Joel Schwartz Schwartz abhors what you
have to say but will fight for your right to say it. E-mail him at
jschwartz@media.ucla.edu.
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The childish hatred common in the Middle East has transcended
national borders and oceans, managing to color our own campus
debates about the conflict. Last week’s bitter rally in
Meyerhoff Park was only the latest attempt at dredging up a
3,000-year- old history and picking apart the origin of the
conflict. Instead of creating a balanced forum for dialogue and
cooperation, as the “teach-in” professed, the rally
turned into a dogfight where tempers flared. It is now time to stop
passing the buck and to face the problem at hand, both globally and
on campus.
Pure hatred has become manifest even on our civilized campus.
One woman at the rally actually approached me and
said, “We will do to you what Hitler did to
you.” As shocking as this sounds, I have personally also
heard this kind of blindness from the Israeli side where
Palestinians were referred to as “animals that must be
killed.” Comments and beliefs like this only serve to
increase divisiveness.
History has constantly shown us that there is only one force
known to humankind that is more powerful and everlasting than the
deadly combination of hatred and violence: human greed and the
almighty dollar. To truly eliminate this exponential hatred, a
system must be created where both sides mutually benefit from
dealings with each other ““ in other words, a system of free
trade.
Free trade ensures that the existence of one state is contingent
on that of the other. Unfortunately, Israel is the only
relatively free democracy in the Middle East, and as long as the
world continues to view men like Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and
King Abdullah II as legitimate leaders, this goal will never be
attained.
The first step in creating free trade and, therefore, peace is a
world effort to topple these totalitarian/socialist regimes by
whatever means necessary. Simply getting rid of a terrorist
like Yasser Arafat is not enough to dissuade the entirety of the
militant Islamic Middle East from using the Palestinian people as
pawns bent on capturing the King in Jerusalem.
The next necessary step is a world effort to leave these people
alone. The entire world’s propensity for condemning this and
distorting that has muddied the waters even further. Once a viable
democracy has been set up, it is important to let these newly free
societies develop and prosper.
By attacking Afghanistan and removing the totalitarian Taliban,
we gained the highest moral ground by effectively liberating an
entire people. However, we lost most of this triumph by imposing
our Draconian drug laws on the Afghan people, putting many
innocent farmers in dire straits by seizing their private
property.
Likewise we must realize as a country that we cannot be the
grand arbiter of morality if we wish to set up free societies in
hopes of creating peace. It is not our job to judge trade that
occurs between two private entities.
Only after the removal of the entire dehumanizing element
of militant Islam that holds its people in a vice of poverty and
the adoption of a non-interventionist philosophy while these
countries develop, can the hope of peace become reality.
This plan worked 60 years ago, but instead of Yasser Arafat and
the Jihad suicide bombers, it was Emperor Hirohito and the Kamikaze
pilots. Japanese society was composed of an Emperor who controlled
by force, using a large army instilled with a loss of individuality
that led to the lauding of martyrdom. And while the populous
remained poor, the army terrorized Japan’s neighbors with
rape and genocide.
Ultimately, the Japanese regime was crushed by a tragic amount
of force. However, when the smoke cleared and the economy of Japan
was left to its own devices, it became a peaceful world power
engaged in trade with its “mortal” enemy, the United
States.
The only way to avoid greater tragedy in the Middle East, as was
necessary to end Hirohito’s sickening rule, is for the world
to consolidate in an effort to obliterate the totalitarian rulers
of the Middle East. Only then can democracy and free trade root out
the bitterness between the 3,000-year-old enemies and peace become
reality.