No other country has been so victimized internationally. Israel - besieged, boycotted, threatened, encircled – is subjected to murderous onslaught at every turn. One such murderous raid – to name just one example among many similar ones - was grossly called a “tremendous MISTAKE” by a senior Soviet Diplomat at the UN. Both the Soviet Diplomat and international reporters failed to call this killing a “murder,” or an “outrage” or “inhuman,” but a MISTAKE! The reporters explained: “Just when the Palestinians had the whole world on their side, when they finally had everyone's sympathies - they made this MISTAKE!” The Soviet Diplomat added that “it is hard to understand what the PLO is aiming at and whether, in fact, it has any coherent policy.”

Barbaric, savage terror --- the equivalent of a mistake?!

On March 9, 1988, terrorists seized a “Mothers’ Bus,” a special bus service of Beer-Sheva’s (capital of the Negev) nuclear plant for employees needing transportation to work after getting their children off to school. Victor Ram, a 39-year old laser engineer at the plant, who had begun using this bus after being widowed the summer before, stayed on the bus to let as many mothers escape as possible, helping them off. The terrorists took him and executed him. His 3-year old daughter and Nir, his 12-year old son, were now full orphans. A mother, Miriam, was shot dead in cold blood and eight other mothers wounded while one of them, Matza, was held hostage as interpreter with a rifle-barrel stuck to her chest. She couldn’t sleep nights for a long time after this nightmarish experience. And these murderers were referred to by BBC as Palestinian “guerillas,” as if they were fighting against a conventional army.

The use of the term “guerilla” is nothing less than unabashed manipulation of public opinion with subtle use of language. The fact is that these “guerillas” were nothing but murderous terrorists, men of lawlessness.

As a reader of the same “Jerusalem Post,” Dr. Marie Louise Henry of the German newspaper, DIE WELT, so rightly said in her letter: “...The worst thing (among Israel's current problems) is the judgment passed by people who do not understand the circumstances. Only a few persons know that your very existence is in danger.”

Constant and relentless assaults upon Israel’s community and State, before, during and after her fight for independence have forced her, at the price of life itself, to develop a high degree of defensive preparedness. The evil Arab siege as manifested in the intense “intifada”/”uprising,” of 1987/1988, and the present one of 18 months smashes relentlessly against Israel's patience, and makes a deplorable breach in her compassion and restraint. Under these circumstances, Israel’s unparalleled struggle for survival should arouse a more humble and compassionate international appraisal than it has.

America should recall the days of her 52 hostages in Iran and the more recent attack on her in New York and Washington on September 11th, 2001. The whole nation was united in patriotic vigils and a willingness even to go to war  with Iran should the hostages suffer hurt in any way. And now the American people even support war against Iraq, the Al Quaida and fighting worldwide terrorism. Yet this situation still pales when compared with the hundreds of Israelis murdered without any echo of outrage among the nations⁶⁰: Mothers of little children raped and murdered before their husbands and children; little children beheaded, their little bodies smashed against rocks, drowned and knifed and mutilated. Two reserve soldiers who ccidentally took the wrong turn to their base lynched and mutilated beyond recognition. Yet no pictures of their tortured bodies appeared in the world press, nor shots of weeping mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, bridegroom and bride, on TV to announce to a stunned world the horrors Israel had just endured.

Michael d'Orleans, a leader of the French resistance of WW II, stated: “We fought like men against the German army…never murdered women and children… never attacked planes carrying innocent passengers. The Arabs’ is not a resistance movement. It is cowardice!”

Even Fidel Castro has stated, in another context: “Revolutionary movements do not see as their objective the annihilation of a people.” 

General Burns of Canada, the Chief of Staff of the UN armistice machinery in the Middle East, said concerning terrorist attacks against Israel: “I felt that what Egyptians were doing in sending these men, whom they dignified with the name of 'Fedayeen' (martyrs) or 'commandos' into another country with the mission to attack men, women and children indiscriminately, was a war crime… essentially of the same character, though less in degree, as the offences for which the Nazi leaders had been tried in Nuremberg…” (“Between Arab and Israeli,” 1963, p. 88).

MURDER HAS NEVER BEEN EQUATED WITH “PROGRESSIVE NATIONAL SENTIMENT!”

Indeed, the Arabs have succeeded in driving a wedge between the Jewish State and her traditional Western friends. Unable to defeat Israel in warfare⁶¹, the Arabs have adopted a diversified and sophisticated political campaign to undermine Israel's international standing. 

0ne of the new tactics is that of elevating the “plight of the Palestinians.” As long as the struggle was portrayed as lying between Israel and the Arab world, sympathy went to Israel. It was enough to compare Israel’s sparse territory with the huge expanse of Arab lands in order to conclude that Arab nationalism did not have much to complain about. But when the conflict was presented as being between Israel and the Palestin- ians, the perspective changed. The substitution of the “Palestinians” for the “Arab” image thus had confusing effects: the courageous little “David” suddenly became an overbearing “Goliath,” and sympathies flowed from the victorious to the defeated. 

As Jacques Soustelle, former Minister in the Government of France and member of the French Academy, states in his public service advertisement in the “Jerusalem Post” of March 11, 1988, p.22: “....the Jew deserves interest only if he is being beaten, humiliated and pursued. Ah, how one loves the Jews when the Holocaust and the Final Solution are evoked in order to put on, at little cost, a humanitarian face! But when the modern and proud Israeli... dares to defend himself, then the tone changes! The only role for the Jew is to be a victim! ...Those responsible for the troubles in Gaza and Transjordan are pushing almost exclusively very young fanatical demonstrators and women into the front ranks of the riots, while they themselves stay prudently under cover. This is in order that the duly informed and misinformed ‘universal conscience’ be able to condemn the ‘repression’ in complete quietude...”