Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: The New York Post
Date: December 9, 2001
In declaring his own war on terrorism
last week, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a surprising claim.
He said that Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, "is responsible for
everything that is happening here," a reference to the onslaught of four
suicide operations that had just left 26 Israelis dead and some 200 wounded.
To which one might reasonably ask:
Why blame Arafat?
No one blames President Bush for
the catastrophe on Sept. 11 or other politicians for the terrorism that
occurs on their watch. Why should it be different with Arafat? Isn't Sharon
unfair?
Let's look at the evidence.
Every inquiry into Palestinian suicide
attacks, and especially Nasra Hassan's remarkable report in a recent issue
of The New Yorker, finds that these do not just happen spontaneously but
result from a large and sophisticated infrastructure.
This infrastructure exists for one
reason: to make normal men want to die. Because Islamic law prohibits suicide,
a suicidal person cannot be recruited to go on a mission. Rather, it is
(perversely) necessary to dispatch only those who are not suicidal.
Islamic Jihad, which along with
Hamas trains the suicide killers, explains: "We do not take depressed people.
If there were a one-in-a-thousand chance that a person was suicidal, we
would not allow him to martyr himself. In order to be a martyr bomber,
you have to want to live." The same strange logic applies for Hamas, which
rejects anyone "who commits suicide because he hates the world."
Convincing healthy individuals to
blow themselves up is obviously not easy, but requires ideas and institutions.
The process begins with the Palestinian Authority (PA) inculcating two
things into its population, starting with the children: a hatred of Jews
and a love of death. School curricula, camp activities, TV programming
and religious indoctrination all portray Israelis in a Nazi-style way,
as sub-human being worthy of killing; and then deprecate the instinct for
self-preservation, telling impressionable young people that sacrificing
their lives is the most noble of all goals.
The system works: Hassan reports
that "hordes of young men" clamor to be sent to their own obliteration.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have established a process of selection based in
the mosques, where "a notably zealous youth" ready for martyrdom gets noted
by clerics who recommend him for selection.
Those who make the cut enter a protracted,
highly supervised, and disciplined regimen of spiritual studies and military-like
training. These adepts are taught to see suicide operations as a way to
"open the door to Paradise" for themselves and their families. "I love
martyrdom" says one such "living martyr."
Just before setting off on an attack,
the men engage in exquisitely pious preparations (ablutions, clean clothing,
a communal prayer service). Their deaths are celebrated by Hamas or Islamic
Jihad by orchestrating a festive funeral celebration ("as if it were a
wedding," Hassan observes) and distributing video cassettes with a statement
from beyond the grave. The sponsoring organizations then make sure that
the family receives both social kudos and financial rewards.
These facts tell us three things:
Militant Islamic suicide killers are not born; they are manufactured. Like
the four simultaneous suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, the four nearly simultaneous
suicide attacks in Israel last week resulted from long-term planning by
sophisticated organizations. They cannot operate clandestinely, but require
the permission of a ruling authority, either the Taliban or the PA.
All of which leads to the conclusion
that Sharon was right to hold Arafat responsible for the onslaught of suicide
attacks on Israelis.
This, in turn, has an implication
for the war on terrorism. No less than in Afghanistan, the American goal
must be to shut down the suicide factory in the Palestinian areas.
And while it would be wonderfully
convenient if Yasir Arafat could be delegated this task, the chances of
his doing this are about as likely as the Taliban getting rid of Al-Qaeda
- in other words, nil. Arafat has been in the business of murdering Israelis
for nearly four decades; he does not deserve yet another chance.
Fortunately, unlike other parts
of the world where Americans have to fight terrorism on their own, in this
case an ally - Israel - is ready and willing to fight terrorism on its
own. The time has come to urge it to do just that.
