Author: Efraim Karsh
Publication: The Sunday Telegraph,
UK
Date: November 3, 2002
Introduction: Western oppression
is not to blame for the spread of terrorism, Western cravenness is says
Efraim Krash.
On Friday evening, October 11, 2002,
a 20-year-old chemistry student carefully tidied his backpack before leaving
for the city's main shopping mall. On arrival, he cast a quick glance around
before making his way to the local McDonalds's. The place was full of families
enjoying a Friday night out.
A clown stood at the entrance, entertaining
a group of young children. The student approached them and without further
ado blew himself up with a homemade bomb hidden in his backpack, killing
seven people and wounding another 100.
This was not downtown Tel Aviv but
rather the Finnish city of Vantaa, near Helsinki. The homicide bomber was
not a hardened terrorist fighting "occupation" or "Western imperialism"
but an ordinary citizen of one of the most peaceful societies in the world.
What drove the first European homicide bomber to this extreme move may
never be fully known. But it is clear that the cancerous phenomenon of
homicide bombing is rapidly spreading beyond its original Middle Eastern
arena to become a real threat to world security.
Alan Dershowitz's latest book could
not be more timely. A Harvard law professor and one of America's most prominent
civil rights lawyers, Dershowitz brings his vast experience in the area
of crime and justice to bear on the subject of terrorism. The result is
an outstanding study that dares to think the unthinkable and to move beyond
the conventional wisdom that has thus far failed Western societies in their
battle against terrorism.
Dershowitz has no time for the standard
line which rationalizes terrorism as a valid response to its "root causes"
- oppression and desperation: "The vast majority of repressed and desperate
people do not resort to the willful targeting of vulnerable civilians",
he argues. His case is that the root cause of terrorism is that it is successful
- "terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts".
This in turn means that terrorism
will persist as long as it continues to work - for as long as the international
community rewards it, as it has been doing for the past 35 years. "Global
terrorism is thus a phenomenon largely of our own making", Dershowitz concludes
starkly.
The main thrust of the book's scathing
criticism is directed at European governments and the United Nations, though
Dershowitz does not spare the US government. In a chapter entitled "The
Internationalization of Terrorism: How Our European Allies Made September
11 Inevitable", he meticulously and mercilessly documents the long and
shameful record of European surrender to Arab terrorism from the late 1960s
onwards. He demonstrates how European governments not only failed to fight
its spread on the Continent, but also constantly sought to appease and
indulge the terrorists.
Far worse, the more spectacular
the atrocities the more far-reaching the international concessions won
by the terrorists. At the end of 1969, for example, as Palestinian terrorism
was increasing, the UN General Assembly, having two years earlier, in resolution
242 - which aimed at achieving peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours
- failed to mention the Palestinians at all, adopted a resolution recognising
their "inalienable" rights. And in November 1974, on the heel of a string
of deadly terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat
became the first non-state leader to address the General Assembly.
Perhaps Dershowitz's most astonishing
example of Western appeasement is the secret deal struck between the West
German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, and Palestinian terrorists, just a couple
of months after the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic
Games in 1972. Brandt, who wished to rid his country of the three Munich
terrorists held in a German prison, conspired with the PLO to arrange for
a hijacking of a Lufthansa plane from Beirut carrying 11 German men and
a skeleton crew.
The German hostages were to be threatened
with death unless the three terrorist prisoners were flown to freedom in
an Arab country. (The Lufthansa flight had originated in Damascus with
passengers and seven members and had picked up the 11 passengers and two
hijackers in Beirut.) Feigning terror at the prospect of Germans being
killed, Chancellor Brandt gave in to "demands" of the terrorists. Thus
the Munich massacre became an unqualified success. No wonder that Arafat
has been reluctant to abandon his terrorist ways.
According to Dershowitz, the only
way to reverse this disturbing trend is to adopt a zero-tolerance approach
toward both terrorism and its root causes". There is no "bad" and "good"
terrorism. All terrorism must be condemned if condemnation of any terrorism
is to have an impact. Beside, there never been a direct correlation between
the degrees of injustice experienced given group and the willingness of
that group to resort to terrorism.
"Our message must this," Dershowitz
writes, even if you have legitimate grievances, if you resort terrorism
as a means toward eliminating them we simply not listen to you."
The consequences of failing
to pay close attention to this advice - however painful in the short term
- are horrendous to contemplate.
