Thank you for Stating the Obvious...

Yeah, yeah, I know it's Dershowitz, but even a broke clock is right twice a day.

Last week the world media reported that Mohammed Dahlan, who served as security chief during the brief tenure of former Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, said the campaign of violence against Israel that began three years ago has been "detrimental" to the Palestinian cause because its various factions did not take into account "the new world that emerged after the events of Sept. 11, 2001."

The logic is inescapable: Sept. 11 reduced the West's toleration for terror, making terror counterproductive in the post-9/11 period. Therefore, zero tolerance of terrorism would eventually render it totally ineffective.

There's no doubt Deshowitz is fundamentally right about terrorism. It's not caused by frustration, disenfranchisement or poverty, although low-level operatives can be recruited from among the frustrated, the disenfranchised and the poor. Rather, terrorism is a tactic employed by wealthy and well-educated political leaders because it works. It works particularly well with the European Community, the United Nations, the Vatican, some liberal churches, and with Western intellectual and artistic elites. And no terrorism has worked better than Palestinian terrorism against Israel.

Deshowitz points out that the moral claim of the Kurds, the Armenians, and the Tibetans for an independent state is at least as strong as the Palestinians'. (And, of course, there is a Palestinian state -- Jordan -- which has been autonomous since 1922 and independent since 1946. Jordan controlled the West Bank until it jumped in on the losing side of the 1967 Six-Day War.)

"Why has the pope met with (Yasser) Arafat seven times and never met with a Kurdish leader or an Armenian leader?" Dershowitz asked Salon's Suzy Hansen. "It's a reflection of the success of Palestinian terrorism."

Dershowitz wrote in the L.A. Times that Arafat was invited to speak to the U.N. General Assembly in 1974 at a time when the Palestine Liberation Organization was trying to destroy a U.N. member state by terrorism. "By rewarding Arafat and the PLO for such behavior, the U.N. made it clear that the best way to ensure that your cause is leapfrogged ahead of others is to adopt terrorism as your primary means of protest."

Nonviolent resistance would not have worked against the Mongols, or the Aztecs, or the Nazis, but Dershowitz is correct that it would have been an effective tactic for the Palestinians. It's easy to make Jews feel guilty -- even Israelis -- as long as you're not trying to kill their children. The Arabs have not emulated Gandhi and Martin Luther King because political autonomy alongside Israel is not their real goal. Rather, it is the annihilation of the "Zionist entity."

Overall, a very excellent piece. But still, I have to say it.

Well. DUH.

via (Kallini.Com)