 |
| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋ u |
Listen to the prestigious Wall Street Journal. "We have all been repeatedly instructed in the past few days that suicide bombing represents a perversion of Islam fostered by a tiny minority of fundamentalists. This may well be so. Yet, it is also true that exhortations to, and celebrations of, this tactic by leading Muslim clerics in the Middle East have drowned out the few lonely protests against it.
"Nor is it only against Israel that suicide bombings have been wildly applauded. Only last November, for instance, one of the official Palestinian Authority newspapers reported the results of a poll in which 73% of Palestinians supported 'suicide missions against American interests in the Middle East.' Is it any wonder, then, that there was rejoicing among the Palestinians over the attacks 'against American interests' in America itself when in textbooks published by the PA Ministry of Education, and in use this very school year, students were being taught that Western civilization 'has begun to collapse and to become a pile of rubble'? A pile of rubble: The sight of the World Trade Center reduced to endless tons of debris must have seemed the fulfillment of a prophecy to young minds poisoned by such teachings…
"At such a time, it is quite simply bizarre that Secretary of State Colin Powell should be pressing the Israelis to meet with Yasser Arafat, who has been, and still is, guilty of everything we have now pledged ourselves to extirpate. What will the State Department come up with next? A proposal that American diplomats sit down with Osama bin Laden? After all, he [too] denies having been responsible for the attacks on us, just as Mr. Arafat denies that he is behind the outbreak of terrorism that has been his response to a recklessly generous Israeli offer last year of terms for a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians. Having signed a piece of paper in 1993 in which he promised to eschew violence, Mr. Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Why not get Osama bin Laden to make the same promise, and then give him the Nobel Peace Prize too?
"The absurdity of the State Department's position on Mr. Arafat is compounded by its efforts to build a coalition against terrorism that will include some of the very states – especially Syria and Iran – against which we have in effect declared war for harboring and sponsoring this evil (in their case, it is [Hizb'Allah], which almost certainly took part in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and of American embassies in Africa in 1998). Evidently, the idea is to make them change their policy. Yet given the enormous popularity of terrorism among their own peoples [in which the U.S. would become collaborators by including them as war allies], the leaders of these countries are highly unlikely to act against it…
"Finally, it would be both immoral and stupid of this administration to exclude Israel as a major ally in the war against terrorism. The president's father prevented the Israelis from participating in Desert Storm (even after the Syrians, of all governments, acknowledged Israel's right to defend itself against the Scud missiles Saddam Hussein was aiming at it). In thus excluding Israel, the elder Bush forfeited what we now know would have been an invaluable military asset in locating and destroying Scuds that were also being fired at American troops in Saudi Arabia.
"If George W. Bush were to repeat this egregious error, he would risk losing an equally valuable asset in the new kind of war into which we have entered – namely, the intelligence capabilities and the expertise of the country that has experienced more terrorism than any other [except Algeria].
"Clarity of purpose cannot be achieved without intellectual and moral clarity; and in this situation, what clarity reveals is that we Americans are in the same boat as the Israelis. But what is harder for us to grasp is that, just as the fervent wish of the Arab world to wipe the Jewish state off the map derives not from anything Israel has done or failed to do, but rather from its existence alone, so we are hated not because of our policies but because of who and what we are. A Palestinian textbook sums up one item of the indictment: 'Western civilization… deprived man of his peace of mind, stability and noble human examples… when it turned material well-being into the exemplary goal… his money leading him nowhere, except to suicide" (Norman Podhoretz, "Israel Isn't the Issue," The Wall Street Journal & Jerusalem Post, 2001.09.21, p. A15).
In fact, blaming Israel is the routine tactic for unpopular Muslim governments to deflect attention from themselves. Take the Saudis, for example. "On [2001.09.20], American officials met with four members of the appointed consultative body that substitutes for a parliament. They were asked whether they felt that Mr. bin Laden's message, which includes labeling the Saudi leaders as corrupt and calls for ridding the kingdom of American troops, was resonating. No, they replied; the real motivations for the [09.11] attack were Israel and the sanctions against Iraq. 'It was clear they were trying to deflect the issue,' said one American official. 'It was a classic case of looking for the outside problem.' " (Elaine Sciolino, "Who Hates the U.S.? Who Loves it?," The New York Times Weekly Review, 2001.09.23, p. 9-10).
"Mr. bin Laden declared a holy war to expel the Americans , along with all the Arab regimes he perceives as secular and corrupt. Israel, in this vision, is simply a beachhead of the infidel, as well as a convenient rallying cry.
"This explanation runs counter to the popular notion [espoused, for example, on CNN by James Rubin and other Clinton relics] that if only Washington could forge a peace between Israel and all the Arabs around it – or if Israel ceased to exist – anti-Americanism would wane in the Middle East" (Serge Schmemann, "Israel as Flashpoint, Not Cause," The New York Times Weekly Review, 2001.09.23, p. 10).
 |
|
 |