Foreign to the Truth

Finnish Foreign Minister Tuomioja and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

By Professor Efraim Karsh

University of London

In an interview with the Finnish news magazine Suomen Kuvalehti on June 3, 2005, Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja gave his prognosis of the Middle East peace process based on a visit to Israel and the Palestinians territories last April. The interview is noteworthy for two main reasons. For one thing, next

year Finland will assume the EU′s rotating presidency, thus making Tuomioja a player in the organization′s Middle Eastern policy at an important juncture in the region′s history. For another, Tuomioja′s views are representative of a deeper undercurrent in contemporary European criticism of Israel, one that combines factual ignorance and misconceptions about the Arab-Israeli conflict with latent animosity borne out of the Continent′s millenarian legacy of anti-Semitism.

Suomen Kuvalehti seems to be one of Tuomioja′s favourite platforms for airing his Middle Eastern position. In a previous interview with the magazine in August 2001, he denounced Israel′s attempts to protect its citizens from the terror war launched by Yasser Arafat′s Palestinian Authority (PA) in September 2000 (euphemised as al-Aqsa Intifada after the mosque in Jerusalem). He went so far as to compare the Israeli defensive measures to the Nazi persecution of European Jewry, stating that "it is quite shocking that some implement the same kind of policy toward the Palestinians which they themselves were victims of in the 1930s."

This glib analogy created an instant international uproar and led the- then Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen to distance himself from his foreign minister. But have events during the subsequent four years, notably the 9-11 terrorist attacks, done anything to mollify Tuomioja′s views? Hardly. Though clearly more careful with his words, Tuomioja remains as entrenched as ever in his offensive analogy. "I could have avoided many unnecessary reactions with a different

wording, but the matter itself has not changed in any way", he argued in his latest interview, before opining patronizingly that even the majority of Israelis now understand that criticism of Israel is meant for their own good.

The problem of course is not one of wording but rather of substance. While Israel should not be more immune to international criticism than any other state, it should not be singled out for disproportionate opprobrium either, especially when infinitely worse offenders are allowed to get away with (literally) murder. Which is precisely what Tuomioja does (yet again) in his latest interview. Ignoring altogether the causes of the Palestinian terror war, launched shortly after the PA was offered an independent state in most of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with its capital in Jerusalem, as well as the reasons for its stubborn persistence, Tuomioja paints a distorted and surrealistic picture of the conflict that turns reality on its head by substituting aggressor for victim and vice versa.

I. Providing erroneous and misleading information and ignoring elementary facts.

CLAIM: "Months following Arafat′s death went by in a hopeful atmosphere: the Palestinians elected a new president, Mahmoud Abbas, in January. Yet now the situation is jammed in one place. According to Tuomioja, new steps forward are already sorely missed. Daily lives of the Palestinians have hardly changed at all… `There are approximately as many roadblocks as before and all political prisoners that were promised to be freed have not been freed … There is a widespread suspicion on whether Israel wishes to hold onto the peace plan at all.′"

The clear impression from the above description is that Israel is unwilling to do anything and has done nothing since January 2005 while the PA has been doing its utmost to promote peace and reconciliation. This is the inverse of the truth! Not only has Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly vowed his commitment to Arafat′s violent and destructive legacy, but he has made it eminently clear that he has no intention to disarm the Palestinian armed gangs as required by the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap. In contrast, the Israeli government has been decisively moving to vacate all Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip, as well as a number of settlements in the West Bank, and has also taken substantial steps to ease the plight of ordinary Palestinians.

FACTS:

Measures taken by Israel since January 2005 (alongside the preparations for the implementation of the Gaza Disengagement Plan) include:

• Initial prisoner release: Contrary to Tuomioja′s claim, there are no political prisoners in Israeli jails! All Palestinian prisoners whose release is demanded by

the PA are either convicted terrorists, or suspected terrorists awaiting trial, or planners and perpetrators of other acts of violence. Of these, 500 were released on February 21, 2005, while another 400 were released four months later, on June 2, 2005.

• Transfer of cities to the PA′s responsibility:

All military checkpoints, closures and curfews have been removed from Jericho on March 15, 2005 and Tulkarm on March 21, 2005, despite the PA′s failure to combat terrorism as required by the Roadmap.

