’t feel humiliated taking off our shoes, but we do like to make certain before we leave the house that there are no holes in our socks!

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