American Politics, Terrorism and Islam

American Politics, Terrorism and Islam

Final Status in the Shape of a WallOrganization of Islamic Conference - Vision for 2050Requiem for a NationStory of a Photojournalist in ConflictWho Murdered Arafat?
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An Analysis of Anti-Islamic Polemics Christian Zionism and the Roadmap to a Palestinian StateStrangers: Muslims Living Outside Dar-Ul-Islam: Rights And ObligationsBrotherhood in IslamA Few Comments on Tafsir of the Qur'an
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American Politics, Terrorism and Islam
by Habib Siddiqui
(Sunday, June 22, 2008)

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"With the Western media's uncanny appetite for violence, yellow journalism and preference to show incidents where Muslims are probable culprits, the overwhelming perception in the West is that if you are looking for a terrorist just focus on Muslims (esp. Arabs), you don't have to profile anyone else. Naturally, the obsessed western corporate media won’t spend time discussing: why a very small minority within the Muslim community has now taken up arms against the West, the Goliath that it has become..."


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Part 1: What's Wrong With Jaw-Jaw?

In the last century very few world leaders could be compared with Winston Churchill of the Great Britain for his stand against appeasement. And yet he is famously quoted as saying, "To jaw-jaw is always better than war-war." So what is wrong in talking with Iran? After all, President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger did speak with their counterparts in China, Soviet Union and Vietnam at the height of tension with those countries.

But this wisdom has consistently been rebuffed by President Bush. Like a drooling hound-dog fixated on scent of its target while other crucial disasters may be happening all around him, Bush's eyes and nose are locked onto Iran. Not surprisingly, in a speech on the floor of Israel's Knesset this month (May '08), Bush criticized those who want to deal with "terrorists". Bush said, "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before," and then compared this diplomatic track with Sen. William Borah's 1939 comment, "Lord if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided. We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

None of the political analysts had any problem decoding Bush's speech. He meant Senator Obama who had earlier hinted that he would personally negotiate with Iran if its leaders abandoned any pursuit of nuclear weapons and stopped their support of violence, and also said he would meet Cuban and North Korean leaders. There is little doubt that the president's speech was made to invoke the horrors of the Second World War, and was made deliberately in Israel, to drive a wedge between Obama and American Jewish voters. The New York Times in its Saturday editorial (May 17, 2008) stated, "Bush's penchant for slash-and-burn politics is unseemly" when practiced at home; "it is shameful when put on display abroad."

Democrats on May 15 condemned President Bush's insinuation that they would be appeasing terrorist states by holding talks, with Senator Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, going so far as to call his remarks "bulls**t." "This is bulls**t. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement," said Senator Biden. Even Democratic Party presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton called Bush's original comments "offensive and outrageous, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy."

Senator Obama, the probable Democratic Party candidate, wasted no time to condemn Bush. In a statement released to CNN by his campaign, he said, "It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate, as expected, promptly came in support of Bush and said, "Barack Obama needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is a head of a government who is a state sponsor of terrorism that kills young Americans." Asked if Obama was an appeaser, McCain said Obama must explain why he wants to talk with leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and added that Obama's position was a serious error. "It shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country that says Israel is a stinking corpse, that is dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel. My question is: what does he want to talk about?"

On Friday, May 16, Senator Obama fought back stating, "It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what (Presidents) Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power -- including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy -- to pressure countries like Iran and Syria." He was ready to debate with anyone, anytime, anywhere on foreign policy.

While such hoopla about American foreign policy before this year's presidential election is quite natural and desirable, it nonetheless once again unmasked how hypocritical and short-sighted politicians are. In an op-ed published on May 16 in the Washington Post, James Rubin, a former State Department official from the Clinton administration, said McCain, responding to a question in a television interview two years ago about whether U.S. diplomats should be working with the Hamas government in Gaza, said: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy toward Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice." McCain added: "But it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that." [Rubin, who interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News, said McCain was "guilty of hypocrisy" and accused him of "smearing" Obama.]

So what has really changed in the last two years for Senator McCain other than the fact that he is now the Republican candidate for the White House, something that he was not before? Hamas still runs the Gaza Strip, and Dr. Ahmadinejad is still the elected president of Iran!

Well, hypocrisy and lying are nothing new to most American politicians when push comes to shove. They simply get worse in the election year. We have also noticed how the White House misled everyone with claims about Iraq's threat, presence of the WMDs, etc. – all only to be found false.

American people need a serious internal discussion about their foreign policy, especially about the Middle East (and Iran, in particular, in the light of her expressed desire to harness nuclear technology) that supplies oil, America's newly stoked urge for global hegemony (empire building) and her perennial quest for security, not just for herself but also for her 'stalwart' ally – the Zionist state of Israel, with her despicable records of sadistic brutality, racism and inhumanity against the dispossessed Palestinians. They must also debate whether President Bush's last eight years have been successful in their national quest for security, global leadership, peace and prosperity. Such a discussion needs to weigh in the pros against the cons. It must be done thoroughly, fairly and justly without the influence of any lobby group. If the last eight years were bad, what change must America bring about? As the only superpower in our time, the policies must not only be good for the American people but also for all humanity. Who, of all the candidates, may be the better presidential candidate to bring about that desired state?

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Part 2: Who’s a Terrorist?

Over the years, America has evolved into the most dominant power in our planet, now much touted as the only super (or more appropriately, hyper) power. Her powerful navy roams around all the seas unhindered and unchallenged. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, America has more than a dozen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers. She has military bases in all the continents of the world. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" (2003), which itemized foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon owned or rented 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and had another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. The number of foreign bases jumped to 737 in 2005. The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. As of May 2007, about 1,426,705 people are on active duty in the military with an additional 1,458,400 people in the seven reserve forces. One can justifiably assume that those numbers have now simply grown.

From numerous secret bases, and satellites stationed in the sky, the American government can monitor what the people of the world, including its own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another. American military budget equals the budget of the rest of the world. She has amassed so much nuclear warheads and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that she could obliterate any nation on earth. With all such brute powers to destroy humanity at his finger tips the president of the USA is undoubtedly the most powerful man in our planet.

American leaders are zealous to sustain this enviable status for all times to come. For years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, they spent billions of dollars on weapons program, including the missile defense system, imagining that the threat to national security might come from hostile powerful states like Russia or China. In recent decades, prior to 9/11, national security concern was heavily focused on the possibility that unfriendly states like Iran or North Korea might launch or threaten to launch a missile attack on the USA. Missile defense was thus an idea that gained popularity.

But 9/11 changed all such notions of false security. There is no doubt that 9/11 is a seminal event in American history. It has changed forever the history of power politics. The American public could never imagine that 19 individuals, armed only with box-cutters and a firm determination, could attack America. With all the weapons in their disposal, they had imagined invulnerability unto America. According to Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, never before had so much pain been inflected on so powerful many by so impotent few. Therein lies the dilemma for our world's only superpower: how to cope with an enemy that is physically weak but endowed with an unfathomed passion?

Before we delve into the subject of America's prudent response to dealing with terrorism effectively, a short review of terrorism may help.

Terrorism was widespread in Tsarist Russia from the mid-19th century to the beginning of the WWI, many of those crimes perpetrated by Ashkenazi Jews who overwhelmed various nihilist and communist organizations. It involved thousands of violent attacks, including high level assassinations and dynamiting of buildings. Almost 7000 officials and politicians were its victims in Russia, including the Tsar Alexander II (in 1881). The assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, is another example of terrorism that sparked WWI.

Almost all "terrorist" activities originate from a political conflict and have been seeded as well as sustained by it. That applies to the Bolsheviks in Imperial Russia, the IRA in Ireland, the ETA or the Basque separatists in Spain, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) in Peru, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the FARC in Colombia, the CPP/NPA in the Philippines, the 17N or N17 and Revolutionary Nuclei in Greece, the Red Army Faction in West Germany; the Ghadar Party, and the Azad Hind Fauz (of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose) in British India; the Partai Nasional Indonesia in Dutch-ruled Indonesia, the RSS and the Naxalites in India, the Mau Mau rebels of Kenya, the Mukti Bahini in erstwhile East Pakistan (March – December, 1971), the African National Congress (of Nelson Mandela) in apartheid South Africa, the Tamil Liberation Tigers in Sri Lanka, the communists in Nepal, the Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, the Chechen rebels in Russia, the PKK in Turkey, the MEK in Iran; the PLF (of Abu Abbas), the PFLP and Abu Nidal Organization in the Occupied Territories of Palestine; the Irgun Zvai Leumi, Stern Gang and Lehi in Palestine (during the British Mandate of Palestine), the Kach and Kahane Chai in Israel, and to all other groups.

