Are we obsessing too much over Palestinian terror?

Sar Shalom

No, I'm not suggesting that we should in any way accept the terror or turn the other cheek as it happens, or as Abbas disburses Euro-American money to its perpetrators. To get at what I'm asking, consider three scenarios:

1. A bank executive embezzles money to support a local soup kitchen.
2. A bank executive embezzles money to endow a local chapter of the Aryan Nation.
3. A bank executive donates from his salary to endow a local chapter of the Aryan Nation.

We should all agree that all three of those are reprehensible or nefarious. However, they are nefarious in different ways. Case 1 involves noble ends pursued by nefarious means. Case 3 involves fully innocent means for a nefarious end. In both cases, it is clear what the public response should be. In the former case, the executive should be censured for his means, and in the latter case for the cause he supports. However, Case 2 presents nefarious means being used for nefarious ends. This presents a challenge in responding because focusing too much on the means allows a perception that the cause might have been acceptable, while focusing too much on the ends allows a perception that the means were not too bad.

Such is the case with the PA. In today's links at Elder of Ziyon, there are 3 articles dealing with reactions to the PA's war against Israel, all dealing with the PA's support for terror. It is true that the terrorism emanating from Palestinian society, with full support from the PA, is nefarious. However, calling attention exclusively to their reliance on terror would be like censuring the executive in Case 2 for the embezzlement in a way that suggests that if he supported the Aryan Nation with his own money that there would have been no problem. In the case of the Palestinians' war against Israel, focusing on terror exclusively suggests that if their objectives were pursued peacefully, such as through BDS, that it would be totally acceptable.

What we need to highlight is, contrary to the PA's useful idiots' belief that the PA's [objective is] to build a free society for the Palestinian people, their goal is to end Jewish self-determination in the Middle East. The reality is that the illegitimacy of the PA's means is deeply connected to the illegitimacy of their ends. If they truly desired nothing more than freedom for their people, Israel would vote for a government that would give it to them. However, Israelis are no longer fooled by Abbas' forked tongue and thus will not willingly cede a more favorable ground from which to pursue an end of Israel, hence the reliance on terror to impose costs for not doing so. One person who does get the significance of the PA's aims is Moshe Sharon. Instead of asking for a demand that Abbas stop paying the terrorists, Sharon asks Trump to tell Abbas to “ 'Go back to Ramallah, stand up in public and give a speech saying the Palestinian people recognize Israel as a Jewish state.' In Arabic.”

Instead of issuing threats over the PA's support for terror and ignoring the denial of the right of the Jews to self-determination, we should issue threats over the PA's denial of the Jews' right to self-determination and complain about their support for terror.

UPDATE: Missing words were added, indicated by brackets.