The Palestinian Choice

There will be no peace in the Middle East unless freedom becomes the Palestinians' guiding philosophy

Edwin A. Locke
The Ayn Rand Institute

10 April 2002

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The toll of violence in the Middle East is a tragedy. The whole world, including President Bush, is pressuring Israel once again to negotiate with Yasser Arafat as a means of ending the conflict. This is a hopeless quest. Negotiation pre-supposes that both parties share common moral values and compatible goals. But the two sides are not morally equivalent. Arafat is a ruthless dictator who has had hundreds of his own people tortured or killed. He is and always has been a terrorist; he has

Every Arab country is a monarchy, theocracy or some kind of dictatorship

never sought peaceful co-existence with Israel but only its destruction. New evidence indicates that he provided money for the suicide bombers' missions and no doubt will continue to do so.

The Palestinians are the initiators of the violence—an indiscriminate violence in which they do not care whom they kill, whether soldier or child. Israel, in contrast, is acting in self-defense, in retaliation for such terrorism. And its response is aimed at those responsible for the violence and at the facilities from which they operate. (Any innocent noncombatants killed in the process are not the targets of the retaliation, and their blood is on the terrorists' hands.)

The Palestinians are not seeking to gain their freedom—they are unequivocal enemies of freedom. They, along with the rest of the Arab world, reject the whole concept of rights. Every Arab country is a monarchy, theocracy or some kind of dictatorship. Freedom of speech, property rights, free elections, and the separation of church and state are almost nonexistent. Speaking out against the rulers or against the Muslim religion leads to imprisonment or death. All attempts to start competing political parties are ruthlessly crushed.

Israel is the sole country in the Middle East that recognizes individual rights. It is the only Mid East country in which people are free to voice their opinions. The nonviolent, non-PLO-supporting Arab who lives in Israel enjoys far greater freedom than he would in any Arab nation. It is an utter perversion for the collectivized, tribalist Palestinians to claim that they are acting in defense of rights, when their aim is to obliterate rights-the rights of Israelis as well as of Arabs.

The fundamental goal of the Palestinian leadership is destruction. They want their terrorist attacks to lead to retaliation, so that more of their people will become terrorists, so that more killing takes place, and so on, in an endless cycle of violence, resulting in . . . death—death to as many people as possible. For example, the response of a father to the suicide-bombing act of his 23-year-old son, which killed three Israelis and injured 93 in downtown Netanyah, was: "I call upon all Palestinian youth to follow in his footsteps."

The Jews brought Western knowledge and Western values to the Middle East

Why such seething nihilism? Consider that when the Jews came to Palestine, it was a desert. People were living in the same primitive manner as they had been since the time of Moses. The Jews brought Western knowledge and Western values to the Middle East. They turned an almost barren land into a modern, industrial civilization. They raised cities where there had been only dirt; they developed irrigated farms where there had been only dry sand; they built cars and trucks and planes where there had been mainly pack animals. They produced wealth where there had been only poverty. They brought freedom and individual rights to a land where these ideas were unknown.

And many of the Arabs hated Israel for doing so—because it was an achievement they could not, and did not want to, equal. That is why they have always wanted to destroy Israel. That is why the Palestinians continue today in that quest.

When a person sees that a different culture can produce a much better life—greater knowledge, greater mastery over nature, greater comfort and security, greater respect for the individual—than his own, he has two choices. He can adopt the new culture as a blessing, or he can seek to destroy it—and himself-because it stands as a reproach to his irrational form of existence.

They hate the Israelis ... (because of) their ability to better their lives by embracing reason, science, technology and individual rights

The Palestinians have chosen the latter. They are guilty of what Ayn Rand called "hatred of the good for being the good." They hate the Israelis not because of their vices, but because of their virtues—their ability to better their lives by embracing reason, science, technology and individual rights. Israel (despite its own, growing crop of religious mystics) represents the triumph of secularism and freedom in the Middle East. Israel stands for the principle of . . . life.

The only way this conflict can be resolved, short of all-out war, is for a radical change in philosophy on the part of the Palestinians, starting with the choice of a new leader who wants Palestine to have a future. They need to choose individual rights and a free society as their core political principle. If they don't, they will tragically get their death wish, and will bring about only further destruction.

Until and unless that change occurs, our Mid East analysts and policy makers should not ignore the morally antithetical premises governing the two sides of this conflict. And that Israel is the morally right side that must be free to wage a just war of self-defense.

The original was published in the Ayn Rand website

Last 25 Visitor Comments

Name Email Subject Date

Ramesh wsx997_at_hotmail.com Poor Israelis! 10/7/2004
This year, two Israelis and an American scientist have won Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Now do we ever read a news that an arab has won a Nobel Prize in science or discover something? NO! We know arabs for only one thing - SUICIDE BOMING!
Wynand de Beer wdebeer_at_yahoo.com Whose propaganda? 12/3/2003
I wonder how much Edwin A. Locke was paid by the Israeli government and/or the Zionist pressure groups who dictate US foreign policy for writing this blatantly anti-Arab propaganda. The violent Israeli expulsion of millions of Arabs from their ancestral homelands since the late 1940's, and their continued occupation of these areas, can on no moral grounds be reconciled with Mr Locke's claim that 'the Jews brought Western knowledge and Western values to the Middle East'. Relations between the state of Israel and the Palestinians can only be normalised, on moral grounds, if the Israelis return the areas they illegally occupy, including eastern Jerusalem, to the rightful inhabitants thereof. Peace without justice towards all parties can never be lasting, let alone morally justifiable.

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Last 25 Visitor Comments
Name	Email	Subject	Date
Ramesh	wsx997_at_hotmail.com	Poor Israelis!	10/7/2004
This year, two Israelis and an American scientist have won Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Now do we ever read a news that an arab has won a Nobel Prize in science or discover something? NO! We know arabs for only one thing - SUICIDE BOMING!
Wynand de Beer	wdebeer_at_yahoo.com	Whose propaganda?	12/3/2003
I wonder how much Edwin A. Locke was paid by the Israeli government and/or the Zionist pressure groups who dictate US foreign policy for writing this blatantly anti-Arab propaganda. The violent Israeli expulsion of millions of Arabs from their ancestral homelands since the late 1940's, and their continued occupation of these areas, can on no moral grounds be reconciled with Mr Locke's claim that 'the Jews brought Western knowledge and Western values to the Middle East'. Relations between the state of Israel and the Palestinians can only be normalised, on moral grounds, if the Israelis return the areas they illegally occupy, including eastern Jerusalem, to the rightful inhabitants thereof. Peace without justice towards all parties can never be lasting, let alone morally justifiable.

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