The Jewish state has borne the brunt of Islamic terrorism for decades. Terror has installed a unique culture in Israel. Israelis fear the weekly trip to the supermarket. They dread the daily bus ride to work. Israeli youngsters cast fearful glances at Palestinians on the streets and parents caution their children to avoid malls, discos and public transportation. Arabs loathe Israel with a vengeance that runs counter to all reason. If we could discover where this hatred for Israel originates, perhaps we could be well on our way to discovering why they hate us.
Americans tend to believe the overly simplistic explanation: the land currently occupied by Israel originally belonged to the Palestinians. Their homes were taken from them and they therefore have a right to be angry. I hope that the fallacy in this reasoning is obvious; besides the fact that the Arab armies, not the Israelis, were the ones who expelled countless Palestinians from their homes in 1948, besides the fact that a Palestinian state has never existed in Israel and besides the fact that the Palestinians have no more claim to the land than the Israelis do, the alleged loss of property cannot possibly be the sole reason for the indiscriminate murder of innocents. The Arab regimes, therefore, must have a more significant motivation. The "Washington Diarist" hints at one possibility: "Vicious anti-Semitism is now the official doctrine of most Arab governments and their organs of propaganda."
Official Arab newspapers run such stories as the following (taken from Al Ahram, an Egyptian publication): "The bestial drive to knead Passover matzahs with the blood of non-Jews is [confirmed] in the records of the Palestinian police where there are many recorded cases of the bodies of Arab children who had disappeared being found, torn to pieces without a single drop of blood. The most reasonable explanation is that the blood was taken to be kneaded into the dough of extremist Jews to be used in matzahs to be devoured during Passover." Note that the Egyptian government funds and authorizes this newspaper, a government to which the United States contributes $2 billion a year. That's not all. Al Hayat Al-Jadeeda, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, published this poisonous article (at the very height of the Oslo peace process): "All signs unequivocally prove that the conflict between the Jews and the Muslims is an eternal on-going conflict, even if it stops for short intervals ... This conflict resembles the conflict between man and Satan. This is the fate of the Muslim nation, and beyond that the fate of all the nations of the world, to be tormented by this nation [the Jews]. The fate of the Palestinian people is to struggle against the Jews on behalf of the Arab peoples, the Islamic peoples and the peoples of the entire world." Once again, note that this article was published with the full approval of Yasser Arafat, a man with whom the U.S. attempts to engage in reasonable dialogue. Finally, note that every Arab nation (except for Jordan) in existence during World War II was an active ally of Hitler and an eager proponent of the "Final Solution."
It seems that the issue, to the Arabs, has a distinctly religious tinge. Militant Islamists cannot stand to see Jews (or Christians) in the Holy Land. "Blasphemy," they cry, and blow themselves up at a disco or a restaurant. Time magazine put it best: "What the secular West fails to understand is that the issue, at least to the fanatic, is not grievance but ascendancy."
But what does this have to do with the Arab hatred for the United States? Well, as Benjamin Netanyahu puts it: "The soldiers of militant Islam do not hate the West because of Israel, they hate Israel because of the West." Militant Islam sees Israel as a tiny United States, a stronghold of democracy and freedom in a sea of Arab theocracies. Israel will always be second on their list, the Little Satan, behind what the Arabs call the Great Satan: the United States. Here's how it works: the enormously oil rich Arab regimes starve their citizens while expending their resources on frivolous luxuries for their theocratic leaders. Those Arab citizens who cannot escape overseas are denied a future in the Middle East and turn to their leaders to protest. The New York Times completes the puzzle: the regimes crush the violent Muslim protesters, but to avoid being accused of being anti-Muslim, "the regimes give money and free reign to their most hard-line, but nonviolent, Muslim clerics, while also redirecting their public's anger onto America through their press. Result: America ends up being hated and Islam gets handed over to the most anti-modern forces. Have a nice day." In other words, militant Islam blames America for the consistent degeneration of the Arab regimes and jets get flown into skyscrapers.
What to do? Negotiations or concessions will only be seen as a sign of weakness. Militant Islam must understand that terrorism will not be rewarded. They must learn that an act of terror, by itself, destroys any moral legitimacy that their cause may have. We cannot look into the reasons behind each act of terror, for to do so would imply, if not to us then to the terrorists, that some such acts could be justified. Militant Islam worships violence and only understands the diplomacy of the mailed fist. Further, we must not discriminate between acts of terror committed against Americans and equal such acts perpetrated against foreigners (i.e., the Israelis). Terrorism must be condemned internationally and we must respond swiftly to every act of terror with targeted strikes. America must also take preemptive steps to avoid future attacks. Any regime that sponsors terrorism must be brought to its knees. Only then can we hope to avoid the horror and heartbreak that we saw on Sept. 11.