The editors of The Washington Times wrote a 500-word piece
that is so bizarre, it is impossible to discuss like a normal article. That's
because the editors have failed to respect the structure of a normal discussion-piece
on three levels.
See for yourself. The editorial came under the title: “When
a murderer is called a martyr,” and the subtitle: “The Palestinian Martyr's
Fund is flush with blood money from America .” It was published on July
27, 2017 in The Washington Times.
First, the editors speak of ethics in relation to the
situation in Palestine cum West-Bank cum Israel , without
once mentioning the words “war” or “occupation,” which is like speaking of an
accidental pregnancy without mentioning the unprotected casual sex that has led
to it.
Second, the editors equate the violent killing that's
committed by an angry spouse or a street hoodlum to that of a terrorist,
without defining what they mean by “terrorist or terrorism”.
Third, the editors use the word “martyr” and the words
“murder or murderer” several times in the piece without defining any of them.
Because the editors have denied us the clarity of their
thinking by failing at these levels, we have the right to judge them by the
method of conjecture. That is, we can guess what they might think if Russian
settlers invaded and occupied Crimea or Georgia or any of the old Soviet
republics they may decide someday to invade, occupy and suppress the local
inhabitants. But if we cannot make a guess, we'll ask the applicable questions.
What would the editors say if such policy was implemented by
the Russians, and kept for several decades during which time the systemic
stealing of properties, including the land, the buildings, and the water and
food supplies of the locals was done by the Russians openly and defiantly?
Would the editors recognize such behavior as being repeated acts of war? If a
local that's resisting the occupation kills a Russian settler – be that a
civilian or a soldier – would the editors consider such act, one of spousal
violence? Or would they consider it the senseless act of a street hoodlum? Or
would that be an act of terrorism in their eyes?
If during an altercation between Ukrainian and Russian
forces, one of each is killed, which of them will the editors of the Washington
Times call a martyr, and which will they call a terrorist?
Given that the editors end their article like this: “The
geopolitics of the Middle East may be complicated, but the morality of
terrorism is not; it's evil,” do they mean to say that an act of war – such as
the ongoing occupation of Palestine
– is a harmless game of geopolitics? Do they also mean that by comparison, the
act of a desperate kid who was robbed of a dignified life at birth because he
wasn't born a Jew, is evil no matter what the act he committed might have been?
The editors of the Washington Times will have to explain this mentality if they
want to be taken seriously.
If they consider the occupation to be more understandable
than a child's act of desperation when faced with a life of eternal agony under
that same occupation – they must stop whining when someone tells them the
Palestinians may be trying to arm themselves. On the contrary, the editors
should rejoice, even urge their congress of zombies to arm the Palestinians
with machine guns, bazookas and RPGs so that they may launch “acceptable” wars
against Israel
instead of going against its tanks, field artillery and helicopter gunships
with bare terrorist hands or biblical slingshots or serrated knives.
And then there is an idea which needs to be explored and
explained. When Israel does
targeted killing in Gaza or the West Bank, does
it deny the pilots who conduct such raids and their families any kind of
financial assistance because the pilots would have committed what Israel is
beginning to call a terrorist act? Or is it that a killing done by a Jew is
kosher, and must not be categorized as terrorism no matter how it was done and
what the consequences may have been?
How about the hypothetical case of an Israeli soldier that
might be capture and disarmed, but then manages to escape, only to be
confronted by the enemy once more. Having no “acceptable” weapon with which to
defend himself, he grabs a heavy object, hits the enemy on the head with it,
and kills him. Did this Jew commit an act of terror? Or is it that war is hell,
and the way to end it is to end the occupation?