In praise of condemnation By Sarah Honig Jerusalem Post (September 30) In my very early childhood, I used to let out a whoop of joy whenever the radio reported yet another UN condemnation for another Israeli anti-terrorist retaliation. As it turned out, I had lots of opportunity for elation. When my bemused mother admonished me with increasing exasperation, I explained that I was happy because the UN had again rewarded our battlefield triumph. Plainly, I didn't understand what the word condemnation meant, nor had any notion about Orwellian doublespeak, international hypocrisy or UN duplicity. I simply noticed that when things go well for Jews, they get condemned. This made each condemnation akin to a trophy or victory medal. My preschool logic dictated the obvious: condemnations are commendable because they invariably accompany our successes. Years later, Golda Meir made a not dissimilar point to me in a private conversation: "The world is just not enamored with the Jewish national cause. ... It doesn't always have our best interests in mind. Even those who say they are our friends don't really like our successes, and that means that there is plenty of cause for suspicion when they are nice to us." Like when they bestow Nobel Peace Prizes upon us. Jews, despite making up an infinitesimal fraction of the world's population, account for a huge proportion of all Nobellaureates in all categories, which is probably another reason for antisemites not to be overly fond of us. But we Israelis have not been very honored by the various Nobel committees, except for the shared literature prize for Agnon, who complained quite bitterly about being denied a full award. Our one distinction is peace. We have contributed inordinately to the cause, as evinced by the fact that three of our own have already been singled out for making this a kinder, gentler world. And now word is that a fourth compatriot may soon be going to Oslo to be rewarded for more of the same. While Menachem Begin may have been a trailblazer, we seem to be getting too many prizes and too little peace since his day. Our latest Nobel candidate, the very voluble President Ezer Weizman, mostly left his mark with such off-the-cuff gems as his unforgettable recommendation that the US secretary of state "bang together the heads" of the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian chairman. Would Mother Teresa have resorted to such imagery? Not that it mattered any to those who nominated our mischievous, forever juvenile Ezer. Let's face it, he is inimitable at endearing himself to interlocutors, even those who, to borrow Golda's phrase, do not always have our best interests at heart. Like his nominator, Desmond Tutu, who is himself a Nobel peace laureate. He could think of nothing more suitable to say after visiting Yad Vashem than exhort us basically to snap out of it, put the Holocaust behind us and forget it. It's time, he preached patronizingly, for us to forgive. But I am especially wowed by the recommendation for our president from another Nobel peacemaker. Yasser Arafat probably feels he still owes Ezer for inviting him to his Caesarea patio to spite then-prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who, for better or worse, was entrusted by the voters to conduct state policy. Ezer was surely a comfort to Yasser, but the two go way back, way before Oslo. When Ezer served as a minister in the national unity coalition, he narrowly escaped being sacked when prime minister Yitzhak Shamir caught him illegally conferring with Arafat, advising him and generally undermining his own government. To be fair, though, no one better than Arafat puts the true worth of the Prize in perspective. No sooner did he receive it than he called for a jihad against his peace partner; and he hasn't changed his tune since. In his recently delivered address to the UN General Assembly, he demanded the full return of four million Palestinian refugees to within Israel's Green Line, knowing full well that this is tantamount to a death sentence for the Jewish State. If his demand is not met, he intoned, "there would be no way to achieve peace, stability and security in the Middle East." In other words, even if Arafat gets every last inch of Judea and Samaria, along with the entire city of Jerusalem, he still promises us blood and tears. This peace lover must get his way, and all of it, or he'll go to war. Only if everything is on his terms, would he - maybe - deign to call it peace. This was just the way Hitler defined the word. Adolf, incidentally, was himself nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after the Munich agreement of 1938 (despite the fact that in 1935 he forbade any German from accepting any Nobel award), but a funny thing happened to him on the way to Oslo. He invaded Czechoslovakia. Yet more immediately troubling for us here and now is the fact that conferring the Peace Prize upon Israelis is always linked to a loss of territory which could help defend the Jewish State and make it less vulnerable. Whenever we divest ourselves of strategically valuable assets, or are about to do so, we are embraced and offered a Nobel tribute. Hence the inevitable conclusion is that the weaker we get, the more Nobel Peace Prizes we can expect. But should we want more such prizes, or would we do better to earn condemnations instead? Perhaps, like I once precociously reasoned, condemnations are the real commendations.