Lest We Forget: Jewish Terrorism

Currently our policy is: don't talk to terrorists. But isn't that hypocritical, considering the fact that terrorists have become our allies? Take, for instance, Jewish terrorism. Israel was actually born out of terrorism. Notorious Jewish terror groups such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang attacked the British as well as the Palestinian Arabs who had lived there 1300 years.

In 1946 the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killing 91. The Stern Gang assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish UN mediator, in 1948. The Irgun and the Stern Gang played major roles in the 1948 terrorist ethnic cleansing of Arab civilians, as is well-documented, village-by-village, in the book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe. This included the massacre of the Arab village of Deir Yassin in which thirty babies were slaughtered while their mothers were raped and killed, along with many others. The massacre was proudly advertised by the Jewish leadership in order to sow terror and induce other Arabs to flee.

The leader of the Stern Gang was future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and future Israeli prime Minister Menachem Begin commanded the Irgun. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led a commando unit which blew up a building in the Arab village of Kibya killing 69 Palestinians including women and children. Twenty years later, Ariel "The Butcher of Lebanon" Sharon, then Israeli Defense Minister, was held accountable for the cold-blooded 1982 massacre of more than a thousand defenseless Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. For this Sharon was forbidden by the Israeli government from ever again becoming Defense Minister. Instead he became Israeli Prime Minister, being elected after he started the 2nd intifada (Palestinian uprising) by ostentatiously parading around the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Palestinian President Arafat had begged then Prime Minister Barak not to allow this provocation by candidate Sharon, since Arafat wanted to prevent the predictable violent reaction, but Barak refused.

Question: why is it that terrorists can become Israeli Prime Ministers and yet the policy is not to talk to terrorists?

Answer: the term terrorist is reserved for enemies of Israel's occupation.