Suicidal?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

As Israel was burying the 16 victims of bus bombings in Beersheba, the editorialists of the New York Times were offering President Bush advice on terrorism. If he is going to speak seriously about terrorism, they said, he “needs to talk about Israel.” Said the Times: “With its fixation on Iraq, the administration has allowed the situation in Israel to turn into a stalemate in which the Sharon government continues to expand its suicidal West Bank settlements while attempting to keep the Palestinians under control with sheer military force.”
It’s been a while since the Times has so affronted a community that understands the ones to blame for the terrorism against Israel are the Palestinian Arab terrorists and their Syrian, Iranian, and Saudi sponsors. The terrorists and their sponsors are the ones to whom the term “suicidal” rightly applies. None can tolerate Jews in their midst, whether in West Bank “settlements” or in Beersheba or other parts of Israel. Nor can they tolerate the freedom and democracy that America and Israel value. Yet when the terrorists strike, the Times editorial writers blame Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Sharon.
The Times contends “there is no way that the current mess is going to improve without the very aggressive intervention of United States diplomacy.” Leave aside the fact that situation (ital) has (end ital) been improving, as reported by the Times’s own Steven Erlanger, who noted that the bombings marked the end of “six months of relative quiet in Israel.” This was achieved not by aggressive diplomacy, a Times euphemism for pressuring Israel for concessions to the terrorists. It was achieved by Israel’s decision to kill terrorist leaders and build a security fence. And also by Mr. Bush’s decision to end the regime of Saddam Hussein, which was paying bonuses up to $25,000 to the families of Palestinian Arab suicide bombers.
The Times claims that the approach of Messrs. Sharon and Bush has involved “sheer military force.” But both men have offered other approaches, as well. Mr. Sharon has a plan for Israelis to withdraw from their homes in Gaza. Mr. Bush has called for a new, more responsible, and democratic leadership to emerge among the Palestinian Arabs. As Ha’aretz put it in an assessment last week, the Bush administration has been “far more involved than any previous administrations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
At the heart of the Times’s argument is the idea that it is American and Israeli recalcitrance – or Israel itself – that are to blame for Middle Eastern terrorism. That’s what the terrorists want us to believe. What a sad argument for a newspaper in New York City to make just days before the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. On Wednesday the Times ran on its front page a memorably poignant photo of one of the Israelis who perished in the latest attack, slumped from the window of a destroyed bus. To follow it with an editorial blaming Israel is astounding. Someone needs to tell the Israelis as they bury their latest dead that the vast majority of Americans know whom to blame and are on the Israelis’ side.