As can be seen from the short list above, yesterday's "terrorist" can be today's "patriot", and even president and prime minister, something that happened to Zionists like Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir of Israel; Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Sukarno of Indonesia, Sheikh Mujib of Bangladesh, Nelson Mandela and Mbeki of South Africa, and many others. Some of those groups were (and are) engaged in national liberation struggle of their country or people, while some others committed violent crimes against individuals.

In 1941 Yitzhak Shamir was imprisoned by British authorities for his terrorist activities in Palestine. After escaping from the detention camp, he became one of the three leaders of the gang in 1943, reforming it as "Lehi". During his tenure, Lehi was also responsible for the 1944 assassination of Britain's minister of state for the Middle East, Lord Moyne; an assassination attempt against Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner of Palestine in the same year, and the 1948 assassination of the United Nations representative in the Middle East, Count Folke Bernadotte who was seen by Shamir and his collaborators as an anti-Zionist and "an obvious agent of the British enemy". Lehi also played a major role in the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre of some 254 unarmed Palestinians.

And yet, Shamir argued that Lehi never engaged in terrorism: "There are those who say that to kill Martin (a British sergeant) is terrorism, but to attack an army camp is guerrilla warfare and to bomb civilians is professional warfare. But I think it is the same from the moral point of view. Is it better to drop an atomic bomb on a city than to kill a handful of persons? I don’t think so. But nobody says that President Truman was a terrorist. All the men we went for individually -- Wilkin, Martin, MacMichael and others -- were personally interested in succeeding in the fight against us. So it was more efficient and more moral to go for selected targets. In any case, it was the only way we could operate, because we were so small. For us it was not a question of the professional honor of a soldier, it was the question of an idea, an aim that had to be achieved. We were aiming at a political goal. There are many examples of what we did to be found in the Bible --Gideon and Samson, for instance. This had an influence on our thinking. And we also learned from the history of other peoples who fought for their freedom — the Russian and Irish revolutionaries, Garibaldi and Tito."

Shamir's argument is quite revealing in that he, like most "terrorists" of our time, did not consider those heinous acts as anything but revolutionary. It is here that the definition of terrorism gets blurred. Truly, in spite of all the clamor and excitement around terrorism for the last several decades the international community has never managed to satisfactorily define the term. It thus remains an abstract concept. Someone's patriotism can be someone else's terrorism and vice-versa.

Professor Igor Primoratz of the University of Melbourne says that many scholars have been reluctant to assign the word "terrorism" to activities that could be construed as "legitimate state aims". Primoratz himself defines terrorism as "the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people...", and writes that his definition can be applied to both state and non-state activities. Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law and Practice at Princeton, has a similar opinion and says that terrorism "should apply to violence deliberately targeting civilians, whether committed by state actors or their non-state enemies." Historian Howard Zinn writes: "If 'terrorism' has a useful meaning (and I believe it does, because it marks off an act as intolerable, since it involves the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose), then it applies exactly to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

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Part 3: Allegations of State Terrorism against America

In the absence of a general agreement on its definition, discussions around terrorism can get rather complicated and unpleasant. While western countries like to portray their violence, even when these are committed against civilians, as non-terrorist acts, according to most experts they are nothing short of state terrorism. Princeton professor Falk argues that the U.S. and other first-world states, as well as mainstream mass media institutions, have obscured the true character and scope of terrorism by hiding their crimes, promulgating a one-sided view from the standpoint of first-world privilege. He opines that without an impartial view of terrorism we won't be able to mitigate the problem.

Until now, in modern times, acts of individual terror have been the weapon of the weak and the poor, while acts of state and economic terror have been the weapon of the strong. According to award-winning veteran journalist John Pilger, "The terrorism of groups and individuals, however horrific, is tiny by comparison with that of states. But the media have no language to describe state terrorism."

While all the communist countries (e.g., former Soviet Union, China and Cuba), illiberal democracies (e.g., India, Russia, Georgia and Egypt) and authoritarian/repressive regimes (e.g., Burma or Myanmar, Iraq, Syria, Yugoslavia/Serbia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan) are long known for practicing terrorism against their own citizens, especially the minorities and dissidents, even many liberal democracies (including Australia and the USA) are not immune from that charge. Palestinians in Israel are routinely terrorized by various government agencies, including the ultra-right Zionists. The fate of Kashmiri Muslims in Indian Occupied Kashmir does not fare any better.

In the post-WW II era, as much as the KGB (now split into groups like the FIS or SVR, FSB, etc.) has been involved in aiding a number of foreign organizations to topple regimes that they considered anti-Soviet (or pro-American) so has been the CIA to bring about desired changes against pro-Soviet (or anti-American) regimes.

The specific allegations of state terrorism against America include dropping of atom bombs in Japan (1945), arming anti-Castro groups in Cuba (1959 to present), aiding the Contras in Nicaragua (1979-90); toppling the popular nationalist government of Musaddeq in Iran (1953) and controlling the state apparatus through Shah's notorious Savak for the next quarter of a century, and covert attempts through terrorist organizations like the MEK and Jundullah to topple the Islamic regime since 1979; overthrow of the Guzman government in Guatemala in 1954 and controlling state apparatus for the next four decades; overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973, and aiding the repressive Pinochet government until 1990; aiding the repressive government in El Salvador (1980-1992) that killed 75,000 people; assassination campaign in 1985 against Shaykh Hossein Fadlallah of Lebanon, which killed, instead, 81 civilians. It is also known that America aided groups like the Iraqi National Accord of Dr. Iyad Alawi (between 1992 and '95) for bombing and sabotage campaigns against Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, and the Iraqi National Congress of Dr. Ahmed Chalabi to topple the regime. Add to this list, America's current activities against the leftist governments in Venezuela and Guatemala. Many Bangladeshis and journalist Lawrence Lifschultz believe that the CIA was involved in the assassination of Sheikh Mujib, the founding leader of the nation, in 1975.

Arno Mayer, Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton University, has stated that "since 1947 America has been the chief and pioneering perpetrator of "preemptive" state terror, exclusively in the Third World and therefore widely dissembled. Besides the unexceptional subversion and overthrow of governments in competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Washington has resorted to political assassinations, surrogate death squads and unseemly freedom fighters (e.g., bin Laden). It masterminded the killing of Lumumba and Allende; and it unsuccessfully tried to put to death Castro, Khadafi, Saddam Hussein (and bin Laden?). These "rogue" actions worsened local political and economic conditions and were of a piece with equally unscrupulous blockades, embargoes, military interventions, punitive air (missile) strikes and kidnappings, always in the name of democracy, liberty and justice. To be sure, for some of these actions America secured the sanction of the United Nations and the collaboration of NATO allies. At the same time, however, Washington refused to pay its dues to the United Nations, defied the nascent International Criminal Court and condoned Israel's violation of international agreements and UN resolutions as well as its practice of preemptive state terror."

America's indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in Afghanistan and Iraq, and destruction of the entire infrastructure qualify her as a country that practices state terrorism. Her occupying forces committed some of the worst war crimes, which include raping, killing and burning of civilian victims, let alone shooting cold-bloodedly at any one, not just in places like Haditha, Mahmudiyah, Hamdaniah, Abu Ghraib and Tel Afar but almost every place that they entered in Iraq under the name of cleaning the territory from al-Qaeda of Iraq.

