"There is something about giving up one's life to hit the big bad guy that arouses admiration in the Middle Eastern person."
I believe "the big bad guy" is surrounded by bigger badder guys. The middle eastern Arab view of Israel is antisemitic, a view that their undemocratic governments sustain through propaganda. Arafat had a good deal on the table with Clinton in 2000 and he chose the path of suicide bombing. He chose the path of violence, not Israel...
TREATMENT OF ISRAEL STRIKES AN ALIEN NOTE
by Alan M. Dershowitz
If a visitor from a faraway galaxy were to land at an American
or Canadian university and peruse some of the petitions that were
circulating around the campus, he would probably come away with
the conclusion that the Earth is a peaceful and fair planet with only
one villainous nation determined to destroy the peace and to violate
human rights. That nation would not be Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Russia
or Iran. It would be Israel. There are currently petitions circulating
on most North American university campuses that would seek to
have universities terminate all investments in companies that do
business in or with Israel. There are also petitions asking individual
faculty members to boycott scientists and scholars who happen to
be Israeli Jews, regardless of their personal views on the Arab-Israeli
conflict. There have been efforts, some successful, to prevent Israeli
speakers from appearing on college campuses, as recently occurred
at Concordia University. There are no comparable petitions seeking
any action against other countries that enslave minorities, imprison
dissidents, murder political opponents and torture suspected terrorists.
Nor are there any comparable efforts to silence speakers from other
countries.
The intergalactic visitor would wonder what this pariah nation,
Israel, must have done to deserve this unique form of economic
capital punishment. If he then went to the library and began to read
books and articles about this planet, he would discover that Israel
was a vibrant democracy, with freedom of speech, press and religion,
that was surrounded by a group of tyrannical and undemocratic
regimes, many of which are actively seeking its destruction. He
would learn that in Egypt, homosexuals are routinely imprisoned
and threatened with execution; that in Jordan, suspected terrorists
and other opponents of the government are tortured, and that if
individualized torture does not work, their relatives are called in
and threatened with torture as well; that in Saudi Arabia, women
who engage in sex outside of marriage are beheaded; that in Iraq,
political opponents are routinely murdered en masse and no dissent
is permitted; that in Iran, members of religious minorities, such as
Baha'is and Jews, are imprisoned and sometimes executed; that in
all of these surrounding nations, anti-Semitic material is frequently
broadcast on state-sponsored television and radio programs; in Saudi
Arabia, apartheid is practiced against non-Muslims, with signs
indicating that Muslims must go to certain areas and non-Muslims
to others; that China has occupied Tibet for half a century; that in
several African countries women are stoned to death for violating
sexual mores; that slavery still exists in some parts of the world; and
that genocide has been committed by a number of countries in recent
> > memory.
Our curious visitor would wonder why there are no petitions
circulating with regard to these human rights violators. Is Israel's
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza - an occupation it has offered
to end in exchange for peace - worse than that of Chinese occupation
of Tibet? Are the tactics used to combat terrorism by Israel worse
than those used by the Russians against Chechen terrorists? Are Arab
and Muslim states more democratic than Israel? Is there any
comparable institution in any Arab or Muslim state to the Israeli
Supreme Court, which frequently rules in favor of Palestinian claims
against the Israeli government and military? Does the absence of the
death penalty in Israel alone. among Middle East nations, make it
more barbaric that the countries which behead, hang and shoot
political dissidents? Is Israel's settlement policy, which 78% of
Israelis want to end in exchange for peace, worse than the Chinese
attempt at cultural genocide in Tibet? Is Israel's policy of full
equality for openly gay soldiers and members of the Knesset
somehow worse than the policy of Muslim states to persecute those
who have a different sexual orientation than the majority? Is Israel's
commitment to equality for women worse than the gender apartheid
practiced in Saudi Arabia?
Our visitor would be perplexed to hear the excuses made by
university professors and students for why they are prepared to
delegitimize Israel while remaining silent about the far worse abuses
committed by other countries. If he were to ask a student about the
abuses committed by other countries, he would be told (as I have
been): "You're changing the subject. We're talking about Israel now."
This reminds me of an incident from the 1920s involving
then-Harvard President A. Laurence Lowell. Lowell decided that the
number of Jews admitted to Harvard should be reduced because
"Jews cheat." When a distinguished alumnus, Judge Learned Hand,
pointed out that Protestants also cheat, Lowell responded, "You're
changing the subject; we're talking about Jews."
Is it not surprising, therefore, that as responsible and cautious a
writer as Andrew Sullivan, formerly editor of The New Republic and
now a writer for The New York Times Magazine, has concluded that
"fanatical anti-Semitism, as bad or even worse than Hitler's, is now
a cultural norm across much of the Middle East and beyond. It's the
acrid glue that united Saddam, Arafat, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran and
the Saudis. They all hate the Jews and want to see them destroyed."
Our intergalactic traveller, after learning all of theses facts,
> would
wonder what kind of planet he had landed on. Do we have everything
backwards?
Do we know the difference between right and wrong? Do
our universities teach the truth?
These are questions that need asking, lest we become the kind of
world the visitor would have experienced had he arrived in Europe
during the late 1930s and early 1940s.
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