The Right Questions to Ask

QOTD: Bret Stephens in WSJ

In Israel..., suicide bombings are commonly understood by the foreign press as acts of desperation by a people who have lost all hope for a better future. Ease the economic hardships of Palestinians and end the occupation, so the thinking goes, and terrorism will be deprived of its motive.

It's a convenient notion, which more or less excuses mass murder as the deeds of men who have been robbed of their property, pride and patrimony. But is it right? What if suicide bombings aren't an act of despair at all but something approaching the opposite: a supreme demonstration of contempt for everything Westerners hold dear, not least life itself? What if, too, suicide bombers are no poor-man's F-16 but a robust expression of confidence that the Palestinians are infinitely more ruthless than Israelis in what amounts to a zero-sum game?

...There are lessons here for us today. If, for example, you think the Palestinian national movement headed by Yasser Arafat seeks only to form a state within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, then the answer to the problem is to get the Israelis to make way. If, however, you think Palestinians are in the grip of a fantasy ideology, acting as the vanguard for a Muslim counterattack against a latter-day Crusader state, then granting a Palestinian state becomes a bit like allowing Hitler to march into the Rhineland: It perpetuates a fantasy that deserves to die.