The insanity of "the Madness of Truth":
Who pays the price for the cult of death?
Weekly Briefing on Israeli and Middle Eastern Affairs
January 20, 2004

Dr. Eran Lerman
Director Israel/Middle East Office
American Jewish Committee

Consider the following manifestations of what would appear, to an observer from another planet (and a good number of earthlings who watch all this with a horrified and distasteful expression) as proof definite that we have all gone around the bend:

• A mother of two pleads and whines her way past the guards at the Erez checkpoint, organized to enable tens of thousands of Palestinians to go to work in Israel every day, and then blows herself up - fulfilling her own dream (described in her will) of having her own body parts scattered about while killing Israelis. As it happens, she took the lives of four fine young people, three soldiers and a civilian, who tried to be nice to her. It was only later that rumors began to surface that this may not have been the "heroic act of self-sacrifice" (istishhad, in Arabic) it was purported to be - but rather, the only option left, in a highly intolerant society, for an adulterous wife. It seems that her own husband and her lover, a Hamas member, ghoulishly exploited her disgrace to find a crack of compassion in IDF security procedures - with the explicit blessing of Hamas "spiritual leader" Sheikh Yassin.
• Later that same week, an enraged Zvi Mazel, Israel's ambassador to Sweden, pulls the plug on the floodlights erected to highlight a "piece of art" in the museum in Stockholm that was to host an international conference on genocide. The exhibit, entitled "Snow White and the Madness of Truth," was a pool of blood-colored water, on which floated a little boat with a photo of Henadi Jaradat, the suicide bomber who in October 2003 took the lives of 21 innocent people - men, women and children - Jews, Arabs and Druse - in the horrifying attack on Maxim's restaurant in Haifa. The foul murderous act has failed to break the spirit of civic cooperation and tolerance in Haifa, or even to take Maxim's out of business (it was full to the brim when I passed by recently). Here it was, however, glorified by a self-hating Israeli - or at least, if a slightly more benign (but ultimately more dangerous) interpretation is accepted, presented as an emblem of "the madness of truth," the so-called cycle of violence which has created this vast pool of blood.
• Equally "insane," for those who chose to see it in such terms, was the suicide bombing that took the lives of a score of Iraqis at the gates of the American HQ compound in Baghdad - another act of "heroic resistance" in the eyes of some, or "senseless violence" in the eyes of others.

Both interpretations are wrong. What we face, when we pull away from the motives of individual terrorists and look at the cult of death that has been deliberately generated to propel them to their death, is not a history of "insanity" or despair - those who use these terms are creating a moral alibi for the true perpetrators - but rather the cunning and cruel tactics of those who would use our own humanitarian weaknesses to drive both peoples deeper and deeper into the abyss. What do they hope to achieve, as the suffering on their own side is deliberately intensified by such acts of perfidy and murder?

• Hamas and Hizballah (and other Iranian-backed murder groups, such as Islamic Jihad) apparently still hope that this will finally break the will of Israeli society - which has not happened, despite cracks here and there;
• Arafat still hopes that the deepening crisis, and the manipulative pressures over the fence ("the Apartheid Wall"), will finally bring in an international intervention and an imposed solution on his terms;
• And in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad apparently hopes that letting Hizballah loose against IDF patrols along the border will give him a stronger hand in the tough game of pre-negotiation; after all, this was his father's way (albeit more cautiously) of "making us an offer we could not refuse" (only to find out that the Israeli people does not like being spoken to in this kind of language and refuses a Golan deal with his regime).

We must not let the murderers, or their apologists, sway us. It is perhaps a good thing - most Israelis think so - that Amb. Mazel acted not as a diplomat but as an aggrieved human being facing the glorification of a murderer. It just may help remind some confused souls that a murder is a murder is a murder.

At the very same time, it is altogether appropriate that even in the face of the Erez provocation, the IDF is now intensifying its efforts to humanize daily work in the roadblocks and checkpoint by having a senior officer and an Arabic speaker at hand; hastening procedures meant to make the wait shorter; and finding ways to connect and liaise with various international NGO's that are genuinely interested in Palestinian welfare (unlike the International Solidarity Movement or the anarchists, whose real effect is to support the political and even the military aspects of the struggle).

Ultimately, such attention to the details of daily life will be a necessary part of implementing the "disengagement" plans and completing the western separation fence (the eastern portion will not come up for budgetary consideration in 2004 - if for no other reason than that there is no money for it). For those who deal in absolutes, the cult of death and the demand that Israel be left defenseless (or be dismantled as a Jewish state) add up to the same thing. On the other hand, for those who are not entirely alien to our realities here, and yet still seek the less-than-perfect solutions which would reduce the loss of life and the suffering on both sides, there are ways to be found to do just that. We can only hope that the International Court of Justice in the Hague, now preparing to sit in judgment over the fence, will come to see things in the same practical light.