July 31, 2006

George Jonas, Ottawa Citizen

Eureka! I’ve stumbled upon the secret of the countries Israel has never bombed or invaded.
Different as they may be from one another, they have one thing in common. These countries have never bombed or invaded Israel. Nor have they funded, sheltered, armed or incited any group to do so. They haven’t even made menacing gestures while developing weapons of mass destruction, like the former president and current star hunger-striker of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. The phenomenon is consistent enough to be reduced to a simple formula. I’ll offer it here as Jonas’ Law: To avoid being bombed and invaded by Israel, avoid bombing and invading it first.

Avoid also funding, sheltering, and supplying terrorists, on your own soil or elsewhere. Avoid inciting proxies to infiltrate, shell, booby-trap, sabotage, kidnap, or otherwise expose to physical harm Israeli installations and residents.

To be on the safe side, don’t even threaten to destroy Israel at some future date. Don’t, especially, combine veiled threats with a nuclear development program, like President Ahmajinedad of Iran.
If you can resist doing this, the historic record guarantees you a bomb - and invasion - free existence as Israel’s neighbour. It’s not necessary to like Israel. Whether you are a fanatic mullah, a pan-Arab nationalist, or just an ordinary Arab or Muslim, whether you get on well with the People of the Covenant or consider them the sons of pigs and dogs, you don’t have to fear military measures until you start throwing things at Israelis first - and I don’t mean stones.

Stones invite rubber bullets in response; you need to throw rockets to invite the Air Force.
No matter how much you detest Israelites in particular, or Jews in general, as long as you can content yourself with calling on God’s wrath to rain down on the Jewish State, and refrain from reinforcing your prayer by supplying missiles to Hezbollah, you can exercise your religious freedom of loathing with no other consequence than perhaps being loathed in return.

It seems necessary to jot this down because current critics of Israel, before they start muttering darkly about war crimes, tend to preface their remarks with the pious bromide: “Of course, Israel has a right to defend itself.”

That’s good news for Israel - or would be, if the people who say so meant it - for Israel never did anything but defend itself from attack, actual or impending. A country whose sole war-aim is to exist is defensive rather than aggressive by definition. The Jewish State’s internal monologue, like Hamlet’s, has always been “to be or not to be.”

You don’t look for a fight, if all victory can achieve for you is the status quo. No one bets his house on the proposition that if he wins, he can keep it. Look at what a belligerent can hope from victory, and you’ll see whether he’s defensive or aggressive.

This simple test demonstrates that all of Israel’s wars have been defensive since 1948.
If the world truly accepted that Israel had a right to defend itself, there could be no criticism of its actions, no moral issues, and no talk of war crimes even when innocent civilians get hurt. But Israel’s “right to defend itself,” to which its western critics are careful to pay lip service, hinges on Israel never actually doing so.

The Jewish State is entitled to armed self-defence; it just cannot shed any blood. If this sounds familiar, it may be because it’s straight out of The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare’s heroine, Portia, disguised as a doctor at law, tells the Duke that the Jew Shylock has a valid contract.

If the Venetian merchant Antonio cannot honour his bond, Shylock is entitled to a pound of his flesh and can use a knife to obtain it. But, says Portia, the contract says nothing about blood. Shylock taking a pound of flesh is a legitimate creditor, but if he draws as much as a drop of blood, he’s a criminal.

Gotcha!

The play was popular then - a smart lawyer sticking it to the avaricious Jew, all perfectly legal - and it’s popular today. The UN plays the Duke; Israel is cast as Shylock, and Lebanon as Antonio.

Canada contributes a contemporary Portia to lay down the law. Oh yes, Israel can defend itself against a camouflaged Hezbollah hiding among the civilian population, but if it sheds any civilian blood, it commits a war crime. Please welcome Madame Justice Louise Arbour.

I’ll offer it here as Jonas’ Law: To avoid being bombed and invaded by Israel, avoid bombing and invading it first.

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