Fisk on the Israeli colonial war

Robert  Fisk: The lies leaders tell when they want to go to war

30 March 2002

How much longer can Ariel Sharon pretend that he's fighting in the
"war against terror"? How much longer are we supposed to believe this
nonsense? How much longer can the Americans remain so gutlessly silent
in the face of a vicious conflict which is coming close to obscuring
the crimes against humanity of 11 September? Terror, terror,
terror. Like a punctuation mark, the word infects every Israeli
speech, every American speech, almost every newspaper article. When
will someone admit the truth: that the Israelis and Palestinians are
engaged in a dirty colonial war which will leave both sides shamed and
humiliated?

Just listen to what Sharon has been saying in the past 24
hours. "Arafat is an enemy. He decided on a strategy of terror and
formed a coalition of terror." That's pretty much what President Bush
said about Osama bin Laden. But what on earth does it mean? That
Arafat is actually sending off the suicide bombers, choosing the
target, the amount of explosives? If he was, then surely Sharon would
have sent his death squads after the Palestinian leader months
ago. After all, his killers have managed to murder dozens of
Palestinian gunmen already, including occasional women and children
who get in the way.

The real problem with Arafat is that he has a lot in common with
Sharon: old, ruthless and cynical; both men have come to despise each
other. Sharon believes that the Palestinians can be broken by military
power. He doesn't realise what the rest of the world learned during
Sharon's own 1982 siege of Beirut: that the Arabs are no longer
afraid. Once a people lose their fear, they cannot be re-inoculated
with fear. Once the suicide bomber is loose, the war cannot be
won. And Arafat knows this.

No, of course he doesn't send the bombers off on their wicked missions
to restaurants and supermarkets. But he does know that every suicide
bombing destroys Sharon's credibility and proves that the Israeli
leader's promises of security are false. Arafat is well aware that the
ferocious bombers are serving his purpose – however much he may
condemn them in public.

But he -- like Sharon -- also believes his enemies can be broken by
fire. He thinks that the Israelis can be frightened into withdrawing
from the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem. Ultimately, the
Israelis probably will have to give up their occupation. But the Jews
of Israel are not going to run or submit to an endless war of
attrition. Even if Sharon is voted out of power -- a prospect for
which many Israelis pray -- the next Israeli prime minister is not
going to negotiate out of fear of the suicide bomber.

Thus the rhetoric becomes ever more cruel, ever more revolting. Hamas
calls its Jewish enemies "the sons of pigs and monkeys", while Israeli
leaders have variously bestialised their enemies as "serpents",
"crocodiles", "beasts" and "cockroaches". Now we have an Israeli
officer -- according to the Israeli daily Ma'ariv -- advising his men
to study the tactics adopted by the Nazis in the Second World War. "If
our job is to seize a densely packed refugee camp or take over the
Nablus casbah, and if this job is given to an (Israeli) officer to
carry out without casualties on both sides, he must before all else
analyse and bring together the lessons of past battles, even --
shocking though this might appear -- to analyse how the German army
operated in the Warsaw ghetto."

Pardon? What on earth does this mean? Does this account for the
numbers marked by the Israelis on the hands and foreheads of
Palestinian prisoners earlier this month? Does this mean that an
Israeli soldier is now to regard the Palestinians as sub-humans --
which is exactly how the Nazis regarded the trapped and desperate Jews
of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944?

Yet from Washington comes only silence. And silence, in law, gives
consent. Should we be surprised? After all, the US is now making the
rules as it goes along. Prisoners can be called "illegal combatants"
and brought to Guantanamo Bay with their mouths taped for semi-secret
trials. The Afghan war is declared a victory -- and then suddenly
explodes again. Now we are told there will be other "fronts" in
Afghanistan, a spring offensive by "terrorists". Washington has also
said that its intelligence agencies -- the heroes who failed to
discover the 11 September plot -- have proof (undisclosed, of course)
that Arafat has "a new alliance" with Iran, which brings the
Palestinians into the "axis of evil."

Is there no one to challenge this stuff? Just over a week ago, CIA
director George Tenet announced that Iraq had links with
al-Qa'ida. "Contacts and linkages", have been established, he told
us. And that's what the headlines said. But then Tenet continued by
saying that the mutual antipathy of al-Qa'ida and Iraq towards America
and Saudi Arabia "suggests that tactical cooperation between them is
possible?" "Suggests?" "Possible?" is that what Mr Tenet calls proof?

But now everyone is cashing in on the "war against terror". When
Macedonian cops gun down seven Arabs, they announce that they are
participating in the global "war on terror". When Russians massacre
Chechens, they are now prosecuting the "war on terror". When Israel
fires at Arafat's headquarters, it says it is participating in the
"war on terror". Must we all be hijacked into America's dangerous
self-absorption with the crimes of 11 September? Must this vile war
between Palestinians and Israelis be distorted in so dishonest a way?

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