Under Trump, Israeli Victims of Terror at Least Get
Genuine Condolences
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Originally
published under the title "Under Trump, Israeli Terrorism Victims at
Least Get Genuine Condolences."
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The Trump
administration's reaction to the June 16 killing of Hadas Malka by
Palestinian terrorists was missing the usual boilerplate admonition to
Israel.
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Although U.S.
President Donald Trump made a host of widely-publicized pledges to
strengthen the US-Israeli relationship during his presidential campaign,
his five-month old administration has shown few tangible signs of
movement on any of them. It has passed on opportunities to move the U.S.
embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and to scrap the Iran nuclear deal.
And it certainly doesn't appear to be undertaking a major rethink about
how to bring about Israeli-Palestinian peace.
But credit the
White House with making one critically important, lower-profile change,
evident in the reaction of Trump's peace envoy to the June 16 killing of
Border Police officer Hadas Malka by Palestinian terrorists outside of
Jerusalem's Old City.
"The United
States stands with our ally Israel and condemns the savage terrorist
attack in Jerusalem," tweeted Trump's lead international
negotiator Jason Greenblatt as he was leaving on a trip to Israel. After
visiting the family of the deceased on June 19, he released a prepared statement saying "[St.-]
Sgt. Major [Hadas] Malka was murdered by terrorists," with a bit at
the end about Trump's vision for a Middle East free from "threats of
terrorism and extremism."
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Past practice of victim-shaming Israel
is unique in the annals of American diplomacy.
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If all that seems
pretty typical of how an American envoy would react to a deadly terrorist
attack against a longstanding U.S. ally, that's precisely the point.
Under previous administrations, it had become standard practice in
reacting to terrorist attacks against Israelis to urge Israel (or both
sides) to "exercise restraint," "not
escalate tensions any further," "avoid any kind of innocent civilian
casualties, "avoid... making provocative statements
that can further inflame tensions," and various other equivalents.
This practice of
singling Israel out for what can best be described as victim-shaming is
unique in the annals of American diplomacy. Most countries get
unmitigated expressions of sympathy after experiencing terrorist attacks.
"Each and every American stands with you today. We stand with you in
solidarity... to the cause of confronting extremism," said secretary
of state John Kerry in response to the January 2016 Paris terrorist
attacks. Nothing about avoiding provocations or not escalating
tensions.
Even Pakistan got straight-up State
Department condolences last year, without any insulting riders or
caveats.
Of course,
admonitions to avoid doing bad things after being attacked crop up at
times in U.S. handling of countries like Lebanon and Syria, where the absence of a
functioning state has given rise to ethno-sectarian score-settling, and China, which has been prone to excesses
in responding to terrorist attacks, but the usage of this rhetoric
doesn't seem to have been routine.
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Israel, of all countries, doesn't need
lessons on restraint.
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It goes without
saying that singling out Israel is unfair – any country willing to turn
the other cheek when under repeated Scud missile attack by Saddam Hussein
doesn't need lessons on restraint. But even if it did, it's difficult to
imagine a less effective way of counseling an ally than demeaning it
publicly every time it is murderously attacked.
This is the
Middle East's lone true democracy and a regional oasis of women's rights
and minority freedoms we're talking about. Pretending otherwise only
legitimizes extremists obsessed with demonizing, boycotting, and
ultimately destroying Israel.
Why, then, the
deliberate projection of false moral equivalence between Palestinian
terrorism and Israeli self-defense? It's partly the result of decades of
Arab diplomatic pressure, and partly a result of the Stockholm
Syndrome-like belief among State Department careerists that Palestinian
leaders won't come to (or at any rate stay at) the table unless they and
their narrative are accorded the same respect and acknowledgment as
Israel's.
Hopefully the
changing substance and tenor of U.S. public statements about Israel
reflects a discarding of such faulty assumptions, a willingness to help
build Israel's confidence rather than undermine it, and greater
commitment to letting this loyal ally get on with the business of
combating Islamist terrorism the way it knows best.
Gregg Roman is director of the Middle East
Forum.
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