inion Editorials are posted and archived on JN Online: wvvw.detroitjewishnews.com Rewarding Deception Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the organiza- s the United States considers its strategic tions it hoped would weaken Arafat. and tactical plans for responding to ter- America, of course, should have learned rorism, it ought to be mindful of the les- the lesson by reflecting on how its support sons that Israel has so painfully learned for Muslim fundamentalists as a over the last several decades of dealing force against Russia's troops in with the Palestinians. Afghanistan laid the groundwork One lesson is that is that old habits don't for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. die. Yasser Arafat may be weeping for But now Washington is talking America now, but the Palestinian leader is the same old about enlisting Iran and Syria and the terrorist he always was and will be to his dying day. PLO in its anti-terror coalition. That While claiming he supports the battle against ter- might, in the short term, provide some ror, Arafat continues to shelter terrorists in the West Arab and Muslim cover for launching Bank and the Gaza Strip. When Israeli authorities operations against bin Laden from identified the organizer of a shooting that killed one Pakistan, but, in the longer term, it will woman and wounded her husband Sept. 20, Arafat's harm American interests by compromising forces warned the suspect, Atef Abidat, not to be its moral authority. caught doing that again and let him go. Some corn- It is nastily ironic, of course, that to pla- mitment to fighting terrorism! cate Arab feelings the U.S. may have to Israel is correctly continuing to insist that Arafat exclude Israel nominally from its anti-ter- and the Palestinians provide 48 hours of nonvio- ror coalition. But asking your best friend lence before it allows any substantive negotiations to sit on the sidelines is very different on a longer-term process for maintaining security. from inviting his most implacable foes to To provide that, Arafat must actually crack down on be the first-string offensive linemen. the terror cells, sending the leaders back to the jails The United States should seize this from which he freed them a year ago. Actions will moment to make the terrorist states — speak more loudly than his words of sorrow for among which the Palestinians would be America or his photo-op blood donation. included if they were a state — under- The second lesson for America is to be careful stand fully why targeting innocent civil- about whom you recruit to fight your presumed foe. ians cannot be justified or rewarded. When Arafat and the Palestine Liberation The world will better respect us if we Organization were using Lebanon as a base of opera- avoid marriages of convenience with the tions against Israel, the Jewish state encouraged fun- very states that helped make terrorism damentalist Muslim organizations to become an such a respectable force in the eyes of too alternate Palestinian leadership. Now it is reaping many Arabs and too many Muslims. ❑ the whirlwind of the suicide bombers sent by Dry Bones A EDITORIAL Se l co Wi-leM IT CAN it\Nri6 mite oNitote 1)6MOCaCY 1146 tAtI) eAs -r - co IN Jowl Negotiating With Terrorists T he horror of Sept. 11 should have made clear to us all that the slaughter of inno- cents for political ends is, without excep- tion, unacceptable. Terrorism is to be accorded precisely zero toler- ance. That it can no longer be tacitly accepted as an unpleasant form of negotiation should be beyond question. Indeed, its total cessation must be an absolute precondition to negotiation. Since the day he took office, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has stated plainly that he will not resume discussions with the Palestinian Authority until it ceases the indiscriminate murder of Israeli citizens. While this simple policy should have made eminent sense before Sept. 11, its cor- David Victor of Bloomfield Hills co-chairs the Michigan chapter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and is a member of AIPAC's national exec- utive committee. He's a past member of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit executive committee. rectness today seems inescapable. Indeed, you would think this would be among the very first lessons learned from our national tragedy. You would think so, but it appears you might be wrong. Despite both Yasser Arafat's continued use of terror and, according to the official PA DAVID newspaper, support by 70 per- VICTOR cent of Palestinians for suicide Community attacks against American tar- gets in the Middle East, our Views administration is insisting that Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres meet with Arafat in a bid to revive the peace process. . It goes without saying that Americans would never consider sitting across the bargaining table from those responsible for the carnage in New York City, near Washington, D.C., and on the Pennsylvania countryside. Why, then, the insistence that Israel negotiate with an organization that is an up-and-fully-running terror machine? The answer is as troubling as the request. To quote the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the administration believes "that an opportunity now exists to resume the peace process, and that this would be a signifi- cant contribution to the American effort to bring Arab and Muslim states into an international coali- tion against terrorism." Translation? It appears we are now endeavoring to purchase cooperation in the coming war on terror by denying a basic truth about terrorism — that its practice is unnacceptable and its absence is an absolute prerequisite to negotiation. Now consider the identity of those whose assis- tance we feel compelled to buy. They include regimes that are themselves seats of terrorist support (Syria and the PA), countries that receive billions of dollars annually in American aid (Egypt and Jordan) and independent nations that today exist as such only because of our military (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and any other Gulf state you care to name). NEGOTIATING WITH TERRORISTS on page 33 9/28 2001