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Jewish World Review Sept. 12, 2003 / 15 Elul, 5763 An end to the delusions By Jonathan Tobin
The exception to an anti-terror consensus lingers
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
Sept. 11, 2001, is a date not likely to fade from the memories of those who lived through
it. Yet 24 months later, I can't help but wonder how future generations will mark this day.
Time has a way of healing wounds. But it can also help change the context of the event
itself. One example is the way we now remember the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
on Dec. 7, 1941, which brought the United States into World War II.
As much as we hold dear the memories of those slain on that day, generations that
grew up since the war with Japan barely understand the anger and hurt of Americans
who were shocked into a world conflict on that day. Thus, it is no surprise that commemorations of that date
have declined in attention.
In 2003, it is hard to imagine that Americans will ever think that way about 9/11, but in a strange way, we should
hope that this does, in fact, happen.
That's because if Dec. 7 is no longer a day of overriding national importance to most Americans, it is because
the threat to our national existence from Japanese imperialists and their German allies is long dead.
Will we experience such a total victory over the forces of terrorism that will transform our 9/11 trauma into a
topic relegated to the History Channel?
Unfortunately, that seems hardly likely.
American forces have routed Al Qaeda's allies from
Afghanistan and evicted the Ba'athist regime of Saddam
Hussein from Iraq, but the enemy of 9/11 constitutes more than
a couple of rogue regimes. It is, instead, an ideology of hate
and terror that spans the world, from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia,
and from Ramallah to places inside the West, wherever
adherents of Islamic fundamentalism — what scholar Daniel
Pipes terms "Islamism" — reside.
This Islamist threat wasn't born on Sept. 11. Indeed, most of the American media and our foreign-policy
establishment spent decades pooh-poohing the idea that Islamic fundamentalism posed any sort of threat.
But, in the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks, most Americans seemed to grasp the nature of this threat.
And President Bush's ringing post-Sept. 11 rhetoric declaring war on the terrorists — and all those who aid or
shelter them — helped mobilize this consensus into a coherent foreign-policy agenda.
That was a formulation that upset many of the elites in the media and academia where temporizing and
rationalization of hatred for America was still the conventional wisdom of the day. But outside of the fever
swamps of the far left, where loathing for America still thrives, such notions were abandoned.
And, despite debates over the wisdom of the Iraq war, as well as continuing questions about the future of that
country, the consensus that all-out war against terror must be pursued has held.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TERRORISM
President Bush rightly saw Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for what he is, an unrepentant terrorist who should
be shunned, not embraced. But Bush's attempts to bypass Arafat by creating an alternative Palestinian
leadership in an attempt to appease America's European and Arab "allies" did not stop Americans, as well as
Europeans from treating Palestinian terrorism differently from that of Al Qaeda.
With the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, it is clear that the
attempt to bypass Arafat while still giving the Palestinians a state never had a chance to succeed. But the
damage that the double standard on terror has created not only undermined Israel, it hurt American policy, too,
because it allowed funders of terror against both Israel and America (such as those in Saudi Arabia) a
loophole that allowed them to escape scrutiny.
In the eyes of Washington and the media, those who kill Americans are terrorists who must be eradicated
without giving a thought to any other consideration. But those Palestinians who kill in Israel are not terrorists,
only militants or activists whose demands must be satisfied.
According to Washington, American pre-emptive attacks on Al Qaeda or Ba'athist leaders are justified no
matter where or when they take place or how many civilians get killed in the crossfire. But Washington
considers Israel's attacks on the leaders of Hamas, who openly boast of their desire to eradicate Israel
completely and who seek to kill as many Jews as possible, prohibited "assassinations."
Some genuinely believe that reasonable accommodation of Palestinian ambitions will still stop terror. Others
seem to take the position that while attacks on Americans were unjustified, those on Israelis were, somehow,
deserved.
If only, they still say, the Israelis would get out of the territories, stop building a security fence or be kinder to
Palestinians at checkpoints, there would be no need for suicide bombers to blow up mothers and babies in
Jerusalem cafes. Such sentiments misunderstand the goal of the bombers.
MISUNDERSTANDING TERROR
It is easy for most of us to understand that Al Qaeda's desire to bring down the West is irrational and cannot be
appeased. Why, then, is it so hard for us to understand that Arab attacks on Israel are similarly based? And
why does any rational person think that even if we acquiesced in that goal, that their attitude toward Americans
would be any less violent?
As we recall the victims of Sept. 11, we should not forget that Israel has suffered similar catastrophes nonstop
for the last three years and more. The people who carry out those attacks must be treated no differently than
the ones who assaulted America. Appeasement of certain kinds of terrorists won't make America safer. In fact,
the exception for Hamas only undermines our efforts to isolate other killers.
The memory of a day of horror has steeled Americans to the necessity of carrying the battle against
international terrorism to the places where such evil is bred. But so long as we continue to pretend that we can
distinguish between Palestinian terrorists and those in Iraq or Indonesia, we will be reverting to our previous
coma about the nature of the threat.
And that's the main point about remembering the attacks. Our commemorations must never be divorced from
the reality of a common war against terror. That is a mistake that an America that wants to win the war cannot
afford to make.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. Let him know what you think by clicking here. In June, Mr. Tobin won first places honors in the American Jewish Press Association's Louis Rapaport Award for Excellence in Commentary as well as the Philadelphia Press Association's Media Award for top weekly columnist. Both competitions were for articles written in the year 2002.
© 2003, Jonathan Tobin | ||||||||||
