A Modest Proposal

(If Miz in our front office were as smart as she is good looking, she'd give up answering that conceited Junior's questions about the Middle East. She thinks he's looking for knowledge, but from what I overhear, I think he's just looking for lunch)

Ms: So you'll help mail books for an hour? Is there a catch?

Jr: Nope.

Ms: Like maybe with the time saved we can go to lunch together?

Jr: I don't have anything like that in mind.

Ms: Oh . . . Then you don't care if I go work in the other room.

Jr.: Miz, I'd love to take you out to lunch. I'd even pay if it's just a hamburger. But you're so hung up on Middle East peace I thought you'd be impossible now that President Reagan has declared economic war on Qaddafi because he kills 11 year old girls.

Ms: I'm on the side of the 11 year olds, Junior. Even 11 year old boys, despite how some of them turn out. Just so long as we don't start killing their 11 year olds back.

Jr: So you're for the economic sanctions?

Ms: Junior, I'm for anything that stops people from killing people.

Jr: Since we so seldom agree about the Middle East, Miz, I'm going to press my luck. How about economic sanctions against Iran and Syria too?

Ms: Why not?

Jr: I thought you'd say economic sanctions won't work.

Ms: I don't have to. Everyone knows they won't. But I'd rather see us try to starve Libyan children than bomb them.

Jr: I knew it! Now you're saying I want to starve children.

Ms: Don't worry, Junior. No one's going to starve. The Europeans will rush in to sell the Libyans food and replace our technicians.

Jr: That's just my point, Miz. Economic sanctions would work if our European allies would assume a responsible role in the Middle East.

Ms: And slap sanctions and an arms embargo on every country that mounts attacks on children? They'd do it if we would first.

Jr: Miz, you and I are perfect for each other in every way. You're young, beautiful, intelligent and, with all due modesty, I'm the exact macho equivalent. But how can we possibly communicate if you don't stay informed? We Uncle Sam, the good old USA have led the way. We slapped sanctions on Iran long ago. Now we've put really tough ones on Libya. We may slap some soon on Syria. So, according to your theory, the Europeans should be helping us, just to keep us from getting irritated enough to waste those terrorist creeps.

Ms: You're right, Junior.

Jr: That we ought to bomb Khomeini back into the stone age, assassinate Qaddafi, land Marines in the Bekaa valley to rescue our hostages and blow away terrorists wherever they try to hide?

Ms: No, that we're not communicating. I said that if we would slap an embargo on every country that mounts attacks on children, the Europeans would have to follow us. In fact, they'd want to.

Jr: Oh boy, here we go. South Africa, the Contras ...

Ms: No, Junior, don't try to complicate it. Let's stick to the Middle East.

Jr: Miz, the Israelis do not level their guns at 11 year olds in airports.

Ms: Junior, in August, 1981, Israeli aircraft leveled some residential apartments in Beirut and killed 300 civilians. In June, July and August of 1982 they leveled much of Tyre, Sidon, and West Beirut and killed 20,000 people, nearly all of them civilians. Do you think the American cluster bombs they use skip 11 year olds and just kill everyone else around them?

Jr: That was war, Miz.

Ms: In September, 1982, after that war was over, between 1000 and 2000 Palestinian civilians were killed in Sabra and Shatilla. Probably most of them were under 11. What kind of war was that, Junior?

Jr: That killing was done by Lebanese Falangist militiamen.

Ms: Who were trucked to the camps by Israelis, provided with weapons and ammunition by Israelis, and given covering fire and illuminating flares by Israelis. It was Israeli troops who wouldn't let the victims escape from the camp during the massacre, which Israeli soldiers have testified they watched for a day and two nights from high buildings all around the camps. Come on, Junior, even the Israeli Government investigation, which was a whitewash, admitted Ariel Sharon personally was "indirectly responsible." Is he a Christian Falangist?

Jr. Miz, don't knock Israel because it used to be run by bad guys. I omitted Algeria and Iraq from the countries we ought to zap because I believe they've stopped harboring terrorists.

Ms: Sharon is still a minister in the cabinet of Shimon Peres, Junior. And Peres just last October sent bombers to destroy the PLO headquarters in Tunisia, whose President was requested by Ronald Reagan to take in the PLO in the first place. Do you think there were no Tunisian kids among the 70 victims of that bombing in a residential neighborhood?

Jr: Miz, it's bleeding hearts like you who make it impossible for our country to get any respect. We can't protect all the 11 year olds in the world but we can blow away anyone who kills our 11 year olds.

