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There Is No "Cycle of Violence"

(Times of Israel) Gerald M. Steinberg - Three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood on their way home from school only because they were Israeli Jews. So it has been for some 100 years in this long war against Jewish national sovereignty and equality among the nations. Long before the 1967 war and the "occupation" provided an excuse for hate and murder, such acts of inhuman violence were common. In 1929, when the Jewish community of Hebron was massacred (ethnically cleansed in modern parlance), there was no cycle of violence - this was an entirely unilateral act. In November 1947, when all Arab leaders rejected the minimalist UN Partition Plan and launched a wave of mass terror against the Jewish community, there was no cycle. And the 1967 war was triggered by Nasser's renewed effort to destroy the Jewish state, and was not part of an action-reaction cycle. When diplomats repeat the "cycle" analogy, and issues calls "to both parties to exercise restraint," they are endorsing a dangerous fiction. When journalists invent an artificial balance and an equivalence between attacker and victim, this is fundamentally immoral. The writer is professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor.
2014-07-04 00:00:00
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