Documents were found in Ramallah proving that the PLO was supplying the
explosives to the suicides; else, where did they get the bombs to blow
themselves up with? And it makes clear that the suicides are a strategy,
however desperate it it. Those who are recruiting, training, and arming the
suicides are looking, not to 1967 border, but to 1947, when Israel did not
exist. They are as wrong as Sharon is in his approach to destroy the
Palestinian independence movement. neither will go away.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Rogers" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: [CHOMSKY] The desperate lie about the suicide bombers


Bill, I appreciate those two articles you posted today, by Ahdaf Soueif and
Thomas Friedman. Friedman however, is someone I seldom (if ever) agree
with, and this letter is no exception. To me, statements like 'Palestinians
have adopted suicide bombing as a strategic choice, not out of desperation'
And 'Israel needs to deliver a military blow that clearly shows terrorism
will not pay' carry a strong whiff of racism. Subconsciously perhaps, but
none the less racist.

Below is an article that in my estimation is fair, factual, and tells it
exactly like it is.

Bob
**************
Palestinians Have Found a Weapon Israel Can't Counter
Bush and Blair must grasp Israel isn't a sideshow, it's the main event.
by Peter Preston
Monday, April 1, 2002 the Guardian of  London

Caging Arafat beneath the wreckage of his compound, says Ariel Sharon, is
stage one in a "long and complicated war which knows no borders". War. That
wretched, mystifying word again. Is this the "war" against terror declared
last September 11? Is it the "all-out war" that the best troops in the
Middle East are always on the brink of unleashing against Arafat's rag-tag
militia? Will tanks roll into Syria or Israeli missiles rain on Tehran?
Will the casualties and the dead get their full Geneva Convention rights -
or be stuck in some hole in Guantanamo Bay?

Grit your teeth and define your terms. War - before the lawyers start their
yacking - is war. You know it as the debris falls around you. We fought a
war against the IRA for 20 years. Maybe we didn't call it that, but the end
results were identical. People by the hundred shot or blown up: then,
eventually, peace. In just the same way, Arafat and Sharon have long waged
undeclared war. Hundreds more die. The Israelis use their heavy-duty kit to
blast the remnants of PLO authority. The Palestinians wrap teenage girls in
Semtex and send them, smiling sweetly, to devastate supermarkets and cafes.

Are they - the inexhaustible legions of Hamas and Hizbullah - to be
condemned for that? It is easy to feel revulsion at so many young lives
lost in a cause we can't fully understand; and over so many Israeli
civilian lives, innocent lives, brutally shattered. This isn't how it
should be... Kids enfolded in explosive, human bombs, don't feature in any
of Jane's catalogues. We shudder and shrink from the reality.

Yet there is also another reality. The IDF has its jets and tanks, weapons
of conventional war built and used to kill. The Palestinians possess no
such weaponry; they are completely outgunned and outclassed. No one - apart
from Arabs bearing wan words - comes to their aid. But they have,
nevertheless, found a weapon at last that the Israelis cannot counter.

Suicide is their chosen tool, their howitzer of ultimate resort, clinically
chosen. We may think of suicide as an act of emotion - but, as Primo Levi
once said, that overlooks its careful sentience. "Animals don't commit
suicide." And we need to be clear: it's a winner. It has humiliated one of
the world's toughest conventional armies. They move in, flattening all
before them and, far away, another burger bar or shopping center is blasted
to smithereens. There are some wars conventional soldiers can't win.

Not all peace processes come to dust. Enter, like the Easter media bunny,
our Northern Ireland secretary, making cautious comparisons with Ramallah -
and, four years after the Good Friday agreement, drawing cautiously
optimistic conclusions. Fair enough. There's tolerable news from Belfast
for a government which needs every scrap of cheer it can get. But some
themes are bigger than soundbites. The moment you really begin to dig - to
put Belfast and Bethlehem together - is the moment a pit of despair opens
beneath your feet.

What's happened in Northern Ireland, gradually through the last six or
seven years, is a tacit admission on all sides that here's a war no one can
win. Not the Provos, not the loyalists, not the British army. A bloody,
costly, futile no-score draw. Jaw-jaw, then, has to be better than that.
But there is, as yet, no such admission from Tel Aviv and the bunkers of
Gaza. There is still a faith in victory.

We ought to be more reflective about such beliefs now. Northern Ireland
(though we never talked of it in those terms) was a war that all the
parachute regiments and special forces at our command couldn't win. Why?
Because "we never let them off the leash"? No: because they couldn't, in
those asinine terms, be let off the leash. Their barricades criss-crossed
community lines. They fought in the only way they could.

And so, time and again, it goes. Could the might of the French army, 45
years ago, quell Algeria? No: the swilling carnage on the streets, the
killings mounting to a frenzy of one every 10 minutes, went far beyond
conventional riposte. The history of the 20th century is littered with wars
- civil wars, liberation wars, guerrilla wars as well as those from the new
terrorist lexicon - which live on only in ignominy or retreat.

The standard wisdom is that Israel needs, somehow, to be settled before
America moves on to its next great task - and Iraq. The "most powerful
nation on earth" chafes in evident frustration. It has the technology to
drop on Saddam from a great height: the difficulty, though, is this bloody
sideshow which fractures the coalition and leaves even trusties like Tony
Blair looking exposed.

Bit by bit, the original Bush wisdom disappears. The White House has to try
to intervene, to twist in impotence or cancel its last announcement by
siding with the UN majority against Sharon: messy infirmity. Foreign
politics and domestic politics blend into each other. The war against
terror waits for General Zinni - and General Zinni may have to wait for
ever.

What's gone wrong? The negotiating muscle, on examination, turns out to be
flab. The weaponry the Pentagon heaps on Israel cannot be brought to bear.
The suicide bombs go on and on.

And it is crass not to learn the wider lesson of desperation. While there
are kids who will put on their Semtex coats, there is and can be no peace.
This is the low-tech world's solution to hi-tech: sickening, but
sickeningly effective. Only the legal jargon of war, the supposed rules of
gentlemanly conduct, stops us realizing as much. George W may be adding
missile shields to his arsenal, but their wonder rests on conventionally
countering the most conventional threat: heavy missiles homing in. Why on
earth suppose that your enemy will play the game that way? Security
disasters through the years - from Vietnam to Osama's penknife hijackings -
counsel otherwise.

Writing in this vein, of course, invites the usual pile of emails from
America berating European cowardice and (worse) liberal hand-wringing. Not
so. The world would be well rid of Saddam. He's a serial killer. I have no
qualms about British troops roaming Afghanistan's ravines in pursuit of
al-Qaida. This debate isn't about ends, but means.

Margaret Thatcher couldn't solve or subdue the simmering Irish. De Gaulle
couldn't worst the Algerians or his own blood-soaked rebels. Sharon is
making absolutely no headway along the same path. American power drifts
inertly, incapable of bringing a resolution.

There's a message here for us, and for Blair and Bush. Some wars aren't
there for the winning. Some peaces can only be brokered in extreme
exhaustion. Special forces are only as special as the intelligence of their
leaders. Israel isn't the sideshow here. Israel is the main event. If they
can't settle that, then they can settle nothing.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002