• Opening crossing points between Israel and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and removing roadblocks to ease movement within the disputed territories:

• In January 2004 there were twenty-five security crossings throughout the West Bank. As part of a long-term plan, initiated well before Mahmoud Abbas′ succession of Arafat, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have removed thirteen of these crossings and an additional eighty-seven roadblocks, leaving today twelve security crossings and sixty-six roadblocks--an over fifty percent decrease in the number of active crossings.
• There is no curfew or encirclement on any Palestinian city. In addition, Israel has introduced advanced technological means at the crossings which allow for quick and efficient security checks and has also improved the conditions at the crossings, adding roofs, clinics and drinking stations.
• On February 1, 2005, the Rafah terminal in the southern Gaza Strip was fully reopened, having been closed for nearly two months following a deadly terrorist attack.
• On February 7, 2005 the Karni crossing in the northern Gaza Strip was reopened for the passage of agricultural merchandise and humanitarian aid. The passage had been closed in mid-January following a terrorist attack in which six Israeli civilians were murdered and another five wounded.
• On February 9, 2005 the Gush Katif junction was opened to all vehicles including vehicles of the Palestinian security services.
• On February 15, 2005 the opening hours of the Karni crossing were expanded, so that the crossing would be open on weekdays from 8:00 A.M. until 11:30 P.M.
• On March 13, 2005 the Erez crossing was reopened and the Abu Holi junction (in the southern Gaza Strip) started to be opened twenty- four hours a day for the passage of private vehicles.
• Between April 7 and May 14, the following IDF barriers have been removed: near Adam, southeast of Ramallah (enables unrestricted movement from Jasa to Chizma), near Yitmah, south of Nablus (enables free access to the Route 5 highway) near Dir Amar, northwest of Ramallah (eases the movement to and from the city of Ramallah), near Abud, northwest of Ramallah (allows free northern bound passage of vehicles from the village), near Ein Bidan, northeast of Nablus

(allows free access for Palestinians and merchandise between Nablus and Palestinian villages in the Jordan Valley).

• On June 17, 2005, the roadblock near the village of Mallek, northeast of Ramallah, was removed to enable free passage to the Northern Samaria region and to Jericho. A roadblock near the village of Dir-Nizam, northwest of Ramallah, was removed to enable free passage to Qalqilya. A gate near the village of Um-Zapa, northwest of Ramallah, was opened to allow passage into Ramallah. On June 19, a roadblock near the village of Sinjil, northeast of Ramallah, was

removed to enable direct passage from the village into Ramallah.

• All in all, approximately thirty roadblocks have been removed throughout the West Bank since the beginning of March 2005.

• Increasing the number of work permits in Israel for Palestinians:

• On February 9, 2005, 2,000 additional Palestinian workers from the West Bank were authorized to enter to work in Israel. In addition, 1,000 Palestinian workers and 500 merchants from the Gaza Strip were authorized to enter Israel via the Erez crossing to work in Israel. Five-hundred Palestinians workers were authorized to work in the Erez industrial zone and family visits for Palestinians prisoners and detainees were authorized.

• Easing restrictions over the entrance of Palestinians into Israel:

• On February 19, 2005, six-hundred additional Palestinian workers as well as three-hundred merchants from the Gaza Strip were authorized to enter Israel via the Erez crossing, half of the merchants were authorized to stay in Israel overnight and one-hundred additional Palestinian workers were authorized to work in the Erez industrial zone, bringing the total number to a maximum of six-hundred. In addition, the age limit of those exiting the Gaza Strip via the Rafah

Terminal was lifted.

• On March 13, 2005, nine-hundred additional Palestinian merchants and businessmen from the West Bank were authorized to enter Israel (total number from West bank then 8,500) and 500 additional merchants from the Gaza strip were authorized to enter Israel via the Erez crossing (total number from the Gaza Strip then 1,300).
• On May 15, 2005, 4,500 additional authorizations were given to Palestinian workers wishing to enter Israel from the Gaza Strip (total from the Gaza Strip to Israel then 10,000) and 1,500 additional Palestinian workers were given authorizations to spend the night in Israel (total number of these then 3,000).

II. Blaming Israel for the conflict with the Palestinian, the sparking of terrorism, and even threatening world peace.

CLAIM:

"Israel is also continuing the building of the wall and is planning to expand settlements. Tuomioja points out that it is completely against the peace plan, the so-called Roadmap, and makes a viable Palestinian state impossible." The impression deliberately given here is that the security fence is a devious Israeli ploy to disrupt Palestinian lives and to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, while it is in fact a necessary security measure aimed at containing Palestinian terrorism and, in consequence, promoting peace and reconciliation.

FACTS:

There is actually no "wall" between Israel and the West Bank, but rather a security fence not dissimilar to that existing along the Finnish-Russian border. Less than three percent of the planned 720- kilometer-long anti-terrorist barrier (or a mere twenty kilometers) will be constructed of concrete, designed not only to block terrorists from infiltrating, but also to prevent them from shooting at Israeli vehicles traveling on main highways, alongside the pre- 1967 "green line." The misnomer "wall" was introduced into the international discourse by Palestinian propaganda, so as to de- legitimize this anti-terrorist measure by falsely associating it with such negative symbols as the "Berlin Wall."

Nor does the security fence have any political motivation whatsoever, least of all the prevention of a Palestinian state. In the Camp David summit of July 2000 Israel offered the Palestinians the creation of an independent state in most of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem as its capital. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has repeatedly reaffirmed his support for this objective and Israel has clarified in no uncertain terms that the final route of the security fence will be determined during the peace talks with the Palestinians. Regrettably the Palestinians chose to respond to this offer of statehood with wholesale violence.

The one and only reason for the security fence is the reduction of terrorist attacks, whether in the form of explosive-rigged vehicles, or shootings at Israeli vehicles traveling along the "green line," or suicide bombers seeking to enter Israel with the intention of murdering innocent civilians: babies, children, youngsters, women and men.

Not only does the security fence not contradict the Roadmap but it actually enhances its chances of success for the simple reason that the Roadmap envisages the end of Palestinian terrorism as a prerequisite for progress toward peace, and the security fence has done more than any other single factor to reduce this terrorism. If in 2002, 453 Israelis were murdered in daily terrorist attacks (220 in suicide bombings), in 2003 the number fell to 212 (142 in suicide

bombings), dropping still further to 118 (55 in suicide bombings) in 2004. Altogether the number of Israelis fatalities dropped in this three-year period by seventy-five percent, largely as a result of the nascent security fence.

CLAIM:

"Tuomioja believes that although, for instance, absolute poverty creates conflicts, it carries less significance in creating terrorism than humiliations, powerlessness, and rage. These are channeled into support and understanding to extremist movements and fanaticism."

This analysis blames Israel for the creation of Palestinian terrorism through "humiliations, powerlessness, and rage." This version of blaming-the-victim syndrome ignores both the real root causes of Palestinian terrorism--rejection of Jewish statehood and systematic indoctrination of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hatred among Palestinians—and the organized nature of this terrorist activity.

FACTS:

In the entire two decades of Israeli occupation preceding the Oslo accords, some 400 Israelis were murdered; since the conclusion of that "peace" agreement, nearly four times as many have lost their lives in terrorist attacks. If "humiliations, powerless and rage" were the causes of terrorism, why was terrorism sparse during the years of actual occupation, why did it increase dramatically with the prospect of the end of the occupation, and why did it escalate into open war upon Israel′s most far-reaching concessions ever in the July 2000 Camp David summit?

The bleak answer is that for Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, the Oslo process has always been a strategic means not to a two-state solution—Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza—but to the substitution of a Palestinian state for the state of Israel. As early as August 1968, Arafat defined the PLO′s strategic objective as "the transfer of all resistance bases" into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, occupied by Israel during the June 1967 war, "so that the resistance may be gradually transformed into a popular armed revolution." This, he reasoned, would allow the PLO to undermine Israel′s way of life by "preventing immigration and encouraging emigration … destroying tourism … weakening the Israeli economy and diverting the greater part of it to security requirements … [and] creating and maintaining an atmosphere of strain and anxiety that will force the Zionists to realize that it is impossible for them to live in Israel."

