[lit-ideas] A View from the Eye of the Storm
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 13:16:17 -0700
Professor HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson
Institute of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to
2001, of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
During his years as President of the Institute, it entered numerous
new scientific fields and projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one
Billion Dollars in philanthropic money, hired more than half of its
current tenured Professors and became one of the highest
royalty-earning academic organizations in the world.
Throughout all his adult life, he has made major contributions to
three different fields: Particle Physics Research on the international
scene, Science Education in the Israeli school system and Science
Administration and Policy Making.
"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 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 would have joined the Arab league and an independent
Palestine would have 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.
Do I say all of this with the satisfaction of someone discussing the
failings of his enemies? On the contrary, I firmly believe that the
world would have been a much better place and my own neighborhood would
have been much more pleasant and peaceful, if things were different.
I should also say 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". I have no better name for the present
situation. A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that
it is a World War, but we are already well into it.
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 will
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.
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 antisemite, 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.
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. 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 everybody outside the
Moslem world, for the miseries of the region.
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.
Of the three circles described above, 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. 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.?
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 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.?
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] A View from the Eye of the Storm
