WASHINGTON, May 1 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair's reaction to the Islamic Jihad terrorist attack in Tel Aviv was odd, to say the least. He said that Hamas needs to understand that such acts "do absolutely nothing to further the process of peace in the Middle East or the two-state solution that we all want to see."
He's joking, right? Hamas favors neither the "process of peace" nor the "two-state solution." The "all" as in the "two-state solution we all want to see" does not include the people now running the Palestinian Authority.
As evidenced by Blair's remark, sometimes this whole issue of terrorism gets way too abstract. Take the phrase "war on terrorism." Instead of producing an image of actual civilians slaughtered by killers, we think about policy and battle fronts.
Look who was murdered in Tel Aviv the other day:
•Binyamin Hafuta, 47, from Lod, who tried to check the bag that the terrorist then detonated.
•Victor Erez, 60, of Givatayim. A grandfather of five.
•David Shaulov, 29, Holon. His wife Varda is in her ninth month of pregnancy with their third child.
•Phillip Balahsan, 45, Ashdod. When the blast occurred, he embraced and covered his two children to protect them; he died en route to the hospital from shrapnel that penetrated his body.
•Lily Yonas, 43, from Oranit.
•Ariel Darhi, 31, from Bat Yam.
•Boda Firushka, 50, and Roselia Basanya, 48, foreign workers from Romania.
Of course, we cannot continue to pretend that the only innocent people killed in this conflict are Israelis and Jews. In the last few weeks, six Palestinian children died as a result of Israeli shelling in Gaza and the West Bank.
•Mohammed Farid Hassan Zayed, 12
•Bilal Eyad Mohammed Abu al-'Einein, 5
•Hadeel Mohammed Rebee' Ghaben, 8
•Akaber 'Abdul Rahman 'Ezzat Zayed, 8
•Ra'ed Ahmed al-Batash, 11
•Aya Mohammad Suliman Al-Astal, 9.
Some readers will, I am afraid, view these Palestinian kids as not in the same category as the Israelis. They will view them as collateral damage, just people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And, of course, the Israelis do not target innocent civilians nor do they invite attacks by intentionally placing armor in the midst of neighborhoods. Unlike the terrorists, the IDF regrets the innocent loss of life. Nevertheless, a dead child is a dead child. Innocent by definition.
I know that just saying this will bring accusations of "moral equivalence." That is bogus. In fact the whole "moral equivalence" charge that is often used to trivialize the killing or injuring of innocent people is both ridiculous and immoral.
At the Passover Seder two weeks ago, we read the midrash in which the angels weep over the dead Egyptians who drowned when the Red Sea closed over them. They weren't innocent. They were soldiers pursuing the Israelites. But the Haggadah tells us that the angels weep because the Egyptian soldiers are the Almighty's children too. I cannot imagine that, in the eyes of God, there is any difference between Ariel Darhi or Akaber 'Abdul Rahman 'Ezzat Zayed.
Or David Dornstein, either.
David Dornstein was 25, a Brown graduate, returning home to the United States after living in Israel when he was killed on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. That was the plane that was blown up by Muammar Qadaffi's agents in the skies above Lockerbie, Scotland. Two hundred seventy people, mostly American college students, fell to their deaths.
David's younger brother, Ken, now 37, has just published a book telling the story of his brother's life and death. It is called "The Boy Who Fell Out of The Sky" and it begins this way:
"Once upon a time, I had a brother. He was older, bigger, wiser, more daring. More passionate and much better looking... I was 19 when he died, a sophomore in college. Now I am in my mid-thirties. I have some memories of my brother, but not as many as I'd like to think. And each time I check, I seem to have one fewer. If at first I found it hard to believe that David was dead, now I find it hard to believe that he ever lived. David's life has come to seem like a story I made up, a fairy tale no more real than words on a page."
David Dornstein left behind notebooks full of his writings which his brother uses to construct a vibrant image of a funny, charming, brilliant and off-beat young man. But it's only an image. The boy whose body, virtually intact, landed in a Scottish woman's front yard, is gone.
Books like Dornstein's remind us that victims of terror are more than names and certainly more than tools to be used for scoring political points. Each one represents an absence, a hole in the world, much like the hole in the New York skyline left by the twin towers, except living, or once living.
It is, of course, easy to respond to violence with more violence. But that is where we go wrong. The killing of innocents cannot be avenged by the killing of more innocents. On the other hand, the terrorists, and those who support them, should and must pay the highest price for their crimes.
The critical thing is to know the difference between perpetrators and bystanders, which is something the United States (and Israel) needs to consider when deciding how best to handle the new Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
After the terror bombing in Tel Aviv, someone e-mailed me to ask if I "still fav(or) aid to Hamas."
I had to explain that I never have. So long as Hamas opposes Israel's right to exist and does not oppose terrorism, I will not favor aid going to Hamas or any entity controlled by it.
But I simply cannot understand how any reasonable person can oppose humanitarian aid being provided to the Palestinian people, not through Hamas but through church groups and other non-governmental organizations.
Starving children or denying them treatment for illness is not a legitimate tool in the war against terrorism. In fact, in its sheer indiscriminateness it can be likened to terrorism itself. Just as the terrorist is indifferent to whether a bus passenger in Tel Aviv is a strategist for Israeli military intelligence or a teenager going to soccer practice, so are those calling for total aid cut-offs indifferent to whether their victim is a Hamas militant or a kindergartener.
Over the next few weeks, the House and Senate will decide on the most effective approach to aiding (or not aiding) the Palestinians. The House bill is still too restrictive because it will not permit necessary aid to get to those who need it. But it was improved in committee, thanks to the efforts of Chairman Henry Hyde, Rep. Howard Berman and others. The Senate bill, sponsored by Senators Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell is better and, hopefully, will be further improved in committee and then in House-Senate conference.
The good news is that a huge public outcry over the cuts in humanitarian aid forced the improvements already made in the bill. Further improvements in that direction will both prevent unnecessary suffering and, in fact, help America (and Israel) counter terrorists like those responsible for the Tel Aviv massacre. The killers understand that when pain is inflicted on the innocent, they gain recruits thirsty for revenge. Maybe we are beginning to understand that as well.
After all, no one has ever turned away from violence because he was punched in the face for no reason at all.
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(M.J. Rosenberg, Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum, is a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report. The views expressed in IPF Friday are those of M.J. Rosenberg and not necessarily of Israel Policy Forum.)
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(Distributed by the Common Ground News Service.)