The Oslo accords enabled the PLO to achieve in one fell swoop what it had failed to attain through many years of violence and terrorism. From the moment of his arrival in Gaza in July 1994, Arafat set out to build an extensive terrorist infrastructure in flagrant violation of the accords, and in total disregard of the overriding reason he had been brought from Tunisia, namely, to lay the groundwork for Palestinian statehood. Arafat refused to disarm the terrorist groups

Hamas and Islamic Jihad as required by the Oslo accords and tacitly approved the murder of hundreds of Israelis by these groups. He created a far larger Palestinian army (the so-called police force) than was permitted by the accords. He reconstructed the PLO′s old terrorist apparatus, mainly under the auspices of the Tanzim, which is the military arm of Fatah (the PLO′s largest constituent organization and Arafat′s own alma mater). He frantically acquired prohibited weapons with large sums of money donated to the PA by the international community for the benefit of the civilian Palestinian population; and he eventually resorted to outright mass violence, first in September 1996 to publicly discredit the newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then in September 2000 with the launch of his war of terror.

This building of terrorist infrastructure was accompanied by systematic indoctrination of Palestinians, and especially the youth, against the state of Israel, Jews, and Judaism—all in flagrant violation of their obligations under Oslo. In a relentless outpour of television and radio broadcasts, newspaper articles, scholarly

writings, schoolbooks, cartoons, and public statements, Jews have been painted in the blackest terms imaginable. Palestinians have been told of the most outlandish Israeli plots to corrupt and ruin them, which are wholly congruent with the medieval myth of Jews as secret destroyers and poisoners of wells. Thus, Arafat has charged Israel with killing Palestinian children to get their internal organs, while the PA′s minister of health has accused Israeli doctors of using "Palestinian patients for experimental medicines." The Palestinian representative to the Human Rights Commission in Geneva charged Israel with injecting Palestinian children with the AIDS virus. The director of the PA′s Committee for Consumer Protection accused Israel of distributing chocolate infected with "mad cow disease" in the Palestinian territories, while the PA minister of ecology indicted Israel for "dumping liquid waste ... in Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza." Suha Arafat famously amplified one such charge when, in the presence of Hillary Clinton, she told an audience in Gaza in November 1999 that "our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children."

Nor has this racist incitement been toned down during Abbas′ reign. As late as June 14, 2005, the official Palestinian radio ran a long interview with a PA cabinet minister accusing Israel of importing a "Super Drink" to the Palestinian territories with a view to poisoning innocent Palestinians. Last month Abbas himself described the proclamation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, as an unprecedented historic crime and vowed his unwavering refusal to

ever "accept this injustice." Small wonder that he has adamantly refused to disarm the many armed Palestinian gangs as required by the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap, and has repeatedly vowed his commitment to the Palestinian "right of return" to territory that is now part of the state of Israel—the standard Palestinian/Arab euphemism for the destruction of Israel through demographic subversion.

CLAIM:

"Tuomioja does not wish to be quite as dramatic as the former French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who called the Middle East conflict `the mother of all the conflicts in the world.′ On the other hand, in his view Villepin hit the nail on the head ... `Of course it is reflected into the safety of the Finns as well.

Terrorism is a global phenomenon. All countries can be pulled into it."

Tuomioja taps into a prevalent recent tendency among Europeans to view Israel as "the most dangerous state in the world." Aside from ignoring far bloodier and more destructive conflicts worldwide (from Rwanda to Bosnia to Chechnia), this claim constitutes yet another plank of the "blame the victim" syndrome. For nobody claims that Israel is likely to launch a worldwide terrorist campaign but rather that it might trigger large scale Arab and/or Muslim attacks. But

then, shouldn′t the perpetrator of these attacks be considered the real culprit? Surely no sensible person would accuse banks of endangering public peace by posing an irresistible temptation to bank robbers. So why accuse worldwide victims of violence and terrorism of endangering world peace?

FACTS:

The perception of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the main trigger of Arab and Islamic terrorism is conceptually and historically misconceived. For one thing, violence was an integral part of Middle Eastern political culture long before the advent of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and physical force remains today the main

if not the sole instrument of regional political discourse. For another, the Arab states have never had any real stake in the "liberation of Palestine." Though anti-Zionism has been the core principle of pan-Arab solidarity since the mid-1930′s--it is easier, after all, to unite people through a common hatred than through a

shared loyalty--pan-Arabism has almost always served as an instrument for achieving the self-interested ends of those who proclaim it.

