Of course, everyone is saying that. For what else can civilized people say?
But what is different with the sickness that I feel is that there is an additional sickness on top of the usual reaction. While tens of thousands of people may never be found, may never be given a decent burial, while hundreds of thousands of others mourn the loss of loved ones, and while hundreds of millions of people around the world mourn with them, American leaders began to react angrily – and properly – to this week’s events.
I do not envy President Bush or Secretary of State Powell their positions this week. These are likely the two men who will bear the burden of responsibility to the American people for their security, and who will bear the brunt of whatever response the US eventually makes. So far, both men have acted courageously, and in perfectly the right way in response to this week’s horrors.
Bush has called Tuesday’s attacks an act of war, and has sworn that the US will use all its resources to hunt down and eliminate the sources of terrorism worldwide. Powell, using different words, has echoed the same sentiments. Bush even went so far as to obtain, in the fastest manner possible, congressional approval for funding when such a war does take place.
I am left wondering just whom the US will target in this war. No one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks in any credible manner, and if they are smart, the attackers never will. Will the US attack Osama Bin-Laden in far-off Afghanistan just for the hell of it? He denied responsibility for it, yet the BBC this morning called for him to be attacked anyway, since “he has committed so many other acts for which he has not yet been punished.”
Certainly the US will not hold the Palestinian Authority responsible, despite the fact that they continue to operate the world’s largest network of terrorist training facilities, or despite the fact that the normal, everyday, “peaceful” Palestinians were dancing in the streets upon news of the attacks. They will not bomb any of the five states remaining on the State Department’s list of terrorism sponsors, despite the fact that these states together will be the source of nuclear and chemical weapons for such terrorist attacks in the future.
Whoever the US does eventually blame, and wherever they do eventually attack, one can be sure that innocents will be killed. The US will pay little heed to the issue of collective punishment. After all, when tens of thousands are killed in one instant, such trivial details are not foremost in the minds of men such as Bush and Powell.
But when Israel is forced to fend off exactly these same enemies and to fight exactly this same war, Bush and Powell are the first to condemn Israel for excessive use of force, and for instituting policies of collective punishment by merely closing a few border checkpoints and not allowing Arabs to work in most areas of the country.
These two American leaders condemned Israel repeatedly for its policy of targeted killings of terrorist leaders. When one such killing took place last month, the American media was full of the lament of the terrorist’s neighbour, an American citizen, who complained that Israel had been using American weapons to carry out such attacks.
The heart and soul of America has been attacked this week. Bush and Powell are acting exactly as they should. It would be awfully nice if they realized that Israel, too, has been acting more than properly these past twelve months.
Instead, in today’s Jerusalem Post, where most of the front page is devoted to further reaction to Tuesday’s attacks, there is also an article describing how Powell yesterday urged Israel to resume negotiations with Arafat. Yasser Arafat, the man responsible for more Jewish death and suffering than any other in the past half-century.
Is Powell so ready to resume negotiations with Bin Laden? He shouldn’t be. But until he is, he should not tell Israel how to fight its own war against terrorism.
Copyright 2001. Yehuda Poch is a writer living in Israel. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
