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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 Chairmansuggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part ofthe world from which I come. I have never been and I will never be aGovernment 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 personalthoughts 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? BecauseIsrael and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might reador hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never beenthe central issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there is a 100year-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 withIsrael. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the ArabMoslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing todo with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders ofhundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians havenothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait,endanger Saudi Arabia and butcher his own people because of Israel. Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because ofIsrael. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his owncitizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The Talibancontrol of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do withIsrael. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to dowith Israel, and I could go on and on and on. The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totallydysfunctional, 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 muchsmaller than what little Greece alone translates. The total number ofscientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6million Israelis. Birth rates in the region are very high, increasingthe poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline. And all of thisis happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to bethe next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, whichdeveloped, at some point in history, one of the most advanced culturesin the world. It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground forcruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicidemurders and general decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody inthe region blames this situation on the United States, on Israel, onWestern Civilization, on Judaism and Christianity, on anyone andanything, except themselves. Do I say all of this with the satisfaction of someone discussing thefailings of his enemies? On the contrary, I firmly believe that theworld would have been a much better place and my own neighborhood wouldhave been much more pleasant and peaceful, if things were different. I should also say a word about the millions of decent, honest, goodpeople who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grewup in Moslem families. They are double victims of an outside world,which now develops Islamophobia and of their own environment, whichbreaks their heart by being totally dysfunctional. The problem is thatthe vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror andof the incitement but they also do not stand up against it. They becomeaccomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders,intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them cancertainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views. The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which havealways existed, but have never been as rampant as in the presentupheaval in the region. These are the four main pillars of the currentWorld Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as "theundeclared World War III". I have no better name for the presentsituation. A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges thatit is a World War, but we are already well into it. The first element is the suicide murder. Suicide murders are not a newinvention but they have been made popular, if I may use this expression,only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of the WesternWorld does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very potentpsychological weapon. Its real direct impact is relatively minor. Thetotal number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders withinIsrael in the last three years is much smaller than those due to caraccidents. September 11 was quantitatively much less lethal than manyearthquakes. More people die from AIDS in one day in Africa than all theRussians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem suicidemurderers since that conflict started. Saddam killed every month morepeople than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalitionoccupation of Iraq. So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates headlines. Itis spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel death with bodiesdismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of thewounded. It is always shown on television in great detail. One suchmurder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can destroy thetourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali andin Turkey. But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense and nopreventive 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 lastmurder, not the next one. We may arrange for the best airport securityin the world.. But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have toboard a plane in order to explode yourself and kill many people. Whocould stop a suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting tobe checked by the airport metal detector? How about the lines to thecheck-in counters in a busy travel period? Put a metal detector in frontof every train station in Spain and the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode in movie theaters, concerthalls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and hospitals. Put guardsin front of every concert hall and there will always be a line of peopleto be checked by the guards and this line will be the target, not tospeak of killing the guards themselves. You can somewhat reduce yourvulnerability by preventive and defensive measures and by strict bordercontrols but not eliminate it and definitely not win the war in adefensive way. And it is a war! What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-bloodedmurderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with truefanatic 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 someof the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons intodoing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren'tthey interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they sendoutcast women, naïve children, retarded people and young incitedhotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the nextworld, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme act isperformed and enough innocent people are dead. Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair. Thepoorest 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 withexplosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly moredespair in Saddam's Iraq then in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no oneexploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weaponof cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard tohuman life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with veryhigh 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 onlyway in which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: theoffensive way. Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial thatthe forces on the offensive be united and it is crucial to reach the topof the crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arrestingthe little drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after the headof the "Family". If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraidof it and some try to explain it away by poverty or by a miserablechildhood, organized crime will thrive and so will terrorism. The UnitedStates understands this now, after September 11. Russia is beginning tounderstand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid thatmost of Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately, it seemsthat Europe will understand it only after suicide murders will arrive inEurope in a big way. In my humble opinion, this will definitely happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are only the beginning. Theunity of the Civilized World in fighting this horror is absolutelyindispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will not be achieved. The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies. Words can belethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomatsand perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as partof their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy arechildish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total absolutedeliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region weare talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab worldbelieve that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocationor, even better, a Jewish plot. You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr. Mouhamad Saidal-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were alreadyinside Baghdad. Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. Butto stand, day after day, and to make such preposterous statements, knownto everybody to be lies, without even being ridiculed in your ownmilieu, can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually became apopular icon as a court jester, but this did not stop some allegedlyrespectable newspapers from giving him equal time. It also does notprevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, tosimilar liars. After all, if you want to be an antisemite, there aresubtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the holocaustnever 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 reportthem as if they could be true. It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm anddispatch suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front ofwestern TV cameras, talking to a world audience, which even partlybelieves them. It is a daily routine to hear the same leader makingopposite statements in Arabic to his people and in English to the restof the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures ofmutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who lie, distortand want to destroy everything. Little children are raised on deephatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western Worlddoes not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soapoperas and game shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you donot understand Arabic, to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You willnot believe your own eyes. But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration inBerlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuringthree-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by thepress and by political leaders as a "peace demonstration". You maysupport or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafator Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into anIsraeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with old peopleand children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays thebill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including manychildren, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She iscalled "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the Europeanpress. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and themoney 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 isnow called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is calledthe "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of suchOrwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs butalso by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than manypeople 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 havesolved many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, arechanneled into three concentric spheres supporting death and murder. Inthe inner circle are the terrorists themselves. The money funds theirtravel, explosives, hideouts and permanent search for soft vulnerabletargets. They are surrounded by a second wider circle of directsupporters, 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, educationaland welfare organizations, which actually do some good, feed the hungryand 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 incitingelectronic and printed media. It is this circle that makes sure thatwomen remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposureto the outside world is minimal. It is also that circle that leads theway in blaming everybody outside the Moslem world, for the miseries ofthe region. Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makessure that the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle ofterror and incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some parts ofthis same outer circle actually operate as a result of fear from, orblackmail by, the inner circles. The horrifying added factor is the highbirth rate. Half of the population of the Arab world is under the age of20, the most receptive age to incitement, guaranteeing two moregenerations of blind hatred. Of the three circles described above, the inner circles are primarilyfinanced by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also byIraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes. Thesestates, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of themurder vendors. The outer circle is largely financed by Saudi Arabia,but also by donations from certain Moslem communities in the UnitedStates and Europe and, to a smaller extent, by donations of Europeans tovarious NGO's and by certain United Nations organizations, whose goalsmay be noble, but they are infested and exploited by agents of outercircle. The Saudi regime, of course, will be the next victim of terror,when the inner circle will explode into the outer circle. The Saudis arebeginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles, stillfinancing the infrastructure at the outer circle.? Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably ontheir loot. You meet their children in the best private schools inEurope, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad"soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, whilesome of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives inParis with her daughter, receives tens of thousands Dollars per monthfrom the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority while a typical localringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only acash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders atthe retail level. The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total breakingof all laws. The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule oflaw, including international law, human rights, free speech and freepress, among other liberties. There are naïve old-fashioned habits suchas respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances andhospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies andnot using children as human shields or human bombs. Never in history,not even in the Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all ofthe above as we observe now. Every student of political science debateshow you prevent an anti-democratic force from winning a democraticelection and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized societymust also have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone tryingto kill him? Can a government listen to phone conversations ofterrorists and drug dealers? Does free speech protects you when youshout "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be death penalty, fordeliberate multiple murders? These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. Butnow we have an entire new set. Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Doyou return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm achurch taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do yousearch every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances toreach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended tobe pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot backat someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group ofchildren? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mentalhospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from onelocation to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happendaily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you donot want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in awell-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government andfinanced by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or inFrance, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibilityfor the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of thesame, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of hisacts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions andtreat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figureout what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation. The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions aboutthe rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to playice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knockout a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that nocountry has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister, becausesuch an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killersshooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protectedby their Government or society. International law does not know how tohandle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands behind themand shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he is shelteredby a Government. International law does not know how to deal with aleader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by a country,which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too weak toarrest him. The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demandprotection under international law and define all those who attack themas war criminals, with some Western media repeating the allegations. Thegood news is that all of this is temporary, because the evolution ofinternational law has always adapted itself to reality. The punishmentfor suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder, notduring and not after. After every world war, the rules of internationallaw have changed and the same will happen after the present one. Butduring 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 thenext generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can and mustbe destroyed by force. The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force. Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power towomen, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever feasible andaccess to Western media, internet and the international scene. Aboveall, we need a total absolute unity and determination of the civilizedworld against all three circles of evil. Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi driverand return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may removethe tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by preventing newblood from reaching it from other parts of the body, thereby preventingnew "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want to be sure, it isbest to do both. But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to realizethat you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more years. Inorder 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 thesepeople. I do not want to comment here on whether the American-led attackon Iraq was justified from the point of view of weapons of massdestruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can look at thepost-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya areout, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria and Lebanon,the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should be added to thelist. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq, both Iran andSyria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly to them. Iranis encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslemrepublics of the former Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by Turkey,Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a significant strategic change and itapplies strong pressure on the terrorist countries. It is not surprisingthat Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. Ido not know if the American plan was actually to encircle both Iran andSyria, but that is the resulting situation. In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iranand its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and toexpand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacyover Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can executeelaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using IranianEmbassies.. It is clearly trying to develop Nuclear Weapons. Itsso-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version ofthe "good-cop versus bad-cop" game. Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, itis certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding theHizbulla and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, itperformed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America andprobably also in Uzbekhistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads amulti-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players,Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, mostEuropean countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuseto read the clear signals. In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financialresources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try tounderstand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaidaand Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbulla, Sadr and other Iranianinspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of themcollaborate beautifully. It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outercircle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is importantto monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamicorganizations, to monitor the finances of international relieforganizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any smallsign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism. It isalso important to act decisively against the campaign of lies andfabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with itout of naivety, financial interests or ignorance. Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether therecent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if notfor the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does notmatter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused theresult and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish storywill surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries,including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and forbiddingveils 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 freeelections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicialsystem, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel,exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racialincitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behaviorregarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracyis the solution. If democracy is just free elections, it is likely thatthe most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement andfabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already inAlgeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, ifthe ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a certaintransition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary solution,paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that animmediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not haveworked in China. I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer ittakes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costlyand painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, isthe key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors ofWorld War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent lives, beforethe tide will turn. |
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