Editorial: Rebuke of terror is missing

Wednesday, April 17, 2002 | 8:47 a.m.

The United Nations' Commission on Human Rights voted Monday to condemn Israel for what the commission called "mass killings" of Palestinians during Israel's military incursion into the West Bank. The U.N.'s hostility to Israel is long-standing, so it's not all that surprising the international organization would take a swipe at Israel, even though there has been no evidence of a massacre. The U.N.'s top human rights body also called on Israel to leave the occupied areas, despite the fact that the country's military action is necessary. What also made the human rights panel's actions egregious was that it failed to condemn Palestinian terrorist attacks, the very terrorism that Israel was responding to when it was forced to undertake military operations.

Meanwhile, the evidence keeps accumulating that Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority have been acquiring weapons and giving the green light to suicide bombings. That is why Arafat's recent denunciation of terrorism rings so hollow, especially after his wife, Soha Arafat, told an Arabic-language magazine last week that she supported suicide attacks against Israelis, adding that they were a legitimate form of resistance. Some Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia, pay lip service to denouncing terrorism, such as that which occurred Sept. 11, but not a peep is heard from them when terrorism is carried out by Palestinians. In some quarters, terrorism is even endorsed. The Saudi ambassador to Britain, in a poem published in a London newspaper over the weekend, praised the Palestinian suicide bombers. And in Egypt, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the gra nd imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, which has been described as mainstream Islam's highest seat of learning, said Friday that suici! de bombers who kill Israeli "aggressors" are martyrs.

There are concerted efforts abroad to isolate Israel. President Bush should resist the calls from Arab and European nations to put pressure on Israel to stop its military actions. The only democratic nation in that region should be free to take the necessary steps to protect itself from further terrorist attacks.