Richard H. Curtiss • Special to Arab News

WASHINGTON, 23 June 2003 — Charles Krauthammer seems to have no bright side. He has always been pessimistic and it shows.

Krauthammer is a columnist for Time magazine and he is a regular on “Inside Washington,” a weekly television program. It is in the matter of the Palestinians that Krauthammer becomes especially obnoxious. There is no sin that the Palestinians, and particularly President Yasser Arafat, have not committed. Never mind that Arafat has tried over and over again to solve the Palestinian dilemma. Each time Arafat or other Palestinians attempt to make a just settlement, their Israeli tormentors, from David Ben-Gurion, founder of Israel, to Ariel Sharon, the cruelest Israeli to date, have kept moving the goal posts.

Krauthammer can always find something worse to say about any Palestinian, from Hamas leader Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantissi to Palestinian security chief Muhammad Dahlan and Palestinian Cabinet member Ghassan Khatib.

A writer has accused Krauthammer of being “pro-Israeli.” That’s putting it mildly. Here is a sample: “The Jews are out of practice. Two thousand years without power — clinging to life among oppressive rulers through the good offices of court Jews, special pleaders and circumventors — have left them bereft of the habits of self- government.” The same writer has another quote: “Israel’s only alternatives are counterstrike and deterrence, or start building boats for the sail back to Europe.”

One of Krauthammer’s regular warnings are that the peace accords were a fraud and a deception, doomed to fail. Another example: “We should quietly let Syria know that if its provocations continue — if for example, it does not turn over the Iraqi leaders it is harboring — we reserve the right of hot pursuit, striking at the time and in the manner of our choosing. This does not mean a land invasion. It could mean a sudden taking out of Damascus’s air defenses or destroying one of Assad’s Republican Guard equivalents…In Iraq, America demonstrated the capacity, extraordinary and historically unique, to destroy a regime while leaving the country intact. Assad needs to learn the lesson of Iraq: Change regime behavior — or suffer regime change.”

In an essay in Time entitled “In Defense of Assassination,” Krauthammer writes: “Now that Israel is facing the same threat — a virulent terrorist campaign operating out of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine and directed against innocent Israeli civilians — the wrath of the world has descended upon Israel for daring to respond by “assassinating” those who are running the terrorist operation…Israel’s response to unrelenting terrorism has been extraordinarily restrained, as precisely targeted at the guilty as possible. The abuse Israel has suffered for this scrupulous exercise of self-defense — in a war it did not start — is yet another example of the outrageous double standard applied to it by a cynical, complicit world.”

In another article in The Washington Post: “Mideast Violence: The Only Way Out,” Krauthammer writes: “No country can sustain what Israel is sustaining: One massacre of Columbine proportions after another. The diplomats prattle about how there is no military solution to this conflict. Tell that to Yasser Arafat. He began this war a year ago after rejecting Israel’s offer of a Palestinian state with its capital in a shared Jerusalem.

Why? Because with this terror campaign he intends to bring a bleeding, demoralized Israel to its knees, ready to surrender...There is only one way this war will stop. The scenario would go like this: A lightning and massive Israeli attack on every element of Arafat’s police state infrastructure…Arafat has given Israel war; he will now receive it.”

In a New Republic symposium he wrote: “Large nations may suffer defeats, even occupation. They may even for a time, lose their independence. But they cannot disappear. Small nations can. Israel is a small nation. That is the reason post-Zionism is so dangerous. It is dedicated to dismantling the Zionist fortress state…To do so when the danger is at the gate is suicide.”

Krauthammer keeps bringing up the claim that Israel must have a land of its own without interference from outside forces. This is his leitmotif and they are about the only optimistic words he embraces. Unfortunately, of course, this means that the Palestinians have to pay the costs. Clearly Krauthammer doesn’t care and that is his ultimate racism.

— Richard H. Curtiss is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.