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one day, the papers ran an obituary on an American flyer who in
1943 shot down the plane carrying Admiral Yamamoto from a Japanese
base in Rabaul, New Britain. There was jubilation in America over
that nice coordination of intelligence and warmaking, and I remember
the special glee of a 15-year-old who had quivered with indignation
when the Japanese admiral a year or two earlier had broadcast that
he looked forward to dictating the terms of surrender to the Americans
in Washington, D.C. On the same day there was news of the Israeli
helicopter attack on Nablus in the West Bank. The targets were two
leaders of the Hamas, and they were killed, as also four others
and two boys walking past the building when the helicopters struck.
The perspectives
by which the two episodes are judged have to do with civil protocols.
We were at war with Japan, which meant that anything we proceeded
to do, including bombing civilian centers, was okay. If we elected
not to bomb the emperor, that was because we thought him more valuable
alive than dead. If there was a scruple on this matter, it was of
the kind felt by heads of state. When we commissioned the assassination
of Fidel Castro, in the Bobby Kennedy days, word got around that
reciprocity was conceivable, and for a few hot hours after the shots
fired out in Dealey Plaza, some suspected that the killer Oswald
was doing the work of Fidel Castro, repaying the compliments of
(failed) U.S.-led assassins.
That situation has cooled off, but hardly that of Israel and the
Palestinians. But of course they are not "at war" with
one another, so that the protocols do not fall quite in place when
a helicopter attack singles out two Hamas leaders and incidentally
kills a few others while at it. The reactions were absolutely predictable
at one end: The Palestinians are enraged and threaten retaliation.
Every now and then, after a sortie of this kind, the Israelis clam
up. But not this time. The office of Prime Minister Sharon issued
a statement: The doomed Hamas figures "were in the process
of planning further terrorist acts." The helicopter attack
was therefore preemptive. Palestinians have denied complicity in
terrorism. "Jamal Mansour was arrested by the Israelis more
than 13 times," one spokesman said. "They deported him
to Lebanon once. That should have been enough for the Israelis to
know who Jamal Mansour was. If he was Hamas military, they never
would have released him."
Are these stipulations, all the way around? The Israelis charge
that the victims were planning terrorist attacks, the Palestinians
deny that they were terrorist-bound. If so, analysts from the outside
are left to weigh the probabilities, which are that the Israeli
intelligence was accurate, and that Mansour and his confederate
Jamal Salim were indeed involved in the terrorist Palestinian cause,
even if one wonders why Israelis didn't hang on to Mansour when
they had their hands on him.
The only thing absolutely settled by the Israeli strike is the future
of Mansour and Salim. The Israelis can always hope that they have
got rid of two critical members of the terrorist operation. This
is unlikely, any more than, after a while, we could sustain a reasonable
hope that bringing in the marginal Vietcong operative would collapse
the Communist effort in South Vietnam. Working for the Israelis
is the counter-terrorist's ultimate card: We know who you are,
Abdul, and one of our people will visit you in due course, so say
your prayers. The Palestinians have to hope that their own terrorism
will one day effectively demoralize the enemy, usher in a Quisling
government, and result in the gradual disappearance of Israel as
we know it today.
The United States government, which prefers to stay away from day-by-day
moralizing on the Mideast 100-year war, did reproach the Israelis
this time around, and the European press, as ever, is all but unanimously
critical. The Israeli killer operation is explained by two standards.
One says: Like capital punishment, such treatment of terrorists
may deter. A second says: We derive satisfaction from executing
such as were directly or indirectly involved in the terrorist operation
in Tel Aviv last June that killed 22 of our citizens.
It is left
for private speculation what it is that keeps Arafat alive, beyond
the seamless protective domes characteristically lived in by despots.
Perhaps the Israelis bow to Machiavelli's doctrine that one should
not cut off the enemy's line of retreat. On the other hand, if Arafat
were to retreat, the assassin would probably be a kinsman.
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