By::
Haim Harari, Chair, Davidson Institute of Science Education.
"A View from the Eye of the Storm"
Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a meeting of the International Advisory
Board of a large multi-national corporation, April, 2004:
"As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological "entertainment"
in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman suggested that I present my
own personal view on events in the part of the world from which I come.
I have never been and I will never be a Government official and I have no
privileged information. My perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what
I read and on the fact that my family has lived in this region for almost 200
years. You may regard my views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which
you are supposed to question, when you visit a country.
I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal thoughts
about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch upon it only in passing.
I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader picture of the region and
its place in world events. I refer to the entire area between Pakistan and
Morocco, which is predominantly Arab, predominantly Moslem, but includes many
non-Arab and also significant non-Moslem minorities.
Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and
any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world
media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the
upheaval in the region.
Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main
show is. The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with
Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem
regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with
Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of
civilians in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with
Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and
butchered his own people because of Israel. Egypt did not use poison gas against
Yemen in the 60's because of Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of
thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of
Israel. The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing
to do with Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do
with Israel, and I could go on and on and on. But enough on Isreal. It's a red
herring to the root causes I wish to discuss.
The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally
dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if
Israel had joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine had existed for
100 years.
The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States,
have a total population of 300 million, larger than the US and almost as large
as the EU before its expansion. They have a land area larger than either the US
or all of Europe. These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources,
have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to
half of the GDP of California alone. Within this meager GDP, the gaps between
rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by
succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers.
The social status of women is far below what it was in the Western World 150
years ago. Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the
grotesque fact that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission.
According to a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and
published under the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the
entire Arab world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates.
Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps
and the cultural decline. And all of this is happening in a region, which only
30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a
Moslem area, which developed, at some point in history, one of the most advanced
cultures in the world.
It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground for cruel
dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders and general
decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region blames this
situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism
and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except themselves.
A word about the millions of decent, honest, good people who are either devout
Moslems or are not very religious but grew up in Moslem families:
They are double victims of an outside world, which now develops Islamophobia and
of their own environment, which breaks their heart by being totally
dysfunctional. The problem is that the vast silent majority of these Moslems
are not part of the terror and of the incitement, but they also do not stand up
against it. They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political
leaders, intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can
certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.
The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which have always
existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present upheaval in the
region. A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that it is a
World War, but we are already well into it.
These are the four main pillars of the current World Conflict, or perhaps we
should already refer to it as "the undeclared World War III":
1. The first element is the suicide murder.
Suicide murders are not a new invention but they have been made popular, if I
may use this expression, only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that
most of the Western World does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very
potent psychological weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively minor. The
total number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders within Israel in
the last three years is much smaller than those due to car accidents. September
11 was quantitatively much less lethal than many earthquakes. More people die
from AIDS in one day in Africa than all the Russians who died in the hands of
Chechnya-based Moslem suicide murderers since that conflict started. Saddam
killed every month more people than all those who died from suicide murders
since the Coalition occupation of Iraq.
So what is all the fuss about suicide killings?
It creates headlines. It is spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel
death with bodies dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of
the wounded. It is always shown on television in great detail. One such murder,
with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy the tourism industry of
a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali and in Turkey. But the real fear
comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and no preventive measures can
succeed against a determined suicide murderer. This has not yet penetrated the
thinking of the Western World. The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving
their defense against the last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for the
best airport security in the world. But if you want to murder by suicide, you do
not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people. Who
could stop a suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting to be
checked by the airport metal detector? How about the lines to the check-in
counters in a busy travel period? Put a metal detector in front of every train
station in Spain and the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and
they will explode in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping
malls, schools and hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and
there will always be a line of people to be checked by the guards and this line
will be the target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves. You can
somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by
strict border controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in a
defensive way. And it is a war!
What is behind the suicide murders?
Money, power and cold-blooded murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing
to do with true fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown
himself up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown
himself. No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you expect some
of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing
it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren't they interested
in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, naive
children, retarded people and young incited hotheads. They promise them the
delights, mostly sexual, of the next world, and pay their families handsomely
after the supreme act is performed and enough innocent
people are dead. Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and
despair. The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens
there. There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures,
countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with explosives,
reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more despair in Saddam's
Iraq then in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one exploded himself. A suicide murder
is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded
terrorists, with no regard to human life, including the life of their fellow
countrymen, but with very high regard to their own affluent well-being and their
hunger for power.
The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the only way in
which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: the offensive way.
Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial that the forces on the
offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the top of the crime pyramid. You
cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the little drug dealer in the
street corner. You must go after the head of the "Family." If part of the public
supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraid of it and some try to explain
it away by poverty or by a miserable childhood, organized crime will thrive and
so will terrorism.
The United States understands this now, after September 11. Russia is beginning
to understand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid that most of
Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately, it seems that Europe will
understand it only after suicide murders arrive in Europe in a big way. In my
humble opinion, this will definitely happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul
bombings are only the beginning. The unity of the Civilized World in fighting
this horror is absolutely indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will
not be achieved.
2. The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies
- "War Propaganda".
(War Propaganda: There are scores of definitions, but the
one that most accurately captures the meaning of war propaganda comes from the
Oxford Companion to United States History, which defines it as the
'deliberate attempt by the few to influence the beliefs and actions of the many
through the manipulation of ideas, facts, and lies. It entails control of
politics and ideology')."-extracted from Vietnam Magazine, Jun 26, 06, Pg 26
Words can be lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians,
diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as
part of their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are
childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total absolute
deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region we are
talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe that
September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even better, a
Jewish plot.
You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf
and his press conferences when the US forces were already inside Baghdad.
Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic.
But to stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements, known to
everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu, can only
happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular icon as a court
jester, but this did not stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from giving
him equal time. It also does not prevent the Western press from giving credence,
every day, even now, to similar liars.
After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are subtle ways of doing it.
You do not have to claim that the holocaust never happened, and that the Jewish
temple in Jerusalem never existed. But millions of Moslems are told by their
leaders that this is the case. When these same leaders make other statements,
the Western media report them as if they could be true. It is a daily occurrence
that the same people, who finance, arm and dispatch suicide murderers, condemn
the act in English in front of western TV cameras, talking to a world audience,
which even partly believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader
making opposite statements
in Arabic to his people and in English to the rest of the world. Incitement by
Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures of mutilated bodies, has become a
powerful weapon of those who lie, distort and want to destroy everything.
Little children are raised on deep hatred and on admiration of so-called
martyrs, and the Western World does not notice it because its own TV sets are
mostly tuned to soap operas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most
of you do not understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You
will not believe your own eyes.
But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration in Berlin,
carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring three-year old babies
dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the press and by political leaders
as a "peace demonstration". You may support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer
to fans of Saddam, Arafat or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A
woman walks into an Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with
old people
and children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays the bill. She
then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many children, with heads
and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is called "martyr" by several
Arab leaders and "activist" by the European press. Dignitaries condemn the act
but visit her bereaved family and the money flows.
There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing",
the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political
wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are
numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only
by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous
than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for
atrocities. It was Joseph
Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
He is now being outperformed by his successors.
3. The third aspect is money.
Huge amounts of money, which could have solved many social problems in this
dysfunctional part of the world, are channeled into three concentric spheres
supporting death and murder. In the inner circle are the terrorists themselves.
The money funds their travel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft
vulnerable targets. The inner circles are primarily financed by terrorist states
like Iran and Syria, until recently also by Iraq and Libya and earlier also by
some of the Communist regimes. These states, as well as the Palestinian
Authority, are the safe havens of the wholesale murder vendors.
They are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct supporters, planners,
commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living, usually a very comfortable
living, by serving as terror infrastructure.
Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational and
welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungry and provide
some schooling, but brainwash a new generation with hatred, lies and ignorance.
This circle operates mostly through mosques, madrasas and ther religious
establishments but also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is
this circle that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is
unthinkable and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It is also that
circle that leads the way in blaming every-body outside the Moslem world, for
the miseries of the region. The
outer circle is largely financed by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from
certain Moslem communities in the United States and Europe and, to a smaller
extent, by donations of European Governments to various NGO's and by certain
United Nations organizations, whose goals may be noble, but they are infested
and exploited by agents of the outer circle. The Saudi regime, of course, will
be the next victim of major terror, when the inner circle will explode into the
outer circle. The Saudis are beginning to understand it, but they fight the
inner circles, while still financing
the infrastructure at the outer circle.
Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes sure that
the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of terror and incitement,
rather than to the world outside. Some parts of this same outer circle actually
operate as a result of fear from, or blackmail by, the inner circles. The
horrifying added factor is the high birth rate. Half of the population of the
Arab world is under the age of 20, the most receptive age to incitement,
guaranteeing two more generations of blind hatred.
Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on their
loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in Europe, not in the
training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad "soldiers" join packaged death
tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while some of their leaders ski in
Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in
Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands of dollars per month from
the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority, while a typical local ringleader
of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a cash payment of a
couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders at the retail level.
4. The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total breaking of
all laws.
The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule of law, including
international law, human rights, free speech and free press, among other
liberties. There are naive old-fashioned habits such as respecting religious
sites and symbols, not using ambulances and hospitals for acts of war, avoiding
the mutilation of dead bodies and not using children as human shields or human
bombs. Never in history, not even in the Nazi period, was there such total
disregard of all of the above as we observe
now. Every student of political science debates how you prevent an
anti-democratic force from winning a democratic election and abolishing
democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society must also have limitations. Can
a policeman open fire on someone trying to kill him?
Can a government listen to phone conversations of terrorists and drug dealers?
Does free speech protects you when you shout "fire" in a crowded theater?
Should there be death penalty, for deliberate multiple murders? These are the
old-fashioned dilemmas. But now we have an entire new set.
Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage?
Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church
taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every
ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their targets?
Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and carried a
suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to kill you,
standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist
headquarters, hidden in a mental
hospital?
Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to
another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in raq and in
the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the
dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.
Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in a
well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and financed by
it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in France, killing hundreds
of innocent people, accepting responsibility for the crimes, promising in public
TV interviews to do more of the same, while the Government of Iran issues public
condemnations of his acts but continues to host him, invite him to official
functions and treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to
figure out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation.
The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule
of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey by
sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a heavyweight
boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no country has a law against
cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an act is unthinkable,
international law does not address killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and
ambulances, while being protected by their
Government or society. International law does not know how to handle someone who
sends children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and
cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. International law
does not know how to deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and
comfortably hosted by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just
claims to be too weak to arrest him.
The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demand protection under
international law, and define all those who attack them as "war criminals," with
some Western media repeating the allegations.
The good news is that all of this is temporary, because the evolution of
international law has always adapted itself to reality. The punishment for
suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder, not during and not
after. After every world war, the rules of international law have changed, and
the same will happen after the present one. But during the twilight zone, a lot
of harm can be done.
The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it? In the
short run, only fight and win. In the long run - only educate the next
generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and must be destroyed
by force.
The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force. Here we need financial
starvation of the organizing elite, more power to women, more education, counter
propaganda, boycott whenever feasible and access to Western media, internet and
the international scene. Above all, we need a total absolute unity and
determination of the civilized world against all three circles of evil. Allow
me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi driver and return to
science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may remove the tumor itself
surgically. You may also starve it by preventing new blood from reaching it from
other parts of the body, thereby
preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want to be sure, it
is best to do both.
But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to realize that
you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more years. In order to win, it
is necessary to first eliminate the terrorist regimes, so that no Government in
the world will serve as a safe haven for these people.
I do not want to comment here on whether the American led attack on Iraq was
justified from the point of view of weapons of mass destruction or any other
pre-war argument, but I can look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now that
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain:
Iran, Syria and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should
be added to the list. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq, both
Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly to them.
Iran is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem
republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq,
Jordan and Israel. This is a significant strategic change and it applies strong
pressure on the terrorist countries. It is not surprising that Iran is
so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I do not know if the
American plan was actually to encircle both Iran and Syria, but that is the
resulting situation.
In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran and
its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to expand in all
directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy over Western culture. It
is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute elaborate terrorist acts without
leaving too many traces, using Iranian Embassies. It is clearly trying to
develop nuclear weapons. Its so-called moderates and conservatives play their
own virtuoso version of
the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it is
certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the Hezbollah
and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of
terror at least in Europe and in South America and probably also in Uzbekistan
and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which
includes, as minor players, Syria,
Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most European
countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuse to read the clear
signals.
In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial resources of
the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to understand the subtle
differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaeda and Hamas and the Shiite
terror of Hezbollah, Sadr and other Iranian inspired enterprises. When it serves
their business needs, all of them
collaborate beautifully.
It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer circle,
which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important to monitor all
donations from the Western World to Islamic organizations, to monitor the
finances of international relief organizations and to react with forceful
economic measures to any small sign of financial aid to any of the three circles
of terrorism.
It is also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and
fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it out of
naivety, financial interests or ignorance.
Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether the recent
elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if not for the train
bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not matter. What matters is
that the terrorists believe that they caused the result and that they won by
driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story will surely end up being extremely
costly to other European countries,
including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and forbidding veils
and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the long run, Spain itself will
pay even more.
Is the solution a democratic Arab world?
If by democracy we mean free elections but also free press, free speech, a
functioning judicial system, civil liberties, equality to women, free
international travel, exposure to international media and ideas, laws against
racial incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior
regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is the
solution.
If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the most fanatic regime
will be elected, the one whose incitement and fabrications are the most
inflammatory. We have seen it already in Algeria and, to a certain extent, in
Turkey. It will happen again, if the ground is not prepared very carefully. On
the other hand, a certain transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better
temporary solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way
that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not have
worked in China.
I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer it takes
us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly and painful the
victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, is the key. Its
understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of World War II, may cost
thousands of additional innocent lives, before the tide will turn."