Alan Keyes: Don't talk peace as terror continues
By Shoshana Kordova

reprinted with the permission of Haaretz Daily © (English)

Talking about peace as terrorism continues is "simply sanctimonious and hypocritical," said outspoken pro-Israel advocate and American political analyst Alan Keyes.

Keyes, who previously served as an ambassador to the United Nations and briefly ran for president in the last election, spoke in Efrat Wednesday evening and met throughout the week with top government officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whom he interviewed for the record.

Keyes implied America has no standing to dictate Israeli responses to terror as long as its troops remains in Afghanistan. "I don't believe as an American I can impose a burden on Israel greater than that I could impose on my own country," he said.

The September 11 attacks, said Keyes, "gave to America an understanding of the real meaning of terrorism and the violence it implies, and the disruption of real life that it entails."

The reason that peace talks in the midst of terrorist activity - such as Wednesday's attack at Jerusalem's Hebrew University - have no real value, said Keyes, is because terrorists abandon the acknowledgment of any common ground between them and their victims. "The terrorist does not just kill today," he said. "He destroys respect for humanity in such a way as to destroy the prospect for peace tomorrow."

In response to a question, Keyes said Israel's deployment of a one-ton bomb into Gaza that was intended to kill a wanted terrorist but also killed an additional 15 Palestinians "may have been" necessary. U.S. President George W. Bush and other world leaders had roundly criticized the move, but Keyes defended the concept of targeting terrorist leaders, saying the most import element of the terrorist infrastructure is people.

He also drew a sharp distinction between "the unconscionable wickedness of the terrorists" - be they attacking Jerusalem or New York - and the military activity of Israel and the United States. "The difference is whether or not it is the conscious aim of policy to produce the death of noncombatants, of innocent civilians, to achieve one's political goals," he said. "When you do that as a matter of policy, you are a terrorist."

Keyes refused to be baited into offering any theories as to why MSNBC canceled his political talk show, "Alan Keyes is Making Sense," on which he frequently expressed his positions on the Middle East. Although his opinions were not always the most popular, he said, "I don't know what vagaries govern media decision-making."