Labels

Some concern over labels is warranted, but much of it is simply an excuse to avoid looking at reality. With this in mind, I was pleased by this column by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. A taste:

Arafat was murdered.

No, not that Arafat (Yasser) but the other Arafat (Moussa). The latter was the cousin of the former and at one time his head of military intelligence. When Yasser Arafat died, Moussa was demoted by the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and named an adviser. Last week in Gaza he was dragged out into the street and shot.

His murder -- an execution, actually -- followed a 30-minute gun battle between Moussa Arafat's security people and the 100 or so armed men in 20 vehicles who had come to get him. The killing attracted little international attention, which is pretty remarkable because it says more about the prospects for peace in the region than do the assurances of the Brioni suit set (assembling now for the U.N. session) that everything is going just fine. This would be particularly the case, we are told, if only the Israelis would cooperate by, among other things, limiting themselves to a block or two of Tel Aviv.

Think about it, though. Doesn't it say something -- and something troubling -- about a political entity (the Palestinian Authority) that two armed groups could battle for half an hour and not one of the PA's security forces could get to the scene and intervene? It is an odd state -- if a state is what it is -- where brigands can show up at the door and fight it out without anyone's calling 911. This, though, is what passes for Palestine.

You can argue that for all the calamity that the creation of Israel has meant to the Palestinians, it has been greatly exacerbated by the corruption and ineptitude of their own leadership. Israel, of course, is hardly blameless. It is out of Gaza, but it remains an occupying power on the West Bank, and its policies there are sometimes not pretty. Still, the Palestinians seem intent on making matters worse. As a society, they have exalted suicide bombings, tolerated senseless and atrocious terrorism and for years they apathetically supported the kleptomaniacal Yasser Arafat, whose peace plan consisted, basically, of waiting for Israel to evaporate. He died very rich but presumably very frustrated.

At the recent Ambrosetti conference of Italian and other notables in Cernobbio, Italy, both Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, and Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, warned against blunt talk. Moussa insisted that anyone who questioned whether Arabs could have a democracy was a "racist." And Erekat, for his part, insisted that the term "Islamic terrorist" was likewise an expression of bigotry. This caused the plain-talking Sen. John McCain, a conference attendee, to suggest that the word "banana" be substituted for "Islamic" while I, exhaustively searching for the proper PC term, chanced upon "persons of terror." That cannot offend anyone.

Referring to the pattern of Israeli policy towards Palestinians as "not pretty," is disengenous at best. However, the main point is valid. It's hard to make a legitmate demand for a state if you are incapable of operating as one.

It seems to be a tradition among the Palestinians to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. I suspect this was part of what Sharon has had in mind all along with the transfer of Gaza: encourage the natural tendency to civil war, and (behind the wall) get out of the way.

When I taught a class on terrorism last spring my proposal was criticized for using the word "Islamist" to describe a substantial number of the terrorists now operating around the world.
Is there a label that would keep everyone happy? I doubt it, but if it does exist it would probably be devoid of all meaning.