Editorial: Sure there’s a cycle of violence

Issue of March 6, 2009 / 10 Adar 5769

For years, Mideast watchers have objected to the term “cycle of violence,” a media favorite, on the grounds that it morally equivocates between Arab belligerence and Israeli self-defense. The phrase neatly ignores the fact that if the Arabs would just stop shooting, the violence would end at once.

However, there certainly is a cycle of something going on there, so far as U.S. policy is concerned — actually several cycles.

The first is somewhat newly revealed. Back when she was merely the First Lady, Hillary Clinton made a lot of people angry by kissing Suha Arafat after Suha had just launched a modern blood libel, accusing Israel of poisoning the Arabs’ water. Suha’s important job at the time was to prop up the French economy. She did that by spending U.S. taxpayer dollars in Paris almost as fast as her late husband, Yasser, could steal them from aid intended for his impoverished constituents.

When Hillary decided that she would make a crackerjack U.S. Senator from New York, the wheel began to turn. She suddenly discovered within herself a passionate well of support for Israel's security and a deep, abiding love for its people. Who knew? Not everyone believed her, of course, but most did, and soon we were calling her Senator. For the record, we at The Jewish Star didn’t believe her.

Now Senator Clinton is Secretary Clinton, the wheel has turned again and it seems the cycle has revealed itself in full. Secretary of State Clinton is in the Mideast this week proposing to give the Arabs of the Gaza Strip $300 million, with another $600 million to go to the West Bank. She insists the money will not go to Hamas, but to the Palestinian Authority, which likes to think it's in charge, and that safeguards are in place to prevent the money from being misused.

And that's another Mideast cycle. The U.S. sends piles of cash to the Arabs there and then finds itself disappointed when the dollars are neatly divvied up between corrupt officials and terrorists shooting at Israel’s civilian population.

Israel has also gotten plenty of cash from the U.S. and uses it to build and defend a modern, flowering society where none stood before, and to build schools, hospitals and sewers for the aforementioned Arabs who choose to shoot at Israel rather than building schools, hospitals and sewers for themselves.

Now that much of the Gaza infrastructure must be rebuilt on account of said Arab shooting, Secretary Clinton and President Obama seem to believe that it's the United State's turn once again to pony up.

And the Arabs are still shooting. Over 100 rockets have been fired into Sderot and nearby cities since the Jan. 18 ceasefire. Over the weekend an upgraded type of missile landed in an empty schoolyard. And that seems likely to become a Mideast cycle too.

Arabs shoot missiles over the border, Israel pacifies them for a while and then it all starts up again. Doesn’t anyone in Washington see it coming?

It seems clear that Israel is going to have to go back into Gaza again, perhaps to finish what it started late in 2008, or perhaps just to make some more noise and again leave undone the job of finally restoring peace and quiet.

Spending $300 million right now to rebuild Gaza is probably not such a great idea. If the President wants to throw money down a rat hole he might as well give it to AIG or Citibank. At least no one there is shooting at Israel.