In its April 2007 report, the Global Policy Forum observed, "The United States and its allies claim they do everything in their power to prevent civilian casualties. Yet, there are many accounts of Coalition forces opening fire and killing Iraqi civilians in circumstances where there was no imminent threat of death or injury to the Coalition troops or anyone else. This is in clear breach of international human rights standards relating to the use of force. In many cases of patrols, house searches, and relentless bombing campaigns, military personnel have used lethal force in absolutely unjustified circumstances. Studies of civilian mortality in Iraq suggest that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed in this way since the occupation began. Murders and atrocities are the extreme form of the daily deadly violence. In Iraq, where US Coalition forces see every man of military age as a potential fighter, and where fear and anger affect the behavior of troops, events like the Haditha massacre are all too likely to occur.… This environment of extreme violence and impunity paves the way for murder, rape and atrocities. These acts are prohibited by The Hague Conventions and the Geneva Conventions and they constitute serious war crimes."

Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT argues that "Washington is the center of global state terrorism and has been for years." Chomsky has characterized the tactics used by agents of the U.S. government and their proxies in their execution of American foreign policy in countries like Nicaragua as a form of terrorism and has also described the U.S as "a leading terrorist state." John Pilger writes, "More terrorists are given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth."

These are very harsh allegations of state terrorism against today's only superpower, and make Bush's finger pointing against others, especially Iran, highly hypocritical and problematic.

Who can also forget the CIA's role in Afghanistan prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979? As stated by the former director of the CIA and current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in his memoirs From the Shadows, the American intelligence services began to aid the rebel factions (the Mujahideen) six months before the Soviet deployment in Afghanistan. On July 3, 1978 President Carter had signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to conduct covert propaganda operations against the communist regime. This fact is further corroborated by Carter advisor Dr. Brzezinski. He stated, "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Dr. Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting the U.S. policy, which, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Dr. Brzezinski recalled: "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."

America was thus successful to bring about the Vietnam upon the Soviet Union, thanks to the so-called jihadists or Mujahideen, only to be later dumped as the terrorists. The CIA recruited fiery clerics like Abdullah Azzam and the Egyptian "blind Shaikh" Dr. Omar Abdur Rahman to enlist Muslim youths to fight its dirty war against the "Evil" Soviet Empire. All on a sudden, "Jihad" became a favorite buzz-word in the mouths of those western patrons who provided arms and ammunitions to Muslim youths. And join they did in vast numbers from all the continents to fight America's jihad against the ungodly Soviets. The CIA even recruited Osama bin Laden (OBL).

The rest is history! The casualties of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan resulted in the death of more than a million of Afghans, five million refugees to Pakistan and Iran, and two million internally displaced people. There were another 4.2 million disabled Afghans as a result of land mines, bombs and bullet injuries. The entire irrigation system was destroyed by the Soviets. As the Soviets bled Afghanistan to death and ruination so did they bleed, albeit in tens of thousands, and eventually collapsed under the massive weight of the war. There was no more the USSR. No time in history was a third party able to so successfully bring about the downfall of its most powerful adversary without a single casualty on its side.

But what the USA and its allies did after the Mujahideen were able to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan is simply criminal. They lost interest in Afghanistan and did little to help rebuild the war-ravaged country, which, not unexpectedly, led to a state of warlordism, eventually paving the way for the Taliban to take control in Kabul in 1996. And guess: who came forward with the much needed cash to help Afghanistan? It was the CIA's former operative - Osama, who called Afghanistan his home, after being driven out of Saudi Arabia (1992) and Sudan (1996).

Who can also forget the White House reception of the Afghan Mujahideen in 1985 when President Reagan dubbed them as “moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers”? Only 13 years later the same people would be dubbed as terrorists, having harbored a 'terrorist' leader. On August 20, 1998 President Bill Clinton ordered missile attacks against OBL. Another 3 years later, Bush Jr. would declare an all-out war to either kill or capture OBL, accusing him of masterminding 9/11.

So, what did really change within those 16 years (1985-2001)? Why someone like OBL, once trained and armed by the CIA, would end up being the most sought after "terrorist" figure in our planet, dead or alive, with a bounty of more than 25 million dollars?

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Part 4: Allegations of Russian State Terrorism

Russia's own record of terrorism isn't any better!

Soon after capturing power in 1917 the Bolshevik party started behaving as a mafia-like organization where, according to Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky, "almost no one died by a natural cause." This includes poisoning of Lenin, Felix Dzerzhinsky, and Maxim Gorky by Genrikh Yagoda's NKVD agents on the orders of Stalin; murders of Sergey Kirov, Mikhail Frunze, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, and Leon Trotsky; poisoning of Stalin by Lavrentiy Beria, and other similar episodes.

During the "Red Terror" (1918-1922) the mass repressions were conducted without judicial process by the state security organization, Cheka. Just in the first two months, ten to fifteen thousand people were executed. Dzerzhinsky himself boasted that: “[The Red Terror involves] the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles."

During the "Great Purge," orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937-1938, also described as a "Soviet holocaust", estimates of the number of deaths run from the official figure of 681,692 to nearly 2 million. Of these, according to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, at least 681,692 were shot dead - an average of 1,000 executions a day.

As much as America at one time terrorized her native Indian and Black population for decades, during the Stalin era millions of people, esp. Muslims from the Caucasus and Central Asia, were traumatized. They were uprooted from their ancestral homes and herded like cattle to live elsewhere. Internal reports show that some 43% of those displaced victims died of diseases and malnutrition.

The people of Chechnya along with their fellow co-religionists in the neighboring Ingushetia were dragged from their homes in 1944 on Stalin's whims to wastelands of Kazakhstan on a cooked up charge of collaborating with the Germans. Both these peoples were sentenced to penal servitude and subjected to systematic genocide, worse than those of the Siberian Gulag. For a time being they were declared an extinct people, who did not exist in Stalin's time. Thirteen years later, under Khrushchev, both these peoples were reinstated, told it was a mistake and invited to return to their homelands. Many did so on the foot. While Chechens still had a home to return to, the Ingush Muslims found their lands and houses occupied by Christian Ossetians. During Stalin's rule 300,000 Chechen and Ingush Muslims were massacred, almost half the entire population!

During the communist rule, while dissidents were routinely herded in the Siberian Gulags, assassination attempts on unfriendly foreign leaders remained a trademark of the KGB, quite in common with the CIA. According to the KGB-defectors at least ten foreign leaders were targeted for assassination by the Kremlin in the post-Stalin era. The list included (failed attempts on) President John F. Kennedy of the USA and Chairman Mao Zedong of China. The second President of Afghanistan Hafizullah Amin was killed by the KGB OSNAZ forces on December 27, 1979.

Presidents of the break-away Chechen Republic of Ichkeria – Dzhokhar Dudaev, Zelimkhan Yandarbeiv, Aslan Maskhadov and Abdul-Khalim Saidullaev - were killed by (Russian) FSB and affiliated forces. [Just before his death, Saidullaev claimed that the Russian government "treacherously" killed Maskhadov on March 8, 2005, after inviting him to "talks" and promising his security "at the highest level." To this day, President Maskhadov's dead body has not been returned to his family for burial. Like his Chechen predecessors, he was dubbed a "terrorist."]

As a matter of fact outside the Bosnian genocide, perpetrated against Muslims by Serbian Orthodox Christians, Russia's terrorism against the Chechens has simply no parallel in our time. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, while Yeltsin's Russia did not object to secession of her former Republics, she had a different qualifier for Chechnya where its inhabitants never accepted Russian domination since her annexation by the Czarist army back in 1859. Apart from obvious reasons of bigotry and double-standard, Russia did not want Chechnya to secede because of economic and internal political reasons. Chechnya's vast oil reserves and control of the oil pipelines between the Caspian and the Black seas that go through the region as an oil-hub were deemed important for Russia's economy. Granting secession right to Chechnya was deemed to trigger similar secession movements from other smaller republics like Tatarstan. Russia thus ignored the October 1991 referendum that elected Dzhokhar Dudayev on the strength of his promise to free Chechnya from Russia and declared war against Chechnya in December 1, 1994, describing independence-seeking Chechens as terrorists.

