1. Well, the bombing has started. In the midst of the battle fog, I still think it is a fascinating exercise to consider what would happen if the same “rules of war” that are always dictated to Israel were to be applied by the world to the US.

   First, even though the US is using high-precision and “smart” weapons, no doubt some civilians will be killed in Kabul. Now the world has long applied a criterion to Israel holding that if even a single civilian is killed while fighting against terrorists, then the country attacking the terrorists does itself become a state terrorist, an aggressor, a villain, while the terrorists morph instantly into “freedom fighters” protecting their people against the state terrorism. Will the same rules now apply?

   Then there is the rule of numbers arithmetic. If the US ends up killing MORE people in the attack on Afghanistan than the numbers killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then ipso facto this makes the US the aggressor and the true terrorist, while bin Laden is merely a somewhat moldy freedom fighter struggling against the occupation of his homeland. The world media will refer to bin Laden as an activist and a militant – little more than an AIDS marcher - and the BBC will describe the attacks on the World Trade Center as “something the US CALLS terrorism”.

2. Perhaps the most Orwellian scene is Shimon Peres congratulating the US for taking firm steps against terrorism. Shimon PERES? The man who has devoted his career to coddling terrorists, to appeasing terrorism, to granting terrorism legitimacy and even a Nobel Prize, who believes every PLO atrocity must be rewarded?

3. One of the most fascinating aspects of the assault on the Taliban fascists is that the US carefully planned to boost the status of the opposition to the Taliban and to install IT in power. True, the Northern Alliance is not exactly the bastion of democracy and liberalism, but it is allied with and obedient to the West and it is being used as an instrument to topple the Taliban.

   SO here is a question, why did the various Israeli governments, including those including the same Shimon Peres suddenly gung ho for bashing terrorists, never seriously try the same thing? Why did it never set up a puppet or subordinate Palestinian party to topple and drive out the PLO and its sister fascist organizations? Sure, there were some weenie half-hearted attempts to do so by Israel in the 1970s at the municipal level. But the Israeli Lemmings quickly undermined these. After all, such groups would not be “authentic” or “legitimate” Palestinian voices, only the PLO speaks for the Palestinians, those who collaborate with Israel are “traitors to their own people”, these spineless jellyfish and anti-Zionist leftists insisted. Palestinian moderates and those opposing violence quickly got the message from the Israeli politicians and media. They were not wanted. Israel has even abandoned the attempt to use anti-PLO parties among ISRAELI ARABS within the Green Line, while granting legitimacy to the pro-genocide Arab Israeli Fascist parties!!

   When Israel then turned the “territories” over to PLO occupation, and later when Barak sold out the Christian Lebanese Army of South Lebanon to the Hizbollah, those Arabs allied with Israel were betrayed and turned over to the PLO and Hizbullah. Some were executed. Meanwhile Israeli Arabs and Leftists insisted that these people NOT be granted asylum in Israel and be denied access to Israeli schools and colleges because they are traitors to their own people for having helped Israel fight terrorism.

   So as the US installs the Northern Alliance in power and throws out the Taliban, every Israeli politician responsible for the FAILURE to install similarly an anti-PLO Palestinian party in the cities of the West Bank and Gaza should resign from politics forever and lower his head in shame.

Copyright © 2001 by Steven Plaut.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission