Author: Haim Harari
Publication: denbeste.nu
Date:
URL: http://denbeste.nu/external/Harari01.html
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 civilian 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.
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 millions, 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.
* The total number of scientific
publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6 million Israelis.
* 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.
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".
A few more years may pass before
everybody acknowledges that it is a World War, but we are already well
into it.
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, naïve 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.
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 other 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 naïve
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 Iraq 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 Hizbulla 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 Uzbekhistan 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 Qaida and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbulla, 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.
