Writing in The New York Times, Shibley Telhami, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and co-editor of Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, examines the week-long Israeli military incursion into the West Bank and — not surprisingly — comes to every imaginable wrong conclusion.

“Not surprisingly,” I note, because academics like Dr. Telhami who co-edit publications with titles containing the prefix “Identity and xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ” are signaling to those readers in the know their allegiance to contingency, context, “complexity,” Otherness — in short, to some fat-headed theory of social construction and to some sloppy hash of convoluted argument that leads invariably to this lazy conclusion: blame is a complicated matter, and assignation of blame, being worldview specific, is therefore necessarily “problematic”.

Let’s take a look, shall we? Dr. Telhami begins:

The Israeli government’s strategy of massive military reprisal against Palestinian violence has not worked in the past and is proving even more disastrous in the era of suicide bombings.

Since this latest round of military incursions began, Israel has suffered no civilian losses as the result of suicide bombings. They’ve rounded up hordes of illegally-held Palestinian weapons, crippled much of the P.A. infrastructure, arrested nearly 1000 militants (and in some cases killed them — including the so-called mastermind behind the Passover Massacre), gathered evidentiary documents linking Arafat to payoffs and to explosives purchases, and confiscated counterfeiting material used to print Israeli money. Academics such as Dr. Telhami, however, begin with a premise they believe to be true (“military reprisal…has not worked in the past” and so it will not work now) — and no amount of empirical evidence (no matter how compelling) can argue otherwise. Even if military reprisals appear now to be working, folks like Dr. Telhami will ultimately trace back whatever violence occurs subsequent to these most recent military operations to the military incursions themselves. Academic post-modernists are notoriously suspicious of straigthforward cause-and-effect arguments (e.g. military operations = ceasing of suicide attacks), but cause-and-effect arguments that require some sort of explanatory narrative of equivalency (“cycle of violence”) — well, that’s their stock and trade.

We must not misunderstand the nature or the magnitude of the danger the Middle East now faces. The true horror of suicide bombings is that they are immensely empowering to many people in the region who no longer believe that their governments can do anything to relieve their humiliation and improve their conditions. The fact that some factions within Yasir Arafat’s own Fatah movement seem to have endorsed suicide attacks is the result, not the cause, of popular support for a method first embraced by Islamist groups [my emphasis]

To a professor of government and politics, perhaps, the “true horror of suicide bombings is that they are immensely empowering.” But to the families of those unfortunates blown into baggie-sized chunks by murdering maniacs programmed their entire lives to hate (by their press, by their schools, by the inflamed rhetoric of their leaders both at home and throughout the Arab world, by the religious appeals to martyrdom) — to these people, “the true horror of suicide bombings” is that their loved ones — civilians all, women, men, children, the elderly — have been targeted and exterminated as part of an ongoing strategy favored by the P.A. terrorist infrastructure (itself funded by the Arab world and by many European countries!) to attack Israeli “soft targets.”

The attacks are “immensely empowering” only in that they weaken Israeli resolve. And they weaken Israeli resolve only when international pressure from those holding beliefs similar to Dr. Telhami’s make it impossible for Israel to adequately defend herself against the waves of suicide attacks. The real “cycle of violence,” then, is a result of misguided interventions by the know-nothing intelligensia.

When a teenage girl suicide bomber recently left a taped message speaking of ‘sleeping Arab armies’ and ineffective governments allowing girls to do the fighting, her handlers knew well how this would play among the masses. The most pervasive psychology in the Arab world today is collective rage and feelings of helplessness — and the focus of this psychology is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. While Israeli television shows the horror that innocent victims of suicide bombings endure today, Arab television is showing Israeli tanks smashing into Palestinian cities, the mounting Arab civilian casualties, and the scars of 35 years of occupation.

“Occupation,” we all know, is a loaded term — and is a fact under dispute. But beyond that, what’s striking about this passage is its total irrelevance. Who cares what the pervasive psychology is in the Arab world today? The fact that many in the Arab world have worked themselves into a collective froth as a result of their own country’s dismal leadership and economic foolishness shouldn’t be Israel’s problem. That the Arabs — feeling humiliated and impotent — have decided to turn their rage on Israel and the West, however, should be the concern of every right-thinking civilized human. Instead, the intelligensia sends this message: Feeling disaffected? Blow shit up! We’ll understand. In fact, we’ll develop a narrative explaining your actions to the world. And if the narrative’s good enough, it may even garner you some sympathy!

In this climate, suicide bombings take root because they free the desperate from the need to rely on governments altogether. Rather than being sponsored by states, this form of violence challenges states.

Pardon me, Professor, but that’s horseshit. All this violence does is illuminate the cartographer’s prestidigitation that for years has tried to convince us that there are legitimate “states” in the Arab world to begin with. The Arab world as a whole wants Israel gone. Period. And, with a few exceptions, they are working in concert to achieve that goal.

