Rush to Judgement

    On December 29, 1997, at an Israeli Army checkpoint near the Arab village of Taibeh, an Arab driver intentionally tried to run over an Israeli soldier. On August 18, 1997, an Arab driver ran over and seriously injured an Israeli soldier near Bethlehem. On February 19, 1987, an Arab driver ran over and killed two Israeli soldiers near Nablus, in what the then-head of the army's Central Command, Ehud Barak (today leader of the opposition Labor Party) said was apparently "a deliberate attempt to hit them." In 1989, Israeli cabinet minister Moshe Katzav reported to the cabinet about "attempts by vehicles from the territories, especially heavy vehicles, to cause accidents with Israeli cars," and in 1992, Abu Tib, commander of Yasir Arafat's elite "Force 17" guard unit, wrote a book which showed Arabs "how to set up head-on collisions or drive Jewish cars off the road."

    These are just a few items taken at random from the Zionist Organization of America's files, and they indicate a pattern of Arabs using automobiles as weapons against Israelis. This is not merely an interesting chapter in the history of Arab terrorism--it is a very real and immediate subject of concern to Israeli soldiers, including the Israeli soldiers who shot at an Arab van that struck one of them at the Tarkumiyah checkpoint near Hebron, in early March. Three Arabs were killed in that incident.

    The Tarkumiyah clash received plenty of one-sided coverage in the Philadelphia media. But none of the reporters explained the reasons why the Israeli soldiers at Tarkumiyah acted as they did.

    Typical of the sloppy media coverage was a March 12 op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, by David Bedein, an occasional contributor to that newspaper. "Nervous Israeli soldiers gunned down three innocent human beings for refusing to stop at a checkpoint." The soldiers had plenty of reason to be nervous--but Bedein never explained that. The soldiers knew of the numerous other instances in which Arabs had used their automobiles as weapons against Israelis--but Bedein didn't mention them, either.

    For Bedein to write that the soldiers "gunned down three innocent human beings for refusing to stop at a checkpoint" makes it sound as if the soldiers knew the Arabs were innocent, and had nevertheless made a calculated to decision to kill them as punishment for not stopping at the checkpoint. In fact, what happened is that the van, in which the Arabs were passengers, suddenly accelerated towards the soldiers, and ran over one of them. The soldiers, operating in accordance with Israel's strict regulations on opening fire, shot at the van to force it to stop. They did not know who was in the passenger area; they did not know if the driver was a terrorist, or just reckless, or if the van's gas pedal had malfunctioned.

    All they saw was a van speeding towards them and running over one of their comrades. They had to make a split-second decision. Any reasonable person in their position would have done exactly as they did.

    Bedein's article was anything but reasonable. He rushed to judgment, the day after the incident, assuming the worst and heaping undeserved blame on the Israelis. To make matters worse, he even blamed Israel, in advance, for any Arab terrorism that might take place in response to the Tarkumiyah incident. The Israelis "have started a blood feud," Bedein declared. "The familiar cycle of violence has been set in motion . . . All Jewish men, women and children living in the settlements or in Israel proper will be considered fair game for reprisals." So, in Bedein's formulation, if such "reprisals" take place --against Jews who had absolutely no connection to the Tarkumiya incident-- it would be the Israeli soldiers, not the terrorists carrying out the "reprisals," who would be at fault.

   Not only did Bedein provide an advance rationalization for Arab "reprisal" violence, he went even further by offering an advance condemnation of what he expected would be Israel's response to such Arab "reprisals." The Arab reprisals "will lead to more repressive measures by the Israel Defense Forces," including "administrative detention, collective punishment [and] torture," Bedein wrote. The implication is that Israel routinely engages in such measures.

    But that's not the case. Israel uses administrative detention only in rare cases, when it needs to keep a terrorist in jail --so that he doesn't murder more people-- but does not yet have evidence that can be revealed in court. (Usually it means that their evidence against the terrorist came from an undercover agent whose identity cannot be revealed in court without risking his life.) Israel's highest courts have ruled that such detention is justified to prevent terrorism.

    Israel has no policy of engaging in what Bedein calls "torture." The Israeli authorities follow strict guidelines that have been set down by Israel's highest courts, which permit the use of moderate force against captured terrorists in exceptional cases--when the terrorist has information that could directly affect whether innocent people live or die, such as the location of bombs that have been planted, or details about plans for forthcoming terrorist attacks.

    As for what Bedein calls "collective punishment," that typically falls into two categories. One is when the Israeli Army is forced to impose a temporary curfew on a particular Arab village where a terrorist may be hiding. Such a curfew may inconvenience the other village residents, but it is not a "punishment"; it is a temporary measure needed to help capture a murderer. The other instance is when the Israeli authorities dismantle part or all of a house belonging to a terrorist who has been captured. Is that collective punishment? Not according to Israel's High Court. Here's how the Jerusalem Post described the Court's decision in the landmark 1986 case of Daghlas v. Commander of Judea and Samaria: "The High Court stated that to view the demolitioin and sealing of homes as a collective penalty 'would void the regulation of content, leaving only the possibility of punishing a terrorist who lives alone...The regulation is designed as a deterrent, and by its very nature, the deterrent effect must also impinge on those surrounding the terrorist, particularly those members of his family living with him...In this respect, the sanction of demolition is no different from imprisonment of the head of the family, a father of small children who are left without a breadwinnder. Then, too, the family members are hurt.'"