Thus began the First Chechen War (1994-96), which, according to the BBC, ranks among the worst military engagements of the 20th century. It witnessed the murder of nearly a hundred thousand civilians, injury to over 200,000 and displacement of half a million people (40% of Chechnya's pre-war population). President Yeltsin, following the footsteps of his murderous predecessors, demolished Grozny - the capital city of Chechnya. International monitors from the OSCE described the scenes as nothing short of an "unimaginable catastrophe," while former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called the war a "disgraceful, bloody adventure," and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl described the events as "sheer madness." So massive was the "terror bombing" attack in Grozny that half its residential areas were damaged beyond repair. Its infrastructure destroyed by bombing, shelling, and street fighting during the struggle for Chechen independence. In February 1996 the Russian forces in Grozny opened fire on the massive pro-independence peace march involving tens of thousands of people, killing a number of demonstrators. Rape of Chechen women became a weapon of war among Russian soldiers to terrorize the Chechen people. The First Chechen War came to an end shortly after Chechens were able to recapture Grozny and a ceasefire agreement was signed on August 31, 1996. Later a peace treaty was signed in the Kremlin on May 12, 1997 between Yeltsin of Russia and Maskhadov of Chechnya.

However, the Kremlin continued to plan invasion of Chechnya. To quote former FSB director and prime minister of Russia Sergei Stepashin, from an interview to Novaya Gazeta "the decision to invade Chechnya was made in March 1999... I was prepared for an active intervention. We were planning to be on the north side of the Terek River by August-September of 1999." But Russia required a pretext to enter the territory. Thus, the Chechen separatists were falsely blamed for apartment bombings in Moscow in September of 1999 that killed more than 300 civilians.

There are now enough credible proofs - thanks to investigative journalists like David Satter, Vladimir Pribylovsky and Anna Politkovskaya, historian Yuri Felshtinsky, and former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko - that the FSB staged a series of criminal activities, including the Moscow Apartment Bombings, to steer public opinion (in a way similar to American public reaction to 9/11) towards legitimizing the resumption of the Second Chechen War and facilitating Vladimir Putin (a former FSB Director) and FSB to come to power in 1999. [Not surprisingly, as soon as three FSB agents were caught while planting a large bomb in the basement of an apartment complex in the town of Ryazan in September 22, all those bombings stopped.]

Thus began the Second Chechen War in which Russia's terrorism knew no bound. This conflict saw the first use of aerial-delivered fuel air explosives (FAE) in populated areas, notably in the village of Tando. During the early phase of the Russian siege on Grozny in October 25, 1999, Russian forces launched five SS-21 ballistic missiles at the crowded central bazaar and a maternity ward, killing more than 140 people and injuring hundreds. These missile attacks were followed by Russian artillery fires, directed toward the buildings, which caused massive destruction of infrastructure and civilian casualties. To quote the Wikipedia, "The enormous scale of the devastation prompted numerous comparisons with Hiroshima and other cities leveled during World War II."

The conflict also saw the use of cluster bombs and vacuum bombs dropped on villages, fleeing refugees hit by tank shells from Russian forces. Nearly a third of Chechnya's residents fled the war-ravaged country. The award-winning journalist John Pilger writes, "On 4 February 2000, Russian aircraft attacked the Chechen village of Katyr-Yurt. They used "vacuum bombs", which release petrol vapour and suck people's lungs out, and are banned under the Geneva Convention. The Russians bombed a convoy of survivors under a white flag. They murdered 363 men, women and children. It was one of countless, little-known acts of terrorism in Chechnya perpetrated by the Russian state, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, has the "complete solidarity" of Blair."

As to the fate of the capital city Grozny, in early February 2000 the Russian military lured the besieged militants to a promised safe passage, to which they agreed. However, the Russian Army had mined the path of 'safe passage' just the day before the planned evacuation, and concentrated most firepower on that point. As a result, a number of separatist leaders including the city mayor and military commander were killed. The guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev and several other militants suffered injury. After entering the city, the Russians dynamited many buildings. In 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the "most destroyed" city on earth."

By June 2006, out of more than 60,000 apartment buildings and private homes destroyed, 900 have been rebuilt. Out of several dozens of industrial enterprises, three have been partially rebuilt. Most of the city's infrastructure was destroyed and many continue to live in ruined buildings without heating and running water, even as electricity was mostly restored since 2006, as the city has undergone substantial reconstruction.

Before the recent conflicts, Chechnya had a population of two million. During the wars, it was reduced to 800,000. Nearly a million Chechens were internally displaced. From the reports of human rights groups, Putin and Yeltsin killed more than 200,000 Chechens, including 35,000 children. Another 40,000 children were seriously injured. Shamil Basayev's wife, sister, uncle and child, including many of his family members (all unarmed civilians) were killed as a result of bombs dropped by Russian forces on his uncle's home in Dyshne-Vedeno.

There are now credible reports that the Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, blamed for hostage taking, may have been a member of the GRU – the Russian Military Intelligence, working towards weakening the authority of the Chechen government. His free passage to Abkhazia in Georgia to fight alongside the pro-Russian elements definitely raises much suspicion.

According to the former FSB agent Aleksander Litvinenko and investigator Mikhail Trepashkin, the Moscow Theatre hostage crisis was also directed by an FSB agent. They also accused the FSB of becoming an international criminal organization that actually promotes and perpetrates terrorism and organized crime in order to achieve its political and financial goals. Many investigative journalists have also accused the FSB of staging many smaller terrorist acts, e.g., market place bombing in Astrakhan, bus stops bombings in the city of Voronezh, and the blowing up the Moscow-Grozny train, bombing in Moscow metro – all these to justify Russia's second invasion of Chechnya. Many journalists and workers of foreign NGOs were reported to be kidnapped by the FSB-affiliated forces in Chechnya who pretended to be Chechen terrorists.

In a Washington Post article, dated 2006, Anna Politkovskaya mentioned that most of the "Islamic terrorism cases" were fabricated by the Russian government, and the confessions were obtained through the torture of innocent suspects. To obtain confessions, victims' legs were broken under torture; kneecaps were shattered; kidneys badly damaged by beating; genitalia mutilated; eyesight lost; eardrums torn; and all front teeth sawed off. "The plight of those sentenced for Islamic terrorism today is the same as that of the political prisoners of the Gulag Archipelago... Russia continues to be infected by Stalinism," she wrote. She continued, "I recall the words of one torture victim at his trial: 'What will become of me? How will I be able to live in this country if you sentence me to such a long prison term for a crime that I did not commit, and without any proof of my guilt?' He never received an answer to his question. Indeed, what will become of all the rest of us, who tolerate this? What has become of us already?"

As we all know, neither Litvinenko, the former FSB agent who wrote the book – Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within, exposing FSB's involvement with terrorist plots, nor Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya who wrote the books – A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya and Putin's Russia -- survived Kremlin's target killing. The former was radiation poisoned to death by Russian agents in November of 2006 in London, and the latter was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in central Moscow on October 7, 2006.

The Kremlin is also accused of complicity in the poisoning of Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko. It was also involved in attempts to denying him the seat of power in Ukraine.

Who can also forget the KGB's role in the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the liberalization programs of Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet forces in 1978-79? Dubcek's reforms, which were known as the Prague Spring or ‘socialism with a human face’, were for the most part reversed by new leaders installed by the KGB. The KGB was also involved in unsuccessful suppression of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland in the 1980s.

Nor should we forget Russia's support for Serbia's genocidal campaign against the Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims in the 1990s that killed nearly a quarter million unarmed people. Her support for the breakaway region of Abkhazia in Georgia unmasks her inherent double standard.

Putin's Russia is no better than Bush's America when it comes to state sponsored terrorism. In her book, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya writes, "We’ve all observed how the word “mercy” has been swept out of the government vocabulary. The government relies on cruelty in relation to its citizens. Destruction is encouraged. The logic of murder is a logic that is understood by the government and propagated by it. The way things are, you need to kill to become a Hero.

This is Putin’s modern ideology. When capitalists can’t get it done, comrades take over again. We know very well that they never forget to line their own pockets. That’s how things stand: at the end of the seventh year of the war, and in the third year of the second campaign, Chechnya has been turned into a genuine cash cow. Here, military careers are speedily forged, long lists of awards are compiled, and ranks and titles are handed out ahead of time. And all you have to do is to kill a Chechen and submit the corpse."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part 5: Allegations of Israeli Terrorism

Israel plays an important role in American politics. So strong is the power and influence of the pro-Israeli Lobby that no politician can afford to appear anti-Israel by questioning, let alone chiding, her criminal, sadistic, state terrorism that is routinely practiced against the Palestinian people. Such queries, while freely discussed inside Israel by concerned Jews, sadly remain a taboo in the West.

