Radio Free Taiwan

That’s what I like to call it. Remember when the teacher would punish the whole class because some punk wouldn’t admit to smacking gum? Every kid knew it was wrong - of the teacher, that is. Here’s a letter I wrote to the Taipei Times yesterday. I’m not sure they’ll print it, but I’ll stick it here too.

To the editors:

Thank you for writing a timely and sensible editorial on the escalating situation in the Middle East.

Clearly, most, but not all, people in the world find Israel’s approach to conflict offensive. The question is why. I believe that these things come down to what might be called doctrines. Israel deals with affronts to its standards in a way that is different from most other countries. As spoken in the recent film, Munich, the basic goal seems to be sending a specific message: “Don’t f**k with Israel.” But while hunting down specific terrorists might be acceptable in many people’s eyes, Israel has broadened this approach considerably since the seventies, using some pretty extreme rationalization in my opinion. Israel’s doctrine now seems to be a simple and blunt one that can be summed up in two words: collective punishment. Israel’s attitude seems to be that a crime committed by one Palestinian is a crime committed by all Palestinians. This allows Israel to rationalize helicopter gunship attacks on apartment buildings in retaliation for primitive rocket lobbings or attacks on small groups of Israeli soldiers.

To be fair, it must be said that the Palestinians also seem to follow the doctrine of collective punishment. The suicide bombings are an obvious example. Either one side or the other needs to take the moral high ground in this conflict and stop punishing a whole population for the crimes of a few. Doubtlessly, a majority of people on both sides of the dispute would prefer to live in peace. After all, both Palestinians and Jews are Semetic people who have co-mingled in this part of the world for thousands of years.

Since Israel has so much money and technology, I feel the moral onus is on that country to raise its standards and make a visible effort to avoid collective punishment when engaging in conflict. But Israel currently appears to be doing the opposite: favouring blatant collective punishment, still dreaming that this will somehow make the Palestinians wake up and realize the simple solution that is, “Don’t f**k with Israel.” Such an approach is obviously stupid and invites escalation. But few are willing to label the situation accurately, so this horrible situation keeps getting worse.

Peter Dearman
Taipei

Here is a photo of Beirut under attack: