The press over the past few days has been filled with “reports” that Arafat has composed his own “hit list” of senior Israeli civilian and military leaders to be targeted by his terrorists, this in “retaliation” for the various assassinations of Palestinian terrorist leaders by Israel.

Let me explain why I think this is a good thing.

No it is not because I want the PLO terrorists to hurt any member of the Israeli elite, not even Shimon Peres (although I think Peres should be indicted). And no, I do not really take the hit list seriously. I am not convinced the PLO was ever complying in the past with any sort of agreement or reluctance to attack senior Israeli leaders, but may well have been simply incapable of striking them or reaching them.

The real problem is this. In the past Israel has had a series of “controlled carnage” agreements with assorted Arab terrorist groups and other belligerents. A “controlled carnage” agreement is where Israel agrees to forego using certain types of military responses or certain types of actions, strategies or weapons. In exchange for this Israel thinks it “buys” a certain level of cooperation from the other side. The Arab side then continues to commit murders and atrocities, but agrees to forego certain sorts of activities or agrees to certain sorts of limits. (Such an agreement might also have operated between Israel and Iran, explaining why no Iranian officials were targeted by Israel after the Iranians murdered 200 people in the Jewish Center in Argentina.)

For years, Israel had a series of “controlled carnage” agreements with the Hizbullah and other terrorist groups in Lebnanon, all of which were - for all intents and purposes - controlled carnage agreements with Syria. Under these, the Hizbullah was permitted to murder Israeli soldiers and occasionally fire shells into Northern Israel, usualy into empty fields, but not massive barrages into Israeli cities. (Over time, a new “controlled carnage” agreement operated that allowed the Hizbullah “only” to shell Kiryat Shmona occasionally, leaving it in peace most of the time.) In exchange for these limits, Israel did not reduce the Hizbollah villages in Lebanon to parking lots. It did not bomb, strafe or drop napalm on them. It only killed Hizbollah terrorists in the bush, not in their villages, and did not target Hizbollah leaders. (The Hizbollah murdered one general, but in typical Israeli fashion, this was dismissed as an unintentional killing by the Hizbollah that did not substantially negate the “controlled carnage” agreement with the Hizbollah.)

Other controlled carnage agreements have operated. I do not rule out the existence of such an agreement, or at least Israel deluding itself into thinking that such an agreement operated, with the PLO and Arab states, whereby each side agreed not to target the leaders of the other side. This may explain why the Israeli sniper who had Arafat in his sights in Beirut in 1982 was ordered to let him go.

The problem with “controlled carnage” agreements is that they give a green light to low-level murder and terrorism, they sanitize warfare, and they are morally repugnant. They create obscene rules of warfare whereby the political and military elite can protect itself from violence while the rest of society suffers from terrorist barbarism. Hence they also isolate the political elite from the realities of terror and war, and allow it to make insane and foolish decisions, based on delusion. If the Labor Party elite were on the front lines of terror like the Kiryat Shmona or Gilo mothers, it is doubtful the Oslo debacle would have taken place.

The only acceptable agreement with Arab terrorists and belligerents is one of complete nonbelligerence, a complete ceasefire. The alternative should be all-out warfare. By allowing Arabs to choose an in-between alternative, Israel ends up sanctioning atrocities and barbarism against its own population.

To put it in a less delicate manner, I do not want politicians and generals urging that my children take “risks for peace” unless they themselves are at risk. If my children are at risk every day they go to school as a result of ten years of folly by the Israeli political and military elite, then I want those responsible for the folly to be at risk as well. Not because I want something bad to happen to them, but because Israel will never return to sanity as long as they can feel sheltered behind some sort of “controlled carnage” protective agreement. I do not believe that the Israeli military and intelligence elite would have sat on its backside - never speaking up against Oslo, never pointing out to the politicians that Arafat was using Oslo merely to establish bases from which to attack Israel from within Western Palestine - had these same military and intelligence officers felt PERSONALLY at risk due to their the folly. Some sort of “deal”, whereby generals and cabinet ministers are acknowledged by the PLO as being off limits, would be the worst recipe for disaster. It would produce even more Oslos.

Hence my reaction to hearing that Arafat was drawing up a “hit list” of people in the Israeli elite to attack was that this is wonderful news. Perhaps this is what is needed to produce politicians and generals in Israel with some minimum of common sense.

Such born-again leaders might even understand that in the post-Holocaust era, NO “controlled carnage” agreement with Arabs, and especially none that allows these Arabs to murder Jewish children, is acceptable under ANY circumstances. If the alternative to “controlled carnage” is fullscale war, then let us have war.

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission