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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: epicure who wrote (115543)9/23/2003 2:00:42 PM
From: Nadine Carroll  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
Pape puts his conclusion in his premise:

Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel liberal democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland

He seems to regard it as self-evident that if a terrorist campaign has gaining land as its goal, then it has a "secular" goal.

My response is, Say What? different people want land for all sorts of different reasons. Some of the reasons are simply political, some are societal, some are historical, some are religious, some are all these causes mixed together. The Serbs wanted Kosovo for historical reasons. The Crusaders wanted Jerusalem for religious reasons.

The Arabs want Israel destroyed for religous and societal reasons: for land that was once Muslim and Arab to revert to being non-Muslim and non-Arab is obviously contrary to the will of Allah. Also, Israel makes the Arabs look very bad by comparison, and they feel shame. So the rise in Islamic fundamentalism includes a corresponding rise in the wish to get rid of Israel.

Moreover, Pape does not address the nature of Islamism, which is something quite different from a pure religious revival. It is much closer to a totalitarian political movement wrapped round in the green flag of Islam. Hamas doesn't just want to remove Israel; it wants to establish its own rule in an Islamic State of Palestine. Is this a religious or a political goal? Yes.
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