Haaretz
Tamuz 3, 5765
The world is treating the wave of terror attacks
in London as a deterministic event, a necessary product of absolute evil,
an act of Satan's emissaries.
The world's media were immediately
inundated with countless "terrorism experts," who self-assuredly explained
how to combat the scourge: "Dry the swamp," "destroy the infrastructure,"
raise the efficiency of intelligence organizations and reinforce security
arrangements.
The world will now upgrade its means of combating
terrorism: Security on subways will be increased. Victoria Station in
London will look like Heathrow Airport, like barracks. And, ultimately,
there will be another war to overcome the affliction.
Our foreign
minister, Silvan Shalom, who never misses an opportunity to appear on
screen, added his own assessment. "This is a war between the children of
darkness and the children of light - groups of lunatics, whose only goal
is to prevent the dissemination of the values of democracy and freedom in
the world," explained the person responsible for disseminating freedom in
Palestine.
Black and white, bad guys and good guys. Everything is
perfectly clear to us, the children of light, the seekers of freedom and
progress.
Nonetheless, a certain doubt arises. Perhaps it is not
just pure evil? Perhaps we should ask what the "children of darkness"
want? What impels them to commit such cruel acts? How is it that so many
people lend a hand to such acts? Is it really true that the only way to
combat them is through exerting more and more force?
The undeniable
fact that after two cruel and unnecessary wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq,
which were ostensibly designed to combat terror - and after installing the
strictest security measures, the world has not become a safer place,
should raise doubts about the validity of those unchanging
mantras.
Everyone talks about the global connections behind
terrorism, linking the attacks in Moscow, Madrid, Istanbul, Mombassa and
Jerusalem. In this way, the West can exempt itself from any responsibility
for the terror attacks, attributing it all to a grand plot of Muslim
"children of darkness," who declared war against the children of light,
the defenders of freedom and democracy.
The truth is that the
picture is much more complex. Even if there is absolute agreement about
the cruelty of the means used by global terrorism, we must ask what really
drives it and whether the West is truly free of any responsibility for its
eruption.
The terror attacks in London occurred one day after the
city was informed that it would host the Olympics in 2012. Some 12-17
billion pounds will be invested in the British capital for the Games. No
one imagined investing such a gigantic sum in Third World
countries.
The attacks also occurred against the background of the
ostentatious concert for Africa and the G8 summit, which will not
significantly reduce the continent's distress. It is impossible to ignore
the fact that Islamic terrorism, which carries the banner of an
uncompromising religious war, has succeeded in cultivating its wild weeds
in the soil of the impoverished, infirm, deprived and oppressed Third
World. Its soldiers come from occupied Afghanistan, from Pakistan, which
is ruled by a Western-backed leader, from backward Arab countries and from
poor neighborhoods of Muslims in Europe.
George Bush is no less
responsible for the bloodshed than Osama bin Laden. He declared an
unnecessary, wicked war on Iraq that has only managed to sow massive
killing and destruction. There are no authoritative figures on the number
of innocent Iraqi civilians killed by the U.S. army, in addition to the
1,700 American soldiers killed for naught, but their number is very
large.
But the wars the West wages are not called terrorism, and
their casualties are not labeled as terror victims. The West provides
fundamentalist terrorism quite a few justifications. Therefore, the
correct way to fight this terrorism should be first of all to reduce these
justifications in order to diminish support for it.
Perhaps it is
impossible to wipe out this terrorism completely, but it is impossible to
deny that its source and support are found in impoverished and oppressed
settings. There is no doubt, for example, that ending the Israeli
occupation of the Palestinian territories would weaken the motivation or
at least the excuse for terror. As long as the terrible gap between the
affluent West and impoverished, backward Third World is not narrowed, as
long as ostentatious Olympic Games continue to be held in London while
millions die of AIDS in Africa due to a lack of medication, as long as the
West continues to wage superfluous wars on false pretenses and Muslims
throughout the world feel deprived and persecuted, as long as the economic
exploitation and occupation continue in several of the world's countries,
terrorism will also continue.
True, groups of fanatics may remain
in the world even after these problems are resolved, but they would no
long enjoy the broad sympathy they receive today. Neither an armed guard
for every passenger on the London underground, nor another war of choice
in Syria or Chechnya would put an end to the phenomenon that former Mossad
chief Ephraim Halevy, another renowned expert on terrorism, called "a
world war."
If there is one way to insure that it will be
impossible to put an end to terrorism, it is the way of force and
exploitation. And this is the path the world has followed so far.