If we stick to the definition of terrorism that is provided by Professor Richard Falk of the Princeton University, the first recorded episode of terrorism can probably be traced back to Samson in the Torah. His is the classic case of what can be called suicide terrorism, now much practiced in vast territories from Asia to Latin America by those who believe that they have been wronged.

However for our purpose here, we shall limit this discussion to the last 90 years. Probably the first victim of Jewish terrorism in the post-WWI period was Jacob Israel de Haan, the Dutch Jewish novelist, poet, lawyer, and legal scholar, who wanted a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Arabs for the recognition of a Jewish state and the establishment of an official Palestinian state in Jordan within a federation. This alarmed the secular Zionist leadership and De Haan was assassinated on July 1, 1924 by the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary force.

It is worth mentioning here that for much of its existence (1920-1948), the Haganah, the precursor to today's Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), enjoyed cooperation and assistance from the British Mandate government in Palestine. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop weapon factories to create hand grenades and military equipment, transforming from an irregular militia force to a capable underground army. In 1936 the Haganah had 10,000 regulars along with 40,000 reservists. During the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, it participated actively to protect British interests and to suppress Arab rebellion.

In 1931, the most militant elements of the Haganah splintered off and formed the Irgun Tsva'i-Leumi (National Military Organization), better known as the "Irgun," under Avraham Tehomi. In 1940, the Irgun also split over the issue of whether or not to attack the British during WW II and their off-shoot became known as the "Lehi" (short from the Hebrew name - Lochamei Herut Yisrael – meaning, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), more commonly known as the "Stern Gang" after its leader, Avraham Stern. The Stern Gang members were ardent students of violence, great admirers of Mussolini who steeped themselves in the terrorist traditions of the pre-1917 Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the Macedonian IMRO, and the Italian "Black Shirts". They sought a Greater Israel as defined in Genesis 15:18, plus building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem.

These three terrorist gangs, as noted by Scott Bidstrup, "operated with little restraint, targeting Arab civilians, often setting up snipers to shoot at innocent Arab civilians waiting at bus stops, shopping in the markets and in doing business in other public places. The deaths of innocent Palestinian Arabs began to mount. The British responded by simply deporting those it caught that it believed to be participating in terrorism. They deported 439 suspected Jewish terrorists, mostly to modern-day Eritrea."

Before we go any further, some basic information on the past history of some leaders of the Jewish state is useful here. Yitzhak Rabin joined Haganah in 1941. Ariel Sharon joined the Gadna, a paramilitary youth battalion, in 1942 at the age of 14. Later he joined the Haganah.

Menachem Begin became a close disciple of Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky, the founder of the militant, racist, Revisionist Zionism movement, and its youth wing – Betar, in the mid-1930s. Upon arrival in Palestine in August of 1942, he received a proposal to take over a position in the Irgun (which was also inspired by Jabotinsky's views), as Betar's Commissioner. In 1944 Begin assumed the organization's leadership, determined to expel the British government from Palestine. Begin issued a call to arms and from 1944 to 1948 the Irgun launched an all-out armed rebellion, perpetrating hundreds of attacks against British installations and posts. Begin financed these operations by extorting money from Zionist businessmen, and running bogus robbery scams in the local diamond industry, which enabled the victims to get back their losses from insurance companies. The British government considered Begin a terrorist and its Security Service MI5 placed a 'dead-or-alive' bounty of £10,000 on his head after the Irgun threatened to kill Sir John Shaw, Britain's Chief Secretary in Palestine. An MI5 agent (codenamed Snuffbox) also warned that Irgun had sleeper cells in London trying to kill members of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee's Cabinet.

Yitzhak Shamir, like Begin, joined Betar in his youth. After immigrating to Palestine in 1935, he joined the Irgun. Later he joined the Lehi, which proposed to intervene in the WW II on the side of Nazi Germany. Lehi offered assistance in "evacuating" the Jews of Europe, in return for Germany's help in expelling Britain from Palestine. [See also Faris Glubb's book - Zionist Relations with Nazism.]

As noted by Arie Perliger and Leonard Weinberg, during the Arab Revolt (1936-1939) the Irgun carried out sixty attacks against the Palestinian Arabs resulting in the death of at least 250 Arabs, reflecting its world view that "political violence and terrorism" were "legitimate tools in the Jewish national struggle for the Land of Israel".

The Irgun and Lehi targeted British policemen and soldiers, United Nations-personnel, Jews suspected of collaborating with the British, and Arab civilians. The Irgun was described as a terrorist organization in media such as The New York Times newspaper, and by the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry. The Lehi was described as a terrorist group by the British government.

On 25 November 1940, the Haganah, opposed to the deportation of some 1,800 illegal Jewish immigrants who were being deported by the British authorities from Palestine to Mauritius and Trinidad, sunk the ship Patria by planting a bomb that killed over 200 Jews and some Britons and Arabs, and injured 172 people.

Other notable terrorist acts by the founding fathers of the State of Israel include: the assassination of Lord Moyne (November 6, 1944) by two Stern Gang terrorists, masterminded by Yitzhak Shamir; the bombing of the King David Hotel (July 2, 1946), masterminded by Menachem Begin of the Irgun, resulting in 91 dead (including 41 Arabs); the bombing of the British Embassy in Rome by the Irgun on October 31, 1946; the bombing of the central police station in Haifa, Palestine, killing four and injuring 140, by the Stern Gang members who drove a truckload of explosives on January 12, 1947. Three months later (April 1947) the Stern Gang repeated the tactic in Tel Aviv, blowing up the Sarona police barracks with a stolen postal truck filled with dynamite, resulting in five casualties. On July 25, 1947, the Irgun murdered two British sergeants, who had been taken as prisoners, in response to the British execution of two Irgun members in Akko prison.

Unhappy about the UN Partition Plan because of its failure to deliver Eretz Israel to the settler Jews, the Stern Gang decided to hit hard Palestinian positions. On January 4, 1948, dressed as Arabs, two Stern Gang members drove a truck ostensibly loaded with oranges into the center of Jaffa and parked it next to the New Seray Building, which housed the Palestinian municipal government as well as a soup-kitchen for poor children. Twenty six Palestinians were killed and hundreds were injured; most were civilians, including many children eating at the charity kitchen. The bomb missed the local Palestinian leadership who had moved to another building, but the atrocity was highly successful in terrifying residents and setting the stage for their eventual flight.

The Stern Gang members planted mines on Cairo-Haifa rail track several times that killed 28 soldiers and wounding 35, north of Rehovot on February 29, 1948, and killed 40 and injured 60 civilians, all Arabs, near Binyamina on March 1, 1948.

During April 9-11, 1948, Irgun and Stern Gang massacred some 260 Arab civilians in Deir Yassin, as part of Operation Nachshon. The commander of the Haganah unit that controlled Deir Yassin after the massacre, Zvi Ankori, made this statement in the Israeli newspaper Davar: "I went into six to seven houses. I saw cut off genitalia and women's crushed stomachs. According to the shooting signs on the bodies, it was direct murder." [Davar, April 9, 1982] As has been noted by many historians, the massacre in Deir Yassin set the final stage for the flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.

On July 13, 1948, Jewish terrorist gangs, backed up by Israeli troops, entered the all-Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramleh, in the Palestinian Partition, just east of Jaffa. The Arab death toll in Lydda alone was 250. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion himself issued the order for the expulsion of Arabs that was countersigned by Lt. Col. Yitzhak Rabin, then the operations chief in charge of the attack. As Scott Bidstrup has noted "the Israeli troops forcibly evicted approximately 70,000 Palestinians from their homes, allowing them no time at all for preparation, and simply drove them out into the hot July sun, most fleeing across open fields in the 100-degree temperatures. Hundreds died of thirst and exposure."

Nearly 900 Arabs were massacred by Israelis during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, after the state of Israel was established on May 15, 1948. After the War of Independence, Israel's terrorism did not stop. It had only begun to continue to this very day. Here below is a short list:

On September 17, 1948, Yitzhak Shamir’s Stern Gang assassinated Swedish peace mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte.

On October 29, 1948, between 80 and 100 Palestinian men, women and children were killed in Dawayma. The children were killed by simply clubbing them to death with heavy sticks.

On October 14-15, 1953, Ariel Sharon commanded attack on the Palestinian village Qibya, destroying 42 homes and killing 70 civilians, most of them women and children."

In 1954, the Israeli government launched a secret operation of terror, called "Operation Suzannah" (also the "Lavon Affair" - named after the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon) led by Israeli Army intelligence “Unit 131”, against the United States. It plotted to murder Americans and blow up American installations in Egypt. Their plan was to leave false evidence that the Egyptians had done those terrorist acts, so as to make America go to war against Egypt on the side of Israel. Israeli agents succeeded in blowing up some post offices (July 2, 1954) in Alexandria and American libraries (July 14, 1954) in Cairo. On the way to blow up an American movie house, the MGM Theater, an Israeli's agent's bomb went off prematurely, thus exposing the plot.

On October 29, 1956 Israeli border guards cold-bloodedly murders 47 Arabs in Kafr Qasim. In 1966, the village of Sammu was attacked killing 18 and wounding 100 Arabs.

On November 13, 1966, 18 Palestinians were killed and 54 wounded; 125 houses and the village clinic were also destroyed in Al Sammou', along with 15 houses in a neighboring village.

In 1967, during the Six Day War, Israel again committed a serious terrorist act by attacking a U.S. Navy ship - the USS Liberty on June 8, killing 34 American servicemen and injuring 172. The Israelis first attacked the Liberty's radio towers in an attempt to stop the Sixth Fleet from learning that the Israelis were the attackers. After unmarked Israeli fighters horrendously bombed and strafed the Liberty, Israel sent in torpedo boats to finish the job. They even machine gunned the deployed life rafts in an effort to ensure that there won't be any survivor (witness) who could expose them. This terrorist act was done to put the blame on the Arabs so that the USA could bomb Arab cities. The United States Secretary of State at the time, Dean Rusk, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas Moorer, both said that the attack was deliberate and no accident.

After the capture of East Jerusalem in 1967 War, several dozen homes were demolished in front of the Western Wall of the Temple and 5500 Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their homes without any compensation. Several villages in the West Bank were also destroyed and some 430,000 Palestinians evicted from their homes. In the Golan Heights alone, 244 villages out of 249 were destroyed and 147,000 people evicted.

In 1969 Israeli bombing of school Bahdr al Baker killed 75 children and wounded 100. The Israeli bombing of Syrian and Lebanese towns and villages on Sept 8, 1972 resulted in death of few hundred civilians.

Lebanon has been a veritable theater of Israeli assassination. The Israeli secret service Mossad employed car bombs in Beirut to assassinate Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani in July 1972. The same year, Yehud Barak led an Israeli commando death squad into Beirut, Lebanon where he personally murdered Palestinian writer Kamal Edwan. In the middle of the night, using silenced submachine guns, he and his team slaughtered Edwan while he had slept in his bed. Between 1975 and 1980 the Mossad carried out numerous assassination attempts on Palestinian intellectuals and other dignitaries.

As Mike Davis has shown car bombs began to regularly terrorize Muslim West Beirut in the fall of 1981, apparently as part of an Israeli strategy to evict the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon. The Mossad was sponsoring the carnage. According to Middle Eastern scholar Professor Rashid Khalidi, "A sequence of public confessions by captured drivers made clear these [car bombings] were being utilized by the Israelis and their Phalangist allies to increase the pressure on the PLO to leave."

The Israeli air raids inside Lebanon killed 20 civilians in Saida's residential area, 150 in Fakhani and another 150 in the Beirut Arab University area in 1981.

In the summer of 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. So massive were the bombing raids on Beirut in August of 1982, on the orders of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, that some 20,000 civilians were killed.

On the night of September 16, 1982, some three months after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Sharon sent the Maronite Christian Phalangist murder squads into two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Chatila. With Israeli tanks and troops closely surrounding the camps to prevent anyone from escaping, the murder squads machine-gunned, bayoneted, and bludgeoned Palestinian civilians all that night, the next day and the following night while the Israelis surrounding the camps listened gleefully to the machine gun fires and screams coming from inside. Sharon then sent in bulldozers to hide as much of the atrocity as he could. Some 1500 to 2500 Palestinian men, women and children were butchered. Even after the efforts of Sharon's bulldozers, many Palestinians remained unburied, and the Red Cross workers were able to discover entire families, including hundreds of elderly and little children, with their throats cut or disemboweled. Uncounted numbers of women and girls were also raped before they were slaughtered. [An Israeli investigation in 1983 found Sharon indirectly but "personally" responsible for the deaths, and he was forced to resign.]

In October of 1982, Israeli terrorist squads bombed houses, cars, and offices of three elected mayors of the West Bank cities - Nablus, Ramallah, and Al Beireh. In 1986 Naj Al Ali, a Palestinian cartoonist, was assassinated by the Israeli agents. In April of 1988 Israeli commandos invaded the home of Khalil Al Wazir, a Palestinian leader, and shot him in his bed. In February-March of 1989 Israeli jets bombed the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon killing 15 children and many adults. On April 14, 1989 Israeli police and armed Jewish settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Nahalin killing 8 and injuring 50.

On May 20, 1990, an IDF soldier in Oyon Qara lined up and machine-gunned to death 7 Palestinian men who were waiting to cross into Israel to go to their jobs. At the demonstrations that followed, the IDF troops opened with live fire arms killing 13.

On October 8, 1990, the IDF soldiers opened with live fire arms on worshipers in the Al-Aqsa Masjid, the third-holiest Islamic shrine in the world, killing 22.

In February of 1994 a Kach Party member - Baruch Goldstein - used an assault rifle to murder some 30 Palestinians worshipping in the Hebron mosque. Nearly 200 were injured. This terrorist act was praised by many rabbis. During the demonstrations that followed, the IDF forces opened with live fire arms on the demonstrators, killing 23 and wounding hundreds (the exact casualty figures were never released). Following the incident, Israel imposed a 5-week long curfew during which 76 Palestinians, mostly stone-throwing children, were killed. [The Israeli government later gave permission for a memorial to be constructed in honor of Goldstein.]

On February 27, 1994 the Israeli Mossad bombed the "Our Lady of Deliverance" Maronite Catholic Church at Jounieh, Lebanon killing 11 worshippers.

On March 28, 1994, the Israeli secret police opened fire on suspected Palestinian activists, killing 6 and injuring 49 in Jabalia. Those injured in their cars were removed from their cars and shot in the head to finish them off.

On July 17, 1994, Israeli settlers opened fire on Palestinians waiting to cross into Israel to go to work at the Eretz Checkpoint. Nearby Palestinians saw what was happening and a gun-battle ensued that lasted for six hours. On the Palestinian side, 11 were killed, 200 injured; on the Israeli side a soldier was killed and 21 were injured, along with an Israeli settler.

On April 11, 1996 Israel launched her Operation Grapes of Wrath by attacking southern Lebanon, killing nearly 170 civilians. So massive were the bombing raids that nearly half a million residents fled the area. The IDF bombed the UN shelter for refugees at Qana, Lebanon, killing some 106 civilians. According to Human Rights Watch, 2018 houses and buildings in South Lebanon were either completely destroyed or severely bombarded. Lebanon's total economic damage was estimated at half a billion dollars.

In 1999, Israeli warplanes bombed a group of children celebrating a Muslim festival in the Bekaa Valley killing 8. The year 2000 witnessed the video clips of the cold-blooded murder of 10-year old Mohamed el-Dura.

Following G.W. Bush's controversial win in the USA in 2000 and Ariel Sharon's election win in February of 2001, Israel unveiled her worst of crimes, with full sanction of the White House, against the Palestinian people. Targeted killing of Palestinian activists and leaders became too common, which in turn brought the suicide attacks as reprisals by Palestinian resistance forces.

On October 12, 2001, two Mossad agents were arrested while attempting to bomb the deliberation chamber of the Mexican National Congress in Mexico City.

On December 10, 2001, the Palestinian activist Muhammad Sidir, 24, was hit by a missile that was dropped in a crowded intersection. Two Palestinian children died in the attacks and two other children were injured. Israeli helicopter gunships hovered over the carnage for five minutes, preventing immediate medical attention from being administered to the wounded and dying.”

