e-Letter 186: Terrorism delenda est! (with
thanks to Senator Cato)
September 6, 2003
When one looks at the kind of declarations coming out of the Middle East it is
sometimes hard to decide whether one is watching a Shakespearean comedy or a
Greek tragedy. Except that in that part of the world it probably does not
matter: you can laugh yourself to death in the former or cry/agonize to death
in the latter. Following the Egyptian claim against "all the Jews in the
world" for "stealing many tons" of Egyptian gold and utensils during the
exodus from Egypt (and this is not in reference to the 1956, 1967, or 1973
exodus) the Syrians are having a hard time to top that. So now they claim
that all the recent devastating bombings in Iraq were the work of Israel ("Syrian
Gov't Media: Israel Bombed Baghdad's U.N. Headquarters, Jordanian Embassy, Abu
Gharib Prison and Water Main," MEMRI, Special Dispatch - Syria, September
4, 2003, No. 565)
and its foreign minister justifies Lebanese terrorism against Israel and
denies that he is antisemitic despite his libelous book ("Syrian
Defense Minister: Lebanese Resistance Is Justified, My Book 'The Matzah of
Zion' Is Not Antisemitic," MEMRI, Special Dispatch - Syria, September 4,
2003, No. 566).
And the Iranians are not left far behind. Since
they know something about plotting and sending terrorists it is very easy for
them to make charges that others are about to do what they routinely engage
in. Now they charge that "Jews" want to assassinate the French president ("Iranian
Daily: 'Extremist Jews Plotting to Assassinate Chirac,' Mossad Agents Behind
Najaf Blast," MEMRI, Special Dispatch - Iran/Arab Antisemitism
Documentation Project, September 1, 2003, No. 563) and they of course support
the Syrian claims that Israel is behind the bombings in Iraq. Of course, the
Iranians have never had an eye on messing Iraq up more than it already was
under Saddam Hussein (their war two decades ago notwithstanding) and they
never sent their agents to kill and maim in various parts of the world. Only
the Israelis say they do.
The Egyptians have a wider agenda. In addition to
wanting "their" gold "back" they also have a tendency to admire their allies
and supporters. So greatly they admire the US (from which it receives $2 bill.
a year) that they attribute to the US the capability and intent that Arab
terrorists could not posses and so according to them it is the Americans - not
the Israelis - who are behind the Najaf bombing ("Egyptian
Government Daily Al-Ahram: The U.S. is Behind the Najaf Bombing," MEMRI,
Special Dispatch - Egypt/ U.S. & the Middle East, September 1, 2003, No. 562).
According to the theater of absurd that is the
Middle East, Hamas is not a terrorist organization and the Palestinian NGOs
are of course the great hope for democracy. From statements by pundits who
belong to the Tom Friedman school and the Franco-German leaders one might
surmise the Palestinians serve as a proven role model for newly emerging
democracies like the US, or Britain. Alas, it is not merely Arafat or his
puppet prime minister (who blamed Israel for the "breakdown" of the
Palestinian-declared "truce" and then submitted his "resignation" to Arafat
who "accepted" it; see "Palestinian
Prime Minister Offers to Resign," The Associated Press, The New York
Times, September 6, 2003) but also the NGOs that refuse to stop terrorism even
against a very supporting US government ("PA NGOs Defy US - Refuse to Sign
Anti Terror Document," Itamar Marcus,
Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, Sep. 3, 2003).
It is therefore somewhat encouraging to see the
realization that it is not just Arafat but the whole PLO that needs to be
fought as the enemy and not only by Israel ("The
PLO: America's next battle," Mike Evans, WorldNetDaily.com, September 5,
2003). After all, Abbas' "resignation" proved that Arafat has been in control
all along, that Israel and the US were delusional when they assumed they can
deal with him in any meaningful way. This charade I snot over yet as Arafat
may appoint another "prime minister" or even be expelled by Israel.
Logic implies that if this view is accepted it
should minimize the importance of Jerusalem but there are no signs - yet -
that this is indeed a revolution of sorts. Against this rare voice of
originality and provocative thoughts, Egyptian official media is replete with
the samples of antisemitism and anti-Americanism mentioned through this and
many other newsletters. Even if this new Egyptian initiative (and it is no
doubt a political initiative) holds ground for a while it has promise of
yielding tangible results only many generations from now. So the news for the
long-term are hopeful but this weather forecast does not offer much solace to
those in the eye of the storm that is predicted to last too long a time.
If anything, the storm is only intensifying. One
of the key elements in personal or national antisemitism is the focus on a
target to hate. It enables one to demonize, vilify, and channel hostile
sentiments by rationalizing that individuals (like Richard Pearl, Paul
Wolfowitz, Ariel Sharon) a people ("The Jews"), or a nation (Israel) are
inherently "bad." Regrettably a number of pundits make it a habit to bash
Israel by promoting various - largely unfounded - charges against Israel,
often times turning victim into offender and perpetrator into an innocent lamb
("Big,
bad Israel?" Tom Ambrose, WorldNetDaily.com, September 2, 2003).
And it is also seen by some as dangerous not only to the subject of hate but
to those who may occupy that dubious title later down the road: "For if the
day should ever arrive that Israel is destroyed by its enemies, the U.S. will
surely and shortly thereafter meet its own demise." Indeed some trace the
development and the spread of terrorism to the tacit tolerance of it when it
was in its initial phases ("Militant
Muslims' moral disease spread to envoy, troops because world did little when
they were only targeting Jews," Jonathan Gurwitz, Jewish World Review,
Sept. 4, 2003).
Gurwitz identifies terrorism as a process that
when ignored at its onset it grows stronger like cancer: "...deformity begins
with the first excuse for hijacking airplanes, blowing up buses, murdering
diplomats and Olympic athletes. The only chance to stop it is at the first
moral justification for the intentional murder of civilians and the religious
sanction to kill those sent to free a long-suffering people. It is a disease
that starts by praising the destruction of "Zionists" or applauding a death
sentence pronounced on a single author for blasphemy, but mutates and grows to
encompass ever-growing groups — Americans, Europeans, Christians, Westerners
and their friends, secularists and insufficiently fundamentalist Muslims. It
begins with the killing of one group — Americans in the World Trade Center,
American soldiers in Iraq — but metastasizes to afflict the entire
international body."
Part of the problem of handling terrorism lies in
terminology. The language Laundromat where "harsh" terms of reference are
"cleansed" into more "neutral/objective" terms causes serious damage to the
fight against terrorism if but for one reason: it makes it difficult to know
who the enemy is ("A
Terrorist by Any Other Name ...," Sharon Kehnemui, Fox News, September
01, 2003). The Israelis know very well who is murdering them and under whose
instructions. But for western public opinion it is not easy to distinguish
such actions by reading about "militants" without providing their
affiliation. This is well illustrated when countries are still willing to
"negotiate" with Arafat - despite his arch-terrorist stature - because the
Palestinians are not seen as perpetrating terrorism but only "extremists" like
Hamas of Islamic Jihad do that (and still will not be recognized as terrorists
by some).
It becomes even more difficult when distinctions
between the "military wing" and "political wing" are being made as if one is
not tied to the other. So while terrorist organization (even if the French and
Germans will not recognize them as such) certainly are engaged in charity
work, such as providing social services and health care, they also send their
operatives to murder Israelis and Americans. No amount of attaching a "human
face" to the terrorists will make them have a genuine one but images make a
difference. And then there are the "support" organizations that under the
guise of "peace activism" and "solidarity" offer anything but furthering the
agenda of the extremists.
Indeed, those who offer moral support ("peace,"
"solidarity") to such terror groups may be better defined as really espousing
"solidarity with Palestinians equals peace without Israel" ("Enemy
With A Human Face," Alyssa A. Lappen, FrontPageMagazine.com | September 2,
2003): "Whether an official
ISM partner or
not, radical Islam stands to gain substantially. Disguised as peace activism,
ISM is radical all the same. Its ideas often parallel those of radical Islam
and are quickly seeping into the North American mainstream. As ISM moves from
campuses to American churches, it concomitantly lowers the bar to principles
outlined in the
Hamas Charter — jihad, death to Jews, delegitimization and destruction of
Israel. Evidently, churchgoers don't realize that Hamas also seeks global
Islamic supremacy. Extremist young "activists" groom for broad political and
social participation—and harvest direct and indirect state and federal
grants—via public facilities, taxpayer funding and (highly questionable)
charitable donations. Yet Americans are doing precious little to compete
ideologically. Time is wasting."
In a balancing act to the attacks on Israel,
increasingly support for Israel is coming from conservative corners ("Who
supports Israel?" Daniel Pipes, The Jerusalem Post, Sep. 3, 2003). As
Pipes suggests "Twenty years ago, liberal or conservative outlooks had little
bearing on one's views of Israel or other Middle East issues. During the Cold
War, Middle Eastern problems stood largely outside the great debate of that
era - policy toward the Soviet Union - so views of the Arab-Israeli conflict,
Iraq, militant Islam, and other topics were formed in isolation from larger
principles. Today, all that has changed. The Middle East has replaced the
Soviet Union as the touchstone of politics and ideology. With increasing
clarity, conservatives stand on one side of its issues and liberals on the
other."
Nowhere is it more evident than in the new power play that the Europeans are
playing under the "leadership" of France and Germany. They refused to support
the US war efforts in Iraq yet now demand a UN (namely, Franco-German) role in
Iraq. And the same countries refuse to recognize Hamas as a terrorist
organization despite ample evidence to that effect ("Europe
Plays Catch With Hamas," Rachel Ehrenfeld, The New York Sun, Sep 5,
2003). The good news is that the Italians are leading the call (to the
European foreign ministers) to define Hamas as a terrorist organization and
the British foreign minister Jack Straw has also just advised his peers to do
the same. So by no means is the European voice unanimously supportive of the
Franco-German position.
Within a short period of 30 years what started as
terrorism against Israel (which experienced it well before and after its
establishment in 1948) has emerged into an international terrorism menace.
What has been "limited" to hate and demonstrations has been channeled into
blowing up civilians in their homes, buses, markets, and streets. And then
came the toppling of the World Trade Center. Now this terrorism has moved far
beyond tactics and became an arm (pun intended) of states who are using terror
as a strategy under the increasing cloud (pun also intended) of a real nuclear
threat as was the case with Iraq and is the case with Iran ("Where
are our friends?" Yossi Olmert, The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 31, 2003): "THE
IRAN of the Ayatollahs means business. Its leaders want to destroy Israel, and
they say so without any qualms. But many in Israel and in the West can't bring
themselves to grasp the depth of Iran's hatred. Legions of pundits and
politicians would have us believe that the Iranians do not mean what they
say."
With nuclear threats looming from North Korea and
Iran (and the possibility of Pakistan joining the party) it is no surprise
that some experts are defining the challenges to the West as noting less than
existential ("Tough
choice for civilization," Yehezkel Dror, The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 31,
2003): "It is time to face the fact that the West is not doing enough to cope
with the existential challenges posed by mass-murdering terrorism. What is
needed is a grand strategy, one that takes into account historic processes as
well as the magnitude of the danger... THE CHALLENGE posed by barbarians armed
with weapons of mass killing is fundamentally not criminal or military but
social, cultural and civilizational. The ability of fewer and fewer to kill
more and more constitutes a rupture in history, one that has produced a
radically new geostrategic reality. Plainly, the barbarians' willingness to
kill and be killed provides them with an initial advantage."
There is growing realization and understanding that the war in Iraq has
entered an attrition phase and it appears that media pundits are losing their
patience but in an election year as do many politicians. This sends an image
to the enemy that the US cannot persevere. To paraphrase the Roman Senator
Cato - who at every opportunity found a way to mention his slogan that
Carthage must be destroyed -
Carthago
delenda est! -
the West needs to realize that terrorism must be destroyed, uprooted, and
vanquished. Terrorism delenda est! Or we will be. No costs should be spared
in this effort.
Carthage was perceived as a threat to the Roman
Empire and its political and mercantile interests. The U.S. and Israel are not
empires and as Dror has indicated, they actually phase an existential threat -
not merely a threat to supremacy faced by the Romans. That is Arafatism and
Bin Ladenism need to be fought and conquered, not tolerated or negotiated
with.
© Robbie Friedmann, Ph.D.
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