In his guest column titled, "Bombers, Terrorists and Prime Ministers," Dr. Mark Peifer attempted to illustrate some kind of "moral equivalence" between the actions taken by revolutionary Israelis in the late 1940s and the state-sponsored bloodshed being endorsed by the modern Palestinian Authority as a political tool.
I can't argue the fact that Menachim Begin blew up the King David Hotel.
However, that example isn't appropriate because at the time, the King David served as the primary military headquarters for the British army in Jerusalem.
Such an attack, while deplorable as is always the case with military solutions, represented action taken against a military target. True, civilians died, just as they did during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
What sets the King David incident apart from the gruesome homicide bombings released upon Israel by Arafat is the fact that the Palestinians deliberately target civilians.
Homicide bombers, with the blessing and funding of the Palestinian Authority, walk into pizza parlors, public buses and hotel lobbies with the sole aim of taking as many lives with them as possible, men, women and children. Homicide bombers don't discriminate.
Israel has a long history of going to extreme measures to avoid civilian casualties in military operations. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers died in 1967 while storming East Jerusalem because the IDF didn't want to risk inflicting civilian deaths or damaging holy Islamic sites by using air or tank bombardment.
You simply can't equate the two actions, Dr. Peifer. One side would rather put its own young soldiers' lives on the line than risk inflicting civilian casualties. The other side glorifies these civilian mass murderers as martyrs.
David Siegel
Freshman
Political Science
