In London, one may seek the Truth under the ground*

(In London, zucht M'n Emes in d'rerd)

From the different reactions which have appeared in the Israeli press it is evident that the terrorist attacks in London had a special meaning. While, of course, the first reaction for many was a sense of compassion and sympathy, a number of writers raised a different issue: the accusation of intellectual dishonesty, particularly with regard to the BBC which, in cases other than England, failed to call terrorists by their true name. But this time, London briefly used the correct word, "terrorists." This is a serious matter because words can be as important as deeds, particularly when they mold the way the public perceives reality.

That the BBC uses a special vocabulary to conceal and even legitimate the horrifying reality of terror when used against others is not new, but there is a need to understand its significance. The choice of words which implies that terror is legitimate against others, but not against the British, is morally objectionable, because in order to hold this view one has to assume that all men are not equal, or that the English are more equal than others, -- which is racist. At best, this could be an example of Orwellian "Doublethink." Indeed, a feeling may also lurk in the background that the troubles of others, when far away, are of minimal concern. When Neville Chamberlain abandoned Czechoslovakia to its fate, he dismissed Nazi German aggression, as "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing." The trouble is that while such attitudes persist to the present, modern "quarrels" are no longer far away.

It should be noted that the British government really tried to make its peace with the forces of terror. In the September 1970 hijacking of a British plane to Jordan, the Heath government met the demands of the Palestinian hijackers, despite the fact that Britain had signed the 1963 Tokyo International Convention on Hijacking, undertaking not to negotiate with hijackers. Years later, highjacker emerita Leila Khaled said, "It was a good step for us that we saw governments could be negotiated with. We could impose our demands. The success in the tactics of the hijacking and imposing our demands and succeeding gave us the courage and the confidence to go ahead with our struggle." Arafat's biographers, Barry and Judy Rubin, reported that before Black September, King Hussein asked the British to help rescue the Hashemite Kingdom. Using archival sources, namely the minutes of the British cabinet, the Rubins reported that the Heath government decided to let Hussein fall and advised the Americans to do the same. In the end, King Hussein managed to stay in power with some help from a neighboring country but with no help from his country's patron, Great Britain. (This week, Edward Heath died at the ripe age of 89).

Evidently, there is a dynamic of first giving in to terror and subsequently endeavoring to appease those who sent terrorists, by satisfying their "reasonable aspirations" and then becoming their advocates. Writing in 1980, Terence Prittie, a British friend of Israel explained that the British Foreign Office began to spread the falsehood, now known as the comprehensivist doctrine, "that the settlement of the "Palestine Question," … would enable all the other pieces of the Middle East jigsaw puzzle to fall neatly into place, resulting in peace, progress and prosperity for all." Prittie further explained the motivation: "given a European-inspired settlement of the Palestinian Question in which Britain would be very fully involved … the gratitude of the Arab world would be boundless and the possibilities for giving invaluable advice to solve other inter-Arab disputes would be boundless." There would thus be plenty of Arab oil and investment for Europe and European technology and expertise would flow in the opposite direction. This would open a golden era of European-Arab cooperation. Prittie wrote shortly after the Venice Summit in June 1980 where EEC heads of Governments issued a declaration on the necessity to involve the PLO in future Middle East negotiations. At this time, Americans were being held hostage in Iran (November 4, 1979-January 20, 1981), and President Carter's historical display of weakness gave tremendous encouragement to the Arab world. The mindset which Prittie described, basically, applies to British and European thinking today, but the golden age of which they dreamed did not materialize. Britain may have booked considerable financial gains, but after caving in to terror in the first round, it now faces a much more threatening reality. For the Arabs terror worked.

In this context, the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, CMIP, recently published a report on Palestinian textbooks (June 2005) containing a revealing passage from a Grade 10 textbook, Islamic Education. Researcher Arnon Grois identified a text contrasting Islamic morality with that of the West,"…[Islamic] morals differ from morals among other peoples, because [Western morals] are characterized by relativity, unsteadiness and subordination to the criterion of interest and benefit. Such people are not bound by them unless they bring them certain gains." The text shows that, although the British may have succeeded in deluding themselves, the Palestinians clearly understood this dimension of Western vulnerability.

The absence of moral clarity which the Palestinian textbook describes is exemplified by the use of such neutral words as "activists," "extremists," and "militants." This represents a pragmatic accommodation with barbaric violence. Not only is the language wrong, but such linguistic collaboration gives comfort to those who claim that the end justifies the means. This development suggests that the British no longer understand the conflict in which they are engaged, a development that will ultimately impair their ability to defend themselves. Another possibility is that they may be gradually conditioning themselves for the new status of a "protected minority," dhimmi, in the Europe of the future.

Joel Fishman is a Fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs