Initiatives
Sources
Terrorists Murder Arabs Too
March 21, 2004
By Robbie Friedmann
This past weekend, on 20 March, an Israeli jogger was murdered in the French
Hill area of Jerusalem. He was a student at the Hebrew University and the son of
a prominent attorney. His grandfather was also murdered in Jerusalem in 1975.
Both murders were committed by Palestinian terrorists. In Israel these are
statistics, not stories. What makes this a story is that the student was an
Israeli Arab, and when the murderers discovered this they issued an ‘apology’
and asked to participate in the funeral. Yasser Arafat even called to offer his
personal condolences. The father did not blame the Palestinian Authority - whose
business is to authorize murders - because it has “no control” over the
terrorists (“Al-Aqsa
Brigades Apologizes for Killing Israeli Arab in Jerusalem,” Jonathan Lis,
Ha’aretz, 20 March 2004).
This one vignette epitomizes how a planned atrocity combines with a personal
tragedy to play a role in the theater of the absurd. In this theater it is
permissible for the terrorists to kill Israeli Jews but not for an Arab father
to blame the terrorists who murdered his son. No one is ‘responsible’. One
Israeli Arab member of the Knesset already rehashed the Arab mantra that this is
because of the “occupation.” Eureka! Now we know why Muslims slaughter Muslims
in Algiers, why they do so in Iraq, in Turkey, in Saudi Arabia, in Morocco and
many other places around the world. It is all because of the Israeli occupation.
What a lunatic method to explain away decadence, vengeance, atrocities and lack
of accountability - by always of blaming someone else. And note the “apology” is
to the specific family, not to Israel, not to the Mayor of Jerusalem. This is
not merely collateral damage, but a “mistake in operation” and thus they count
the victim as another “shahid” or “martyr,” even though he was a
Christian (they must have automatically converted him after his death)! The same
way terrorists picked a 12-year old porter to deliver a bag with explosives to
kill (himself and) Israeli soldiers without his knowledge. True to longstanding
Arab democratic principles, the terrorists did not bother to ask them if they
wanted to become willing participants. Their martyrdom is assumed.
Even Arafat’s own cabinet demanded of him to rein in terror and he refused (“Arafat
Rejects His Cabinet’s Demand to Act against Terror,” Arnon Regular and Aluf
Benn, Ha’aretz, 16 March 2004). What better evidence is needed to realize
that the Arafat-headed PA is a terrorist organization? It also employs a
sophisticated propaganda apparatus with paid clerics who vilify and preach
murder (“Last
Week’s Friday Sermon on PA Television,” MEMRI, Special Dispatch - PA/Arab
Antisemitism, 19 March 2004, No. 683).
The Palestinian (paid) clerics pit their ‘stand’ as “truth battling falsehood,”
justify why “Jews had to be destroyed” (by Muhammad), argue that “the Jews’ evil
deeds led to their downfall,” make the preposterous claim that “Jews seek to
conquer Saudi Arabia,” complain that “Arab states are abandoning the struggle,”
pledge that “we will fight the Jewish cancer” and argue that “the Palestinian
mother wishes to receive her son as a corpse, but not butchered.” Perhaps even a
Ph.D. in psychiatry may not be sufficient to understand the sheer lunacy of such
sick propaganda and indoctrination.
However blatant such indoctrination is, the more sophisticated and subtle
versions of it have already permeated American school textbooks (“Textbooks
for Jihad,” Lee Kaplan, FrontPageMagazine.com, 19 March 2004):
“...prestigious American textbook publishers such as Prentice-Hall, Simon and
Schuster, TCI and others are educating your child to the ‘Arab point of view’
and its aspirations of world domination through what the Islamic world calls
Dawa, a means of proselytizing unbelievers to the faith. They are doing this
no matter how much that point of view may be distorted, farfetched or, in some
extreme cases, outright lies.”
“To be sure, it [Islamic culture] is a major part of world history. But the
activities of organizations like CIE and AWAIR seek to glorify historical Islam
while ignoring Islamic historical tenets that even survive today and are
affecting our world. Jihad is virtually ignored in many of the texts or
sweetened to mean a personal internal struggle. Bernard Lewis, one of the most
prominent Middle East scholars, has stated in the past that jihad has always
referred to Muslim conquests in military terms in Islamic culture and to claim
otherwise is a diversion... If the use of false history and propaganda to
promote the goals of our enemies overseas becomes commonplace in our textbooks
here, how long before those goals are achieved in our next generations? Our
schools and children have become targets of militant Islam and its apologists.
Congress did right by insisting on oversight of Title VI funds in our colleges.
It is time now they take an equally hard and long look at the textbooks being
used to indoctrinate our children still in grades K through 12.”
Regrettably they produce naive admirers and blind followers who abuse the term
‘peace’ as a commodity the Israelis are not deserving of. Thus they are also
playing a role in the theater of the absurd by preaching ‘peace’ but willfully
and knowingly supporting terror. A recent cynical article by an Israeli is
illustrative of the low regard in which so-called ‘peace activists’ are held (“A
Tribute to Rachel Corrie: Thanks for showing us what ‘peace’ really means,”
Ruhama Shattan, The Wall Street Journal, 16 March 2004).
Once in a while the ‘right’ voice is heard from Arab corners. Usually replete
with classical canards against the crusaders (Christians) and Jews, it is
surprising to find an unequivocal criticism of the Arab practice to vilify and
blame everyone else. The latest is by a Saudi columnist (“Saudi
Columnist: The Creed that Sanctions Blowing Up Worshippers in Mosques ... Should
Be Declared the Public Enemy of Humanity,” MEMRI, Special Dispatch - Saudi
Arabia/Reform Project, No. 681, 17 March 2004) who states that “terrorists in
Iraq are more barbarous than Saddam,” that “Arabs ‘blame others and shun the
facts’” and suggests that “Shia and Sunni know perfectly well who the
perpetrators [of the Karbala massacres] are.” Yet even he does not specify who
they are, but leaves very little doubt when referring to them as ‘Arabs’ and
being part of the ‘religious elite’. This is a clear reference to al-Qaeda on
one hand and Iran on the other.
There is something common to terrorism and antisemitism. They target similar
‘enemies’ and end up doing even greater damage to many others in the process as
evidenced by Nazi atrocities. Terrorism and antisemitism metastasize like
cancer. Cutting the growth (or the ‘snake's head’) is no longer sufficient to
eliminate it (“The
Cancer of Antisemitism in Europe,” Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, 14
March 2004): “What the world should already know but so often forgets is that
Jews are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. Antisemitism is like
cancer; unchecked, it can metastasize and sicken the entire body. When civilized
nations fail to rise up against the Jew-haters in their midst, it is often just
a matter of time before the Jew-haters in their midst rise up against them.”
Other metaphors for antisemitism equate it to a mutating virus (“Antisemitism
is a Virus and it Mutates: To claim Jews cause their own suffering by failing to
denounce Israeli policy is a revival of an old hatred,” Stephen Byers,
The Guardian, 15 March 2004). Indeed this is an appropriate metaphor given
that the individualized Jew as an object of hate and vilification - and as a
candidate for extinction - has been replaced by what the Jew has created, namely
the State of Israel.
As British Member of Parliament Byers writes: “The reason for the resurgence of
an old hatred is simple. Antisemites feel emboldened again. Their prejudice,
suppressed out of guilt but lingering on in the past 50 years is finding its way
back to the mainstream. This cannot be ignored. Anti-racists everywhere have a
responsibility to challenge and expose antisemitism wherever it occurs.”
And a scholar on antisemitism (“Memories
Are Short, Hatred Is Forever,” Omer Bartov, Los Angeles Times, 15
March 2004) adds a warning: “We should not wait until it is too late. We must
not repeat the fatal misunderstanding of the 1930s and ignore the lesson Hitler
taught us: that some people, some regimes, some ideologies and yes, some
religious groups, must be taken at their word.”
Too many of these signs are blatantly evident. In the U.S. teenagers are
committing ‘pranks’ by stuffing mailboxes of Jews with hate mail, and media
mavens and politicians are talking about ‘neo-cons’ as a euphemism for Jews and
get away with it (“The
Usual Suspects,” Ronald S. Lauder, The New York Sun, 16 March 2004),
partly because Jews themselves have not yet learned when is it appropriate to
cry wolf and not be bitten by the cry itself. But also partly because it is
tolerated, allowed or simply ignored. And then when it emerges from the gutters
to the ‘civilized’ surface the result is ‘amazement’ at ‘not seeing’ the
writings earlier, even when they have been smeared rather saliently on the wall.
There is more to the results of the Spanish elections that took place in the
aftermath of the terrorist attack on trains in Madrid than submitting to terror
(“Terror
and Democracy: The bombers ‘voted’ and Aznar’s party lost in Spain,”
Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 16 March 2004).
Commentators aptly labeled it appeasement, capitulation, and even decadence,
pointing out that it is not only Spain at stake but the fate of all Europe (“Spaniards
Capitulating . . . ,” Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 19
March 2004): “So when Zapatero and, more important, Prodi speak of nonmilitary
means to combat terrorism, they do not mean draining the swamp by gradually
building free institutions. They mean buying off the terrorists, distancing
themselves from America and seeking a separate peace. Sure, they will continue
to track down individual al-Qaeda terrorists. But that is no favor to anyone.
They want to make sure there is not another Madrid, in case European appeasement
is not quite thorough enough to satisfy the terrorists. But on the larger fight,
the reordering of the Arab world that produced the terrorists, they choose
surrender.”
Others ascribe the victory of the terrorist not so much to their power to
instill fear, but to the identified weak point of their targeted victims who no
longer have the wherewithal to oppose them (“Spain’s
Elections Show Why Radical Islam Can Win,” Spengler, Asia Times, 16
March 2004). This has to do with demographic decline and long historical trends
that are now catching the Spaniards as an unwilling party to protect themselves
(at least for now).
The British have their own radical Muslim threat from within and some of their
experts offer fairly nebulous remedies for terrorism (“Terror
Unlimited: After Madrid We’re in Shock. But we are more resilient than our
leaders think,” Tim Garden, Independent, 14 March 2004). A British
scholar and former Air Marshall wrongly identifies past terrorist activities,
suggesting that terrorists transform into legitimate governments once they
obtain their objectives. He wrongly focuses on the pain and anger of the
Spaniards demonstrating in the streets following the atrocity yet fully ignores
the political shift which resulted from their elections. He is also too
politically correct when suggesting that “leaders must resist the temptation to
throw away our individual liberties in the hopeless search for absolute
security. Coping with terrorism is the challenge of the century.” This is the
kind of ‘truism’ and classical ‘expert’ advice that dooms its recipients to
failure.
By no means is this sentiment shared by all Europeans or all Brits. Others in
England have a far better read on what needs to be done with terrorists (“Let
Us Pray by all Means, and Then Pass the Ammunition,” Barbara Amiel, The
Daily Telegraph, 15 March 2004). There is a correct analysis of the depth of
the hate and ‘grievance’ displayed by terrorists. When it goes back to 1492
(‘losing’ Spain) or 80 years ago (‘losing’ the Ottoman Empire) it means there is
no time period and no appeasement that will soften or satisfy any real or
imagined grievance. In other words, no matter how many times the Islamists lose
they only see it as an incentive for additional demands.
Indeed, “...by their own mad statements, the Islamists will not be content until
all the lands they believe belong to the Muslim world are free of the infidel
and the ‘humiliation of 80 years ago’ is reversed, meaning the reversal of the
end of the Ottoman Empire. Given their rather bloody interpretation of the
command of the Koran to spread the word to all infidels, unless we pull
ourselves together we shall find ourselves spread all over streets and railway
lines. In the fight against Satan, it is traditional to have a deity. Let’s pray
by all means - and then pass the ammunition.”
What is missing in the Spanish script is the understanding of what the
objectives of the terrorists (and their handlers) are. One commentator takes
them at their word (“These
Guys Want to Kill Us Anyway,” Mark Steyn, The Australian, 15 March
2004). Therefore, “the choice for pluralist democracies is simple: You can join
Bush in taking the war to the terrorists, to their redoubts and sponsoring
regimes. Despite the sneers that terrorism is a phenomenon and you cannot wage
war against a phenomenon, in fact you can – as the Royal Navy did very
successfully against the malign phenomena of an earlier age, piracy and slavery.
Or you can stick your head in the sand and paint a burqa on your butt.
But they’ll blow it up anyway.”
Perhaps the French would be wise to heed the latest Islamist threat against them
(“Muslim
Group Threatens France: Group plans to inflict ‘terror into the heart of the
French people’,” CNN, 17 March 2004). An exceptionally gutsy British
editorial (“The
World at War,” Editorial, The Daily Telegraph, 14 March 2004)
understands that this unusual threat that terror poses requires fighting it with
unusual means, not with designer kids’ gloves we cannot afford. In reference to
the British criticism raised against the holding of detainees in Guantanamo, it
states: “No country at war has ever treated captured saboteurs or spies as
ordinary criminals...They need to ask themselves if, in order to increase the
chances of preventing the next episode of mass murder, it is worth restricting
some of the protections which the law extends to those suspected of involvement
in terrorism. It is difficult to believe that the answer to that question must
always be No.”
One only need look at the differing perception of events in Europe and the U.S.
to realize that even if the terrorists mistake U.S. resolve again (to be weak),
they will be matched with an even more fierce response than what is currently
taking place (“Al-Qaeda’s
Wish List,” David Brooks, The New York Times, 16 March 2004). Yet the
point is not whether ‘in the end’ the terrorists will not win. That should be
axiomatic. The point is they might (and are very likely to) try to imitate and
re-apply the Spanish model to influence the American elections shortly before
they take place.
The negative lesson taught by the recent Spanish political experience is also an
omen of what not to do in the Middle East. Any early Western retreat from that
area (“Like
It or Not, the West Just Can’t Leave the Middle East: The dreams of al-Qaeda and
its allies are destructive - but doomed,” Martin Woollacott, The Guardian,
19 March 2004) will be perceived as defeat. And the U.S. has already been to
that movie in Beirut, when
it decided in 1983 it no longer had business there because it became too costly:
“As Spain demonstrates, it may be that in the future the Western leaders who
will have to deal with the consequences of the Iraq intervention will not be
those who led it. But deal with it they must, as well as take other decisions
that may prove equally hazardous, if the pernicious idea that the West and the
Islamic world have separate futures linked only by hostility is to be defeated.”
It is normal to be fearful and concerned about terrorism, it is normal to plan
ahead, it is normal to be resilient, it is normal to hope for better days to
come. Yet if there is anything that boggles the mind as an unexplainable
abnormality it is the persistent hijacking of the ‘peace narrative’ by those who
claim they are for peace but will not say a word against terrorism. City streets
all over the world should have been filled with mourning, angry citizens
protesting like the millions of Spaniards immediately following the Madrid
bombing. In fact, the Spaniards were the only ones displaying such massive and
strong sentiments against terror. Until their election results three days later,
which turned their dignity into misplaced opportunism. But why is the rest of
the world silent? Why could a million people march in London against the war in
Iraq or in numerous cities around the world, but very few go out to the streets
to protest daily massacres committed by terrorists, the abuse, the decadence,
the corruption, the twisted mindedness, the evil and the sheer cold-bloodedness
of murderers who are so brazen as to declare a Christian Arab to be an Islamist
‘shahid’ after they murdered him? When we have answers to this question we may
also have the first signs that victory against terrorism is indeed possible. The
answers will likely come and hopefully not at a high cost.