Consider, for example, the pan-Arab invasion of the newly proclaimed state of Israel in 1948. This, on its face, was a shining demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinian people. But the invasion had far less to do with winning independence for the indigenous population than with the desire of the Arab regimes for

territorial aggrandizement. Transjordan′s King Abdullah wanted to incorporate substantial parts of mandatory Palestine into the greater Syrian empire he coveted; Egypt wanted to prevent that eventuality by laying its hands on southern Palestine. Syria and Lebanon sought to annex the Galilee, while Iraq viewed the 1948 war as a stepping stone in its long-standing ambition to bring the entire Fertile Crescent under its rule. Had the Jewish state lost the war, its territory

would not have fallen to the Palestinians but would have been divided among the invading Arab forces.

During the decades following the 1948 war, the Arab states manipulated the Palestinian national cause to their own ends. Neither Egypt nor Jordan allowed Palestinian self-determination in the parts of Palestine they had occupied during the 1948 war (respectively, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). Palestinian refugees were kept in squalid camps for decades as a means of whipping Israel and stirring pan-Arab sentiments. "The Palestinians are useful to the Arab states as they are," Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser candidly responded to an inquiring Western reporter in 1956. "We will always see that they do not become too powerful." As late as 1974, Syria′s Hafiz al-Assad referred to Palestine as being "not only a part of the Arab homeland but a basic part of southern Syria."

If the Arab states have shown little empathy for the plight of ordinary Palestinians, the Islamic connection to the Palestinian problem is even more tenuous. It is not out of concern for a Palestinian right to national self-determination but as part of a holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the "House of Islam" that

Islamists inveigh against the Jewish state of Israel. In the words of the covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its Arabic acronym Hamas: "The land of Palestine has been an Islamic trust (waqf) throughout the generations and until the day of resurrection.... When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims."

In this respect, there is no difference between Palestine and other parts of the world conquered by the forces of Islam throughout history. To this very day, for example, Arabs and many Muslims unabashedly pine for the restoration of Spain, and look upon their expulsion from that country in 1492 as a grave historical injustice. As illustrated by the overwhelming support for the 9/11 attacks throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, this vision is by no means confined to a disillusioned and obscurantist fringe of Islam. Islam′s war for world mastery is a traditional, indeed venerable, quest, and is far from over. In the words of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding father of the avowedly imperialist regime in Iran: The Iranian revolution is not exclusively that of Iran, because Islam

does not belong to any particular people .... We will export our revolution throughout the world because it is an Islamic revolution. The struggle will continue until the calls "there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah" are echoed all over the world. Within this grand scheme, the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is but a single element, and one whose supposed centrality looms far greater in Western than in Islamic eyes.

III. Implicitly upholding the analogy between Israel and Nazi- Germany.

CLAIM:

"Four years ago, Foreign Minister Tuomioja criticized Israel′s oppression policy with harsh words. He stated in an SK interview how `certain people promote a policy similar to what they themselves were victims of in the 1930s.′ The statement caused a great fuss. This time Tuomioja is clearly more careful with his words and does not wish to return to his old interview. `I could have avoided many unnecessary reactions with a different wording, but the matter itself

has not changed in any way,′ he nevertheless states."

By insisting that "the matter itself has not changed in any way" Tuomioja consciously passes a golden opportunity to retract his glib analogy of four years ago—by far the most preposterous diatribe leveled at the Jewish state by its enemies during its fifty-seven years of existence.

FACTS:

Viewing the Holocaust as the most powerful modern-day justification for the existence of a Jewish state Arabs and Palestinians have gone out of their way, from the mid-1940s to date, to minimize the genocide, if not deny it altogether. Even Mahmoud Abbas, the Oslo architect and one of the foremost symbols of the supposed Palestinian reconciliation, argued in a 1984 book that less than a million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust and that the Zionist movement was a partner to their slaughter.

