What is an outrage?

Jerusalem Post Editorial
April 28, 2002

Yesterday, Danielle Shefi, five, was buried. She was shot in 
the head Saturday by terrorists who broke into her home while
her father, Ya’acov, a policeman, was at Shabbat services. 
"Danielle," said her devastated father, "who never hurt anyone 
and who was taught to love and respect all human beings, Jew or 
Arab, was murdered in her parents’ bedroom – which for her should 
have been the safest place."

Katrina Greenberg, who worked at a home for the mentally retarded, 
was murdered by the same terrorists in her bed with her husband 
Vladimir, who was seriously wounded. Their son, Natan, 14, was 
also wounded. Arik Becker and Ya’acov Katz, two other residents 
of Adora, a small Israeli settlement near Hebron, were gunned 
down as they ran to defend their neighbors.

In a world less surreal than the one we live in, the act of bursting 
into a random home and shooting a five-year-old child in the head 
would be the cause of some outrage. Multiply this act by hundreds 
and one might think it would rate an international investigation. 
Yet in the world in which we live, the party that is struggling 
not to be indicted for war crimes is Israel, for having the audacity 
to fight back.

Also yesterday, the cabinet voted to accede to a personal request 
from US President George W. Bush to allow the transfer of the 
killers of tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi to a prison in Gaza, 
to be guarded by American and British personnel. In exchange for 
its indulgence, Israel asked that the United States support changes 
in the operations and makeup of the UN committee investigating 
events in Jenin.

In the meantime, the Palestinians are not wasting time in their 
preparations for the UN team. According to a statement issued 
by the IDF, the Palestinians have dug up about 25 bodies buried 
near a hospital in Jenin before Operation Defensive Shield in 
order to add them to a mass grave of those killed in that operation. 
The Palestinian Authority also ordered that the search for bodies 
be stopped, so that any additional bodies can be found in the 
presence of the UN commission.

How is it that the United States has ended up stumping for Arafat’s 
freedom while Israel – still busy blocking a new wave of terrorist 
attacks – must beg for help in fending off international indictment? 
The answer lies in the vortex of moral confusion into which the US 
and Israel have let themselves be swallowed.

Despite Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s straightforward statements 
that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat heads a "coalition 
of terror," the government has not decided that he must be removed 
from power. To blame the lack of such a decision entirely on the 
United States is not completely fair. There seems to be a 
chicken-and-egg dilemma at work here: The US will not decisively 
break with Arafat unless Israel is united behind such a path, 
and the dovish half of the Israeli government will not back 
Arafat’s ouster as long as the US seems dead set against it.

The upshot is that both the US and Israel have become complicit 
in creating a massive exception to the Bush Doctrine: a regime-change 
free zone. Arafat does head a coalition of terror, and though the 
capabilities of that coalition were reduced militarily, the legitimacy 
of Arafat’s leadership is defended again and again. Arafat has so 
far succeeded in proving that is possible to be up to your eyeballs 
in terrorism and not only continue in power, but do so with the 
help of the United States.

The US and Israel will gain nothing from deciding not to face down the 
moral bankruptcy of the "international community." In a piece 
titled "The Bush Doctrine, RIP," New York Times columnist Frank Rich 
crows, "President Bush, who once spoke of rigid lines drawn between 
‘good’ men and ‘evildoers,’ has now been so overrun by fresh 
hellish events... that his old formulations — ‘either you are with 
us or you are with the terrorists’ — have been rendered meaningless." 
But those who hated Bush’s revival of Reaganesque moral categories 
do not stop at saying "I told you so" – they clamor for even 
more "leadership" along the same lines.

The original Bush Doctrine remains as correct as it is essential. 
We can only hope the US and Israeli governments both understand 
now that Arafat’s regime must not be allowed to survive the next 
round of terrorism. But the brutal truth is that more children 
like Danielle Shefi will die now, because, in the last round, 
Arafat’s coalition of terror was merely suppressed and not 
removed.