Ms: Junior, I should think after what the human race has been through in this century even you would have mastered the basics of how to break the genocide cycle. Thinking back to the civil rights battles in the U.S. a generation ago, would you agree that no minority is safe in this country until every minority is safe?

Jr: If you're implying that because one Arab American was murdered last fall...

Ms: There's no need to imply anything so long as we Americans don't start choosing sides against each other over battles in the old world, specifically including the Middle East. Would you also agree, after seeing how Hider started with the Jews and before he was through had also killed countless millions of Gypsies, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians...

Jr: Hold it. I agree! If we let a tyrant pick on members of one group, like the Jews, no group is safe. Doesn't that bring us right back to Qaddafi, Khomeini and the Abu Nidal terrorists who shoot up synagogues?

Ms: Doesn't it also bring us right back to Israel? If we supply the weapons with which the Israelis kill Palestinian, Lebanese and Tunisian 11 year olds, our own 11 year olds aren't safe. That's why we just added Natasha Simpson to the list of nearly 300 Americans killed by Middle Eastern terrorists in the 1980s alone. Until we make everyone safe from terrorism, no one is safe from it.

Jr: You're trying to politicize a case of cold blooded mass murder.

Ms: No, I'm trying to beat Abu Nidal. His goal is that of every extremist in the Middle East: To make it impossible for Jews and Arabs to sit down together to negotiate a lasting peace. Effects have causes. That's what Mrs. Thatcher is trying to tell Ronald Reagan. If we will join our European allies in resolving the political cause for their streets and airports becoming unsafe, they will join us in dealing with the terrorism effects that are getting our citizens killed over there. It's the gutlessness of our leaders, not theirs, that's holding things up.

Jr: But it's not so easy to solve the political problem.

Ms: It would be easy, Junior, if only we had a really strong President and more than half a dozen honest Congressmen. The U.S., the Europeans, the Arab states, Golda Meir's Israeli Government and even the Russians have agreed to U.N. Security Council Resolution 242's land for peace solution. Way back in the Nixon era the U.S. said that under that solution, when the Israelis go back to their 1967 borders in return for Arab guarantees of peace, territorial adjustments should be "insubstantial." The original UN partition plan for Palestine provided that Jerusalem should be internationally administered. We've since said that Jerusalem should never again be divided and that everyone, Christians, Jews and Muslims, should have access to their own Holy places. That's the whole ball of wax. There's nothing in any of that to prevent the Israelis from using Jerusalem as their capital, if they choose to, nor to prevent the Palestinians from also using it as the capital of their state, which we've said should be in confederation with Jordan. Is that really harder for us to see through than futilely trying to save lives by making Americans stay out of half of the world and turning U.S. embassies in the rest of it into fortresses?

Jr: But what if certain Israeli or Palestinian leaders won't accept Resolution 242?

Ms: To borrow from your vocabulary, waste 'em.

Jr: Miz, we can't just blow people away when we disagree with them!

Ms: For once we agree, Junior. But we do have the power to encourage the moderates and hurt the extremists in both camps if our President goes right around the Israel firsters in Congress and explains what he is doing to the American people. For instance, we already know that Sharon and Abu Nidal are extremists who reinforce and justify each other. Their goals are identical: Derail the peace process at all costs. We have the power, by consistently supporting their moderate rivals in both camps, to beat them both. On the other side are Peres and Arafat. Both have evolved from hawks to moderates during the past decade. Both would make peace if they had to. But to make it stick, they need to show their own people they are compromising in the face of inexorable pressure. Believe me, if we, our European allies, and the moderate Arabs levy economic sanctions on all parties to the ArabIsraeli dispute who won't accept Resolution 242, that's inexorable pressure. And the Russians would have to go along or be exposed as hypocrites openly obstructing peace.

Jr: But you said economic sanctions don't work.

Ms: And you said they would if our allies would join us.

Jr: Are you agreeing with me or am I agreeing with you?

Ms: Whatever. Like Resolution 242, I'm proposing a reasonable compromise.

Jr: Great! If I weren't a little short maybe we could have lunch together after all. As a matter of fact, if you give me my newsletter gratis, I can pay for my lunch even if I can't quite manage yours.

Ms: You finish mailing the books, Junior, and I'll buy.

Jr: Now that's the kind of reasonable compromise I can go for.

—Richard H. Curtiss