‘Seeking justice’
A man who, as the evidence shows, engineered the mass killing of civilians in refugee camps is no less guilty of abhorrent acts merely because he has been sanctified by the vote of the citizens of his country or because he has been accepted by an international community which has proved to possess a selective memory. Hence he has remained relentless and unpunished, in other words free to repeat his barbarous acts. Many Israelis acknowledge that their prime minister is stained with the blood of the victims in Sabra and Chatila (in Lebanon, 1982). They also recognize that their country’s violence gives birth to armies of desperate people who are ready to blow themselves up. Indeed, there are many Israelis who oppose the plans that have as their objective the uprooting of the Palestinians, even within the ranks of an army which has for years crushed stone throwers with tanks, but which has fallen short of transforming the fate of a country which forces its enemies to pay the same lethal price that its own people paid in the past. The critics of war would be greater in size and effectiveness if the fantasy that we tend to refer to as the international community – meaning of course the United States – ensured the implementation of UN resolutions, such as the one which was passed on Sunday and mandated the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the besieged city of Ramallah. In numerous other cases, however, the Americans needed no resolution to «impose justice.» «At that time,» the Bible says, in praise of the Maccabeans, «many who were seeking for righteousness and justice (went down to the wilderness to live there) because troubles pressed heavily on them.» And they decided: «If we shall all do as our brethren have done, and not fight against the heathen for our lives, and our justifications, they will quickly root us out of the earth.» The gods have perhaps been forced by people to have a chosen people. History, however, does not.