At the same time, the Palestinians are portrayed as the Holocaust′s real victims: they have been made to pay for the West′s presumed desire to atone for the Holocaust through the establishment of a Jewish state. In fact, the Holocaust triggered no worldwide wave of sympathy for the Jewish predicament, least of all in Europe, where anti-Semitic sentiments remained as pronounced as ever, especially in Eastern Europe, which witnessed a few vicious pogroms shortly after

the end of WWII. Even in Germany Jews found themselves attacked and abused in public, with sixty percent of Germans condoning overt acts of violence against Jews. For their part the British, who had ruled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate since the early 1920s, did their utmost to prevent the creation of a Jewish state and to resettle the Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world except for Palestine.

A far more insidious propaganda ploy used by the Palestinians and their international champions to downgrade the significance of the Holocaust, or indeed to turn it on its head, was to equate the Jews with their Nazi executioners. This perverted analogy was quickly adopted by Soviet propaganda, from where it spread rapidly to become a staple of western intellectual discourse. "I do not want to press the analogy too far," the celebrated American academic Edward Said wrote in 2002, on the second anniversary of Arafat′s terror war, "but it is true to say that Palestinians under Israeli occupation today are as powerless as Jews were in the 1940′s."

A strange assessment on the anniversary of a Palestinian war that had already resulted in the bloody murder of hundreds Israelis and the wounding of thousands more in daily terror attacks. How many Germans were murdered by Jewish suicide bombers in Berlin′s cafes during the 1940s? How many Palestinians were herded like cattle into trains and transported into death camps where they were systematically exterminated in gas ovens? The answer to both questions is of course none.

But then, the analogy between Zionism and Nazism has never stood the most basic historical test. Far from seeking to systematically exterminate the Palestinians, the Zionist movement accepted the two- state solution—the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states— from the moment it was first proposed in 1937 and has consistently striven for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians and the Arab states on this basis. This in stark contrast to the Arabs′ outspoken commitment to the destruction of the Jewish national cause and their sustained and repeated efforts to achieve that end from the early

1920′s to date.

Nor has Israel′s control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip been remotely reminiscent of the Nazi occupation of Europe. At the time of the Israeli occupation during the June 1967 Six-Day War, life expectancy in the territories was 48 years. By the time Israel passed control to the PA in the mid-1990s, life expectancy had risen to 72 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). One can hardly say a similar thing about the life expectancy of European Jewry (or for that matter, many millions of non-Jewish Europeans) during World War II.

But the story doesn′t end here. During the 1970′s, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world- ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan′s $1,050, Egypt′s $600, Turkey′s $1,630, and Tunisia′s $1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria′s, more than four times Yemen′s, and 10 percent higher than Jordan′s (one of the better off Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.

Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.

No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians′ standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.

Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980′s, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher

education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990′s, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.

This astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression" is not to justify Israel′s rule over these populations until 1996/7—when control was passed to the PA. Yet it exposes the sheer mendacity and hollowness of the "Israel equals Nazism" equation made by enemies of the Jewish state.

CONCLUSION:

In an address to the Finnish Parliament on September 13, 2001, Tuomioja condemned the terrorist attacks on the United States as "a crime against humanity." "The victim of the strikes was not only the United States, but democracy and humanity as well," he emphatically stated:

In the United Nations, there has been a consensus since 1994 that terrorist acts are always crimes, irrespective of who commits them, or what their targets, political motives or goals are. Terrorist acts cannot be justified on any religious, political or ideological grounds. The international community will not remain inactive after these atrocities.

Four years later, the Finnish Foreign Minister has all but eschewed this bold pledge. Since September 28, 2000, Israeli society has been subjected to the longest and most ferocious terror war in modern history, which has resulted in the bloody murder of 1,051 Israelis and the wounding of 7,200 more in some 22,500 terror attacks: a fatality rate that is proportionately equivalent to more than a dozen 9-11 attacks on the United States. Still, Tuomioja has not only

failed to emphatize with these innocent victims--men, women, and children--but has also castigated their efforts to combat this indiscriminate murderous spree as Nazi-like action while at the same time indulging the perpetrators of what he has himself termed "a crime against humanity."

How foreign to the truth does the Finnish Foreign Minister want to get?