Not long ago a woman was forcibly raped in Canada by a
horrible man. The case went to criminal court where there was no denial that
the incident did take place.
Whatever the defense might have been, the judge accusingly
asked the victim why she did not keep her knees together. Known as blaming the
victim, this mentality caused uproar in the country, and the judge was forced
to resign. The reason why someone would blame the victim is to establish the
principle that she contributed to her misfortune, a move that would reduce the
responsibility of the rapist.
If the judge had gotten away with it, a precedent would have
been established to the effect that regardless as to whether or not there was
consent, a rape need not be viewed as a crime but a shared responsibility. And
so, when it comes to sentencing, it will only be a matter of establishing if
the responsibility falls equally on both sides or slightly more to one side
than the other. Now imagine a rape victim having to go through a procedure like
this.
Can there be something worse than that? Yes there can be.
Imagine the victim being treated like the witches of a bygone era. She is kept
in the basement of the rapist while the case is adjudicated by the cohort of the
rapist, sitting in the courtroom as presiding judge.
You don't have to go too far into the latest of Elliott
Abrams's articles to get the feeling he is articulating a case based on the
approach of the demented Canadian judge. All you need to do is look at the
title of the article: “What's the Palestinian Contribution to Peace?” It was
published on March 22, 2017 on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations.
What we have here is a Palestinian population that's kept in
a concentration camp called the West Bank . It
has the look of a rape victim that's kept in a basement. And you have an
Elliott Abrams suggesting that the Palestinian victims must do something to
please the criminals responsible for the horror perpetrated on them in concert
with their American cohorts. If you must know from where Abrams got his idea,
you'll find the answer in the article where you'll see that the philosophical
construct he put together, was based on his quoting the work of Efraim Inbar;
another American Jew.
But before quoting Inbar, Abrams tells of three principles
he likes to see become the basis upon which the negotiations can proceed
between the Palestinians and the Israelis. They are: (1) the continuation of
Israeli settlement activities even if that should happen on a limited basis;
(2) only then can small steps be taken to improve the Palestinian economy; and
(3) the spelling out of what the Palestinians must do to merit the trade-off
delineated in (1) and (2).
Abrams says that the first two principles were taken up by
Jason Greenblatt who, as representative of the American administration, visited
the region and conferred with the Palestinians and the Israelis. What is left
to discuss, he says, is the third principle. And this is when Abrams quotes
Efraim Inbar who espouses a scary idea. In fact, he forcefully tries to justify
a philosophy you may call: The blameless rapist.
Inbar began with this complaint: “It is odd to offer carrots
to the Palestinians,” his view being that “the Palestinians [are] fed to
prevent their erupting into violence.” What this goon goes on to say is worse
than the question posed by the demented Canadian judge. He is not suggesting
that the victim should have kept her knees together; he is suggesting that if
she did, her move would have amounted to an act of violence. This would have
made her the aggressor, he says, rendering her singularly responsible for what
happened to her. No, that thing, Efraim Inbar, is not a goon; he is a wild
two-legged animal.
Elliott Abrams picks it up from there and elaborates on
Efraim's complaint, beginning with this: “The channeling of aid to terrorists
and their families to which Ephraim Inbar refers...” Whereas people under
occupation have always produced freedom fighters that history recognized as
icons of selfless nobility, bestowing on them the stature of a Charles de
Gaulle or a Nelson Mandela, the Jews want to reverse that order.