Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 23, 1990 TAG: 9005230497
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By all accounts, the assailant was acting alone. If so, Foreign Minister Moshe Arens has a point. "In the United States, very often similar incidents occur when a crazy person takes to the street and shoots people," Arens said. "There is no connection with the government."
But the massacre did not occur in the United States. It occurred in the tinderbox that is the Middle East. In this case, the context can't be divorced from the crime.
Predictably, one man's gunfire kindled a blaze that has spread through the Arab populations of the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Predictably, violence has begotten violence. One man's derangement has become cause for Palestinian violence against Israelis, which has become cause for renewed military suppression and violence against Palestinians, which has become cause for heightened tensions throughout the region.
At least as many Palestinians have been killed in the aftermath as in Sunday's massacre.
Behind the violence remains the backdrop of Israel's paralysis in the pursuit of peace and its continuing occupation of Arab populations.
From time to time, Israelis have complained that Americans hold higher expectations of Israel than they do of its Arab neighbors. But adherence to a higher standard is to be expected from an ally, and from a nation that is the only real example of democracy in the region.
At the moment, the Israeli democracy is not functioning well. Much of the difficulty stems from a system of proportional representation that, by allowing the balance of parliamentary power to be held by tiny ultra-orthodox parties, has produced political deadlock. The rise of Israeli jingoism hasn't helped, and the system has failed above all because it cannot produce a government capable of negotiating a peace settlement.
For some Israelis, occupation of Arab territories is not so much a security measure and bargaining chip against hostile neighbors as it is the booty of war and a place to make permanent settlements in fulfillment of biblical promises. For some Israelis, exercising a claimed right to settle in the Christian quarter of Jerusalem is more important than maintaining the delicate balance by which that multi-ethnic city has enjoyed a measure of peace.
Not all Israelis think that way. It may well be a minority view. If so, however, the minority is strong enough to influence government politics and policies, to Israel's detriment.
Nor can Sunday's crime near Tel Aviv be divorced entirely from Israel's role as occupying power. This was madder than most, but it was not the first example of vigilante justice against Arabs by Israeli citizens.
Occupations exact a heavy toll on occupier as well as occupied; part of the toll is the dimunition of moral sensibility. If the deranged killer saw Arabs as somehow less than human, his madness is shared to a degree by many Israelis who aren't deranged.
The crazed American killer postulated by Foreign Minister Arens shoots indiscriminately. An apter analogy would be a demented American killer who stalks blacks. That, too, would be the mad act of a single man. But that, too, could not be divorced entirely from history, from traditions of animosity and prejudice.
In the absence of peace and justice, the violence by Israeli and Palestinian, civilian and soldier, sane and insane alike, can only grow. As the victims grow more numerous, distinctions drawn among the motives for killing will diminish in significance.
by CNB