I notice that in all the coverage of police killings of unarmed black men in America, nobody ever says the country’s legitimacy as a nation is at stake. But just imagine if Israel did the same thing to a couple of Palestinians?
The novelist Tom Clancy, no fan of the Jews, imagined just that in his 1991 novel The Sum of All Fears. The following scene takes place after Israeli police kill two unarmed Palestinians who are demonstrating peacefully. The protagonist, Jack Ryan, is Clancy’s alter ego:
“Sooner or later, the Arabs had to wise up,” Jack said. Alden nodded agreement. It was gracious of him, Jack noted. He’d said the same thing in one of his books several years earlier.
“I think Israel can weather this, they always have -” Jack cut his Director off.
“No way, boss,” Ryan said. Someone had to straighten Cabot out. “It’s what Napoleon said about the moral and the physical. Israel depends absolutely on having the moral high-ground. Their whole cachet is that they are the only democracy in the region, that they are the guys in white hats. That concept died about three hours ago. Now they look like Bull – whoever it was – in Selma, Alabama, except he used water hoses. The civil-rights community is going to go berserk.” Jack paused to sip at his coffee. “It’s a simple question of justice. When the Arabs were throwing rocks and cocktails, the police could say that they were using force in response to force. Not this time. Both the deaders were sitting down and not threatening anybody.”
“It’s the isolated act of one deranged man!” Cabot announced angrily.
“Not so, sir. The one shot with a pistol was like you say, but the first victim was killed with two of those rubber bullets at a range of more than twenty yards – with two aimed shots from a single-shot weapon. That’s cold, and it wasn’t any accident.”
“Are we sure he’s dead?” Alden asked.
“My wife’s a doc, and he looked dead to her. The body spasmed and went limp, probably indicating death from massive head trauma. They can’t say this guy tripped and fell onto the curb. This really changes things. If the Palestinians are smart, they’ll double-down their bets. They’ll stay with this tactic and wait for the world to respond. If they do that, they can’t lose,” Jack concluded.
“I agree with Ryan,” Alden said. “There’ll be a UN resolution before dinner. We’ll have to go along with it, and that just might show the Arabs that non-violence is a better weapon than rocks are. What will the Israelis say? How will they react?”
Alden knew what the answer was. This was to enlighten the DCI, so Ryan took the question. “First they’ll stonewall. They’re probably kicking themselves for not intercepting the tape, but it’s a little late for that. This was almost certainly an unplanned incident – I mean that the Israeli government is as surprised as we are – otherwise they would have grabbed the TV crew. That police captain is having his brain picked apart now. By lunchtime they’ll say that he’s crazy – hell, he probably is – and that this is an isolated act. How they do their damage control is predictable, but -”
“It’s not going to work,” Alden interrupted. “The President’s going to have to have a statement out by nine.”
We can’t call this a “tragic incident.” It’s cold-blooded murder of an unarmed demonstrator by a state official.”
“Look, Charlie, this is just an isolated incident,” Director Cabot said again.
“Maybe so, but I’ve been predicting this for five years.” The National Security Advisor stood and walked to the windows. “Marcus, the only thing that has held Israel together for the past thirty years has been the stupidity of the Arabs. Either they never recognized that Israeli legitimacy is based entirely on their moral position or they just didn’t have the wit to care about it. Israel is now faced with an impossible ethical contradiction. If they really are a democracy that respects the rights of its citizens, they have to grant the Arabs broader rights. But that means playing hell with their political integrity, which depends on soothing their own extreme religious elements – and that crowd doesn’t care a rat’s ass about Arab rights, does it? But if they cave in to the religious zealots and stonewall, try to gloss over this thing, then they are not a democracy, and that imperils the political support from America without which they cannot survive economically or militarily. The same dilemma applies to us. Our support for Israel is based on their political legitimacy as a functioning liberal democracy, but that legitimacy just evaporated. A country whose police murder unarmed people has no legitimacy, Marcus. We can no more support an Israel that does things like this than we could have supported Somoza, Marcos, or any other tinpot dictator -”
“God damn it, Charlie! Israel isn’t-”
“I know that, Marcus. They’re not. They’re really not. But the only way they can prove that is to change, to become true to what they have always claimed to be. If they stonewall on this, Marcus, they’re doomed. They’ll lean on their political lobby and find out it isn’t there anymore. If it goes that far, then they embarrass our government even more than it already is, and we’ll be faced with the possible necessity of overtly cutting them off. We can’t do that either. We must find another alternative.” Alden turned back from the window. “Ryan, that idea of yours is now on the front burner. I’ll handle the President and State. The only way we can get Israel out of this is to find some kind of a peace plan that works.