On December 17, 2001, Israeli troops murdered Palestinian activist Yaqoub Aidkadik. On January 14, 2002, they assassinated Palestinian resistance leader Raed al-Karmi. On January 24, 2002 Elie Hobeika, a Lebanese national, who was preparing to testify at a war crimes trial in Belgium against his former ally Ariel Sharon regarding Sharon’s masterminding of the Sabra and Chatila massacres, was assassinated by the Mossad agents.

Taking advantage of the post-9/11 atmosphere, between September and December of 2001, according to the Guardian newspaper, some 200 Palestinian children were killed and 400 injured by the Israeli forces. Sixty Palestinian homes in Gaza were destroyed as part of a collective punishment for the death of 4 Israeli soldiers.

On March 6-16, 2002, some 200 Palestinian civilians were slaughtered in Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces. On March 30, 2002, five Palestinian bank guards were summarily executed in Ramallah by the Israeli soldiers.

During the Battle of Jenin, West Bank (April 3-11, 2002), the Israeli forces massacred at least 52 Palestinian civilians. So brutal was the Israeli action that the HRW castigated Israel to have "committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, some amounting prima facie to war crimes." The Amnesty International, in its November 4, 2002 report on Jenin and Nablus similarly alleged that Israel had committed war crimes. Specifically, the reports stated that unlawful killings occurred; there was a failure to ensure medical or humanitarian relief; demolition of houses and property occurred; water and electricity supplies to civilians were cut; torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in arbitrary detention occurred; and Palestinians civilians were used for military operations or as "human shields." In addition, the Amnesty report charged that some civilians were not warned before their houses were demolished and hence they were buried in the rubble.

On May 20, 2002, Mossad car bombed Mohammed Jibril, a Palestinian leader.

On July 23, 2002, an American-supplied F16 jet dropped a 1,000 lb. laser-guided bomb on an occupied Gaza City apartment block, killing 15 people (including 9 children and Sheikh Salah Shahada, the military leader of Hamas). Over 150 were wounded, mostly old men and women.

On February 5, 2003, Kamla Said, a partially deaf woman of 65 was killed when the Israeli army demolished her house by dynamiting it during a raid on the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip while she was still inside.

On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, 23, a peace activist from America, was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, as she had protested against house demolitions. On April 11, 2003, Tom Hurndall, 21, a peace activist from London, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier as he had tried to help a Palestinian woman and her children move away from a gunfight in Rafah.

On August 4, 2005, an ex-Israeli Army personnel and Kach Party member Eden Natan-Zada attacked a bus using an assault rifle, killing 4, wounding 12 Palestinians.

During the week of July 15, 2006, the IDF, shortly before its invasion of Lebanon, in an official response to the kidnapping of one of its soldiers by the Hamas militants near the Gaza Strip, undertook a severe raid, in which at least 60 civilians were killed and hundreds injured. Israeli planes bombed an electrical power distribution facility, knocking out power to half of the Gaza Strip, and knocking out water pumping stations, leaving much of the Strip without potable water. Bridges linking the northern and southern halves of the Gaza strip were bombed, and border crossings were closed, putting at risk the civilian population of the Strip, which is totally dependent on supplies of food and fuel brought in through the border crossings with Israel.

During the July-August 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Israeli Air Force bombed Lebanon for 34 days, killing some 1,300 civilians. So sadistic was the bombing campaign, Lebanon was dubbed to have been "bombed into the stone age.” Lebanon’s infrastructure was destroyed.

On November 8, 2006 the IDF shelled a row of houses in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, killing 19 Palestinians and wounding more than 40. Italy's foreign minister Massimo D'Alema called the shelling of the civilians deliberate.

The 2007 Amnesty International Report (for the year ending in December of 2006) stated, “Increased violence between Israelis and Palestinians resulted in a threefold increase in killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces. The number of Israelis killed by Palestinian armed groups diminished by half. More than 650 Palestinians, including some 120 children, and 27 Israelis were killed. Israeli forces carried out air and artillery bombardments in the Gaza Strip, and Israel continued to expand illegal settlements and to build a 700-km fence/wall on Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories. Military blockades and increased restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of Palestinians and the confiscation by Israel of Palestinian customs duties caused a significant deterioration in living conditions for Palestinian inhabitants in the Occupied Territories, with poverty, food aid dependency, health problems and unemployment reaching crisis levels. Israeli soldiers and settlers committed serious human rights abuses, including unlawful killings, against Palestinians, mostly with impunity. Thousands of Palestinians were arrested by Israeli forces throughout the Occupied Territories on suspicion of security offences and hundreds were held in administrative detention. Israeli conscientious objectors continued to be imprisoned for refusing to serve in the army. In a 34-day war against Hizbullah in Lebanon in July-August, Israeli forces committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes. Israeli bombardments killed nearly 1,200 people, and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes and other civilian infrastructure. Israeli forces also littered south Lebanon with around a million unexploded cluster bombs which continued to kill and maim civilians after the conflict.”

On June 1, 2007 Israeli troops shot and killed two 13-year-old Palestinians [Ahmed Abu Zbeida and Zaher al-Majdalawi] near the Gaza-Israel border fence, saying that they were crawling toward the barrier in a “suspicious manner.” The boys had told their families they were going to the beach. (The Guardian, June 1, 2007)

In its year-end review of Israeli violence against Palestinian people, the Israeli Human Rights Organization B’tselem stated that in 2007 (up to 29 December), Israeli security forces killed 373 Palestinians (290 in Gaza, 83 in the West Bank), 53 among them minors. By comparison, in 2006, 657 Palestinians were killed, including 140 minors: 523 in Gaza, 134 in the West Bank. In 2007, there was an increase of 13 percent in the number of Palestinians held in administrative detention without trial, which averaged 830 people. Sixty-six staffed checkpoints and 459 physical roadblocks on average controlled movement inside the West Bank, thus hindering Palestinians' freedom of movement. Israel continued the freeze policy on family unification, denying tens of thousands of Palestinians the right to a family life. The number of houses demolished in East Jerusalem rose by 38 percent. Palestinians continue to face severe discrimination in the allocation of water in the West Bank, causing serious hardship in the summer.

The 2008 Amnesty International Report (in its year-end review for 2007) stated, "The human rights situation in the Israeli Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) remained dire. Israeli forces killed more than 370 Palestinians, destroyed more than 100 Palestinian homes and imposed ever more stringent restrictions on the movement of Palestinians. In June, the Israeli government imposed an unprecedented blockade on the Gaza Strip, virtually imprisoning its entire 1.5 million population, subjected them to collective punishment and causing the gravest humanitarian crisis to date. Some 40 Palestinians died after being refused passage out of Gaza for urgent medical treatment not available in local hospitals… Some 9,000 Palestinian adults and children remained in Israeli jails, some of whom had been held without charge or trial for years." During the same period 13 Israelis were killed by Palestinian armed groups.

As if this litany of state terrorism is not enough, Palestinians suspected of actively opposing Israel's occupation of the West Bank or Gaza, have had their homes and families attacked by Israeli tanks, mortars, missiles and bombs. And after their suspect is killed or imprisoned, the Israeli army bulldozes or dynamites their family's home. Over the years of occupation, thousands of homes have been destroyed in this fashion. Israel has also killed hundreds of Palestinian leaders by assassination. Such attacks often kill innocent bystanders.

Police brutality against Arab Israelis is common and well documented. Illegal detention, beatings, personal property confiscations and torture of Arab citizens of Israel are a fact of life. Their homes are routinely invaded and ransacked in the middle of the night, under the pretext of searching for suspects. From 1967 to 1988 more than 600,000 Palestinians have been held in Israeli jail for periods ranging from one week to life. During the first Intifada (1987-1994), Israel arrested some 175,000 Palestinians. According to the B’tselem, some 85% of Palestinian detainees have been tortured during interrogation.

The Israeli torture includes everything from choking victims with urine and feces soaked bags tied over their heads to using electric cattle prods for anal rape and mutilation. The brutal torture of prisoners and detainees is recognized as a particularly vicious form of terrorism. Thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese have died while in Israeli custody.