Those who have tried to explain suicide terror by religious doctrines have been proved wrong. Increasingly, secular Palestinians are adopting this method because they think it is effective in making occupation unbearable to Israel. From nonreligious young women to members of the semi-Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to the secular Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, groups and individuals have begun emulating the suicides of Hamas, the radical Islamist group.

Ridiculous. Should an atheist wander into a church, he hasn’t disproven religion. Similarly, you can’t disprove a connection between suicide bombings and a long-term theocratic indoctrination stressing rewards for religious martyrdom by pointing out that not all suicide bombers are devoutly religious. Explosives know no ideology. Atheists can blow themselves up, too.

Suicide bombings thrive in anarchy. The absence of effective government is their primary source of power. They are antigovernment, the lethal weapon of individuals and small groups. While deterrence works against states, even against states like Iraq, it is ineffective against dispersed and shadowy groups that do not have significant infrastructures to target. And even when one knows whom to target, retaliation is not generally effective against those willing to die.

And there you have it. Nothing can stop those who are willing to die. So in lieu of the Palestinians suddenly (and quite magically) finding an “effective government,” the only recourse the Israelies have (by Dr. Telhami’s reckoning) is to surrender. See? Now wasn’t that simple?

But of course, Dr. Telhami’s analysis is nonsense. Retaliation can be very effective against those who are willing to die, provided the retaliation prevents those who are willing to die from taking a bunch of innocent people who don’t wish to die with them. This has been Israel’s most recent course of action, and it has worked. Palestinian suicide bombers have had plenty of opportunities in this past week to strap on the explosives’ belt and take on Israeli tanks and soldiers. But they have not done so, because the suicide bomber is himself a limited and strategic “weapon” intended to do maximum damage, and so he or she is deployed by handlers against civilian targets. Were Dr. Telhami correct — were it really the desire of these poor Palestinian souls to lash out against those who they believe humiliate them — you would anticipate that oppressed Palestinian freedom fighters would be launching themselves hourly at the myriad Israeli military targets encamped, for the last week, in the West Bank.

But of course, you don’t get your $25K and your martyrs’ merit badge for getting gunned down by an Israeli soldier.

The next stage of suicide terror may be more ominous. The method is likely to be copied and made more lethal beyond Palestinian areas, particularly in the era of globalization, when information, technology and weapons are readily available.

Maybe, Dr. Telhami. But not if those who are considering such a strategy are shown in no uncertain terms that the civilized world will not stand for such tactics. Which is why apologists who seek to “explain” the “psychological” motivations for suicide bombings — the “root causes” folks who provide justifications for murder by attaching to it all sorts of contextual accoutrements and historical excuses — are so very dangerous. They lend legitimacy to illegitimate acts. Similarly, those who answer each new bombing with a call for concessions to the terrorists assure that the preferred strategy of aggrieved groups across the globe will (for the forseeable future) be to deploy suicide bombers.

Like all terrorism, suicide bombings must be delegitimized by Arab societies and stopped because no ends can justify these horrific means. At the same time, there has to be a way of dealing with the realities that have made suicide bombings acceptable to a large number of Palestinians and others. To pretend that this issue is simply one of a choice between good and evil is to know nothing of human psychology. Today many Israelis support the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes as a way of stopping the unbearable horror of suicide terror; and many Palestinians support terror as way of ridding themselves of the unbearable pain of occupation. This was not the case only months ago.

Ah, yes. The classic apologist’s construction: “[…]suicide bombings must be delegitimized,” BUT™ we nevertheless must find a way to deal with those “realities that have made suicide bombings acceptable…” Except, of course, if that “way” happens to involve the Israeli military cracking down on the P.A. infrastructure. Right Dr. Telhami? Because that would be unfair — working, as it does, in the Israelis’ favor…

Dr. Telhami would have us believe that “to pretend…this issue is…one of a choice between good and evil” is simplistic — that a detailed understanding of the suicide bomber’s psyche is a precondition for stopping the horror of Seder massacres or pizza parlor intifadas.

But Dr. Telhami is wrong, predictably: what we have here is precisely that clear choice between good or evil. Terrorism — in all its forms — is evil. It’s that simple. And the Arab summiters seemed themselves to recognize this — which is why they refused to define it.

President Bush is right that suicide bombings cannot be tolerated or rewarded because the consequences to the international system could be devastating. But there is only one way to reduce these acts of terror: putting forth a better alternative, a peace plan that revives hope. Violent retaliation is unlikely to end suicide terror, and may even increase it by adding to the humiliation that hardens the hearts even of decent people.

…And the clincher. The only answer to violence is peace. The only answer to despair is hope. The only answer to humiliation is empowerment.

Thank you, Dr. Telhami. You’ve been extraordinarily helpful.

Or, as Blow Hard from the very funny “We are full of shit ” blog aptly put it:

Well, I’ll give [Dr. Telhami] credit, I thought I couldn’t dislike either suicide bombing or the word ’empower’ any more than I already do. The blend of the two is like some evil version of chocolate and peanut butter, making each element worse by the combination. Some sort of evil synergy.