The use of cluster bombs in civilian territories is known to kill unarmed civilians and as such considered a crime, according to most international laws. However, Israel used cluster bombs in its bombing campaigns in Lebanon. Not surprisingly, therefore, that while the rest of the world recently vowed never to under any circumstance "use cluster munitions" nor "develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions," Israel, like the USA, China and Russia have not ratified the treaty banning its use.

Notwithstanding the fact that the above list of terrorism is incomplete, what is clear is that many of the leaders of the State of Israel – Begin, Rabin, Shamir, Barak and Sharon – were terrorists and that, irrespective of who runs the government there, the State of Israel continues to practice terrorism against her dispossessed Palestinians and neighbors. Audaciously, she has also practiced terrorism against the USA, the country which has been her greatest benefactor.

Recently, Israel's latest 11-month blockade of Gaza has been dubbed as "abominable" by Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Laureate for Peace. He denounced the international community by stating that "our silence and complicity, especially on the situation in Gaza, shames us all. It is almost like the behavior of the military junta in Burma."

Sadly, many lawmakers in the West who cry out foul about human rights violations in places like Burma and China (especially when it comes to Tibet), are the most vocal supporters of state terrorism of Israel. Why this double standard? Will these western leaders ever have the moral courage to condemn Israel for her monumental records of state terrorism?

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Part 6: Allegations of Muslim Terrorism

These days Islam is equated with terrorism. There is little doubt that this mendacious campaign against Islam has gotten a tremendous boost after 9/11. Who can also forget the images of the "suicide bombers" in the Occupied Palestine? Then there were the bombings in Bali and Madrid, and hostage crises in Moscow and Beslan, the London Underground bombings and the car bombing in front of the Danish Embassy in Islamabad - enough to sideline root cause analysis in favor of dealing with symptoms.

With the Western media's uncanny appetite for violence, yellow journalism and preference to show incidents where Muslims are probable culprits, the overwhelming perception in the West is that if you are looking for a terrorist just focus on Muslims (esp. Arabs), you don't have to profile anyone else. Naturally, the obsessed western corporate media won’t spend time discussing: why a very small minority within the Muslim community has now taken up arms against the West, the Goliath that it has become; why there were the so-called Black Widows terrorizing Russia; why in Iraq today there is the presence of al-Qaeda, something that was non-existent during Saddam Hussein's time; why there is resurgent insecurity and turmoil in the Horn of Africa after a period of relative peace, rule of law and order; why the once stone-throwing Palestinian children have now turned into suicide bombers? They won't relate the fact that the Palestinians are fighting as victims of dispossession against the combined might of a much superior, sadistic and brutal Israel and her western patrons – most notably the USA; it is they that face ethnic cleansing, daily persecution and not the Israeli Jews.

So pervasive is this negative perception about Islam these days that no political leader in the West, especially in the USA, can elude giving 'expert' opinions as to how he/she would deal with this absurd notion of Islamic terrorism, the 21st century's 'greatest' challenge. In this context, who can forget what John Ashcroft, former U.S. Attorney General, said about Islam? Nor should we also forget what the Bavarian Pope Benedict said exposing Christianity's deep rooted and ubiquitous hatred of Islam.

Atheists have killed in the name of atheistic ideologies. And Christians have killed in the name of God or religion, as have Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Sikhs, Baha'is and others. And yet none of these religions (including Judaism) with its own colossal record of violence is accused of promoting terrorism. In places like Israel the terrorist activities of Jewish extremist groups - e.g., the Gush Emunim of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook and later Rabbi Moshe Levinger, Tora Ve'eretz Yisrael of Rabbi Moshe Levinger, Jewish Defense League and Kach of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Jewish National Front party of Baruch Marzel, Jewish Task Force of Victor Vancier, Moledet of Rabbi Benny Elon, Terror Neged Terror or TNT, National Religious Party - and fanatics like Baruch Kappel Goldstein and Ami Popper -- are no less criminal and violent than those unleashed by some Muslim terrorists today. The Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda has killed 100,000 people. Yet, no one would dare condemn Christianity for the LRA's terrorism. None would even consider anti-choice Christian terrorists James Kopp and Eric Robert Rudolph as representatives of Christianity in spite of their horrendous crimes in the USA that were motivated by Christianity.

So, the attempt to blame Islam for the activities of Al-Qaeda only unmasks the deplorable hypocrisy of those critics, and should be construed as an utterly hostile and disingenuous one.

More importantly, no one has had the audacity to implicate the founders of these religions for crimes of their followers. However, when it comes to Islam, there is a new rule in play! Not only is Islam equated with terrorism even its noble Prophet is also implicated (see the Danish cartoons). I am not sure if these critics are aware of the fact that if they are looking for justification of violence they don't have to look outside their own scriptures. Those holy books have plenty of verses which can be exploited (and have sometimes been used) by chauvinists and zealots to justify violence against unbelievers.

It is said that Osama bin Laden (OBL) has openly called for killing Crusading Christians and Jews. But so have many Christians and Jews against Muslims over the last 14 centuries. For our discussion here let me cite a religious decree supporting the killing of Palestinian civilians in Rafah in southern Gaza that was issued on May 19, 2004 by Dov Lior, a high-ranking rabbi in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arbaa near Hebron, stating that "it is very clear in light of the Torah that Jewish lives are more important than non-Jewish lives." Rabbi Lior argued that non-Jewish lives have no sanctity, especially during wartime. He is not alone amongst the Rabbis to endorse killing of non-Jewish civilians. As Michael Hoffman II has pointed out, a group of 14 prominent rabbis, led by Haim Druckman, demanded the Israeli army not to flinch from killing Palestinian civilians in its ongoing military campaign against armed groups, resisting the occupation. In a letter to the Israeli defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, published on Sept. 7, 2004, the rabbis said killing enemy civilians is "normal" during time of war and that the Israeli occupation army should never hesitate to kill non-Jewish civilians in order to save Jewish lives. The rabbis declared, "There is no war in the world in which it is possible to delineate entirely between the population and the enemy army, neither in the US war in Iraq, the Russian war in Chechnya, nor in Israel's war with its enemies." The rabbis quoted a Talmudic edict, from the ancient "sage," Rabbi Akiva, as stating: 'Our lives come first.'" Another Rabbi Yaacov Perrin had permitted wanton massacre of Palestinians by saying, "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."

In spite of such utterances from religious authorities, very few would dare equate Judaism with terrorism. Why a different yardstick for Islam, especially when OBL is not a religious authority?

The accusation of Muslim terrorism by critics is like turning the tables with a reprisal when one recalls that not a Muslim was left alive in Spain or Sicily or Apulia, and that not a Muslim was left alive and not a mosque left standing in Greece after the great rebellion in l821 (even to this day there is not a single mosque in Athens). In the Greek War of Independence in 1811, three hundred thousand Muslims - men and women and children - the entire Muslim population of the Morea without exception, as well as many thousands in the northern parts of Greece - were atrociously exterminated. Just in last two decades alone, we have witnessed slaughter of nearly half a million unarmed Muslims in genocidal campaigns in former Yugoslavia and the break-away Republic of Chechnya in southern Russia. Add to this list the slaughter of nearly a million Iraqi and Afghan civilians since 2001, another half a million Iraqi children (below the age of 5) during the Clinton era due to the imposition of Embargo, another two to four hundred thousand Iraqis during Bush Sr.'s campaign – "the Desert Storm" (1990-91), and another two million Afghans during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. We shouldn't also forget about the daily state terrorism faced by millions of Muslims in places like Kashmir, the Arakan, Mindanao Islands and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the hands of the Indian, Myanmar, the Philippines and Israeli governments, respectively, for more than half a century.

Interestingly, many of these acts of state terrorism, resulting in deaths of millions of Muslims, were (and continues in certain part of our world to be) perpetrated by governments with a religious soul! Some of the instigators, planners, generals and heads of these states boasted that they were doing those 'godly' acts for preservation of their "national/cultural/religious" values, protection of their territories from the 'onslaught' of Islam, and being even whispered by a Higher Power.

We shouldn't also forget that the last two great wars of western civilization that resulted in deaths of tens of millions of civilians were not started by Muslims. If the "civilized" world cannot condemn Christianity for dropping of the atom bombs in Japan by the USA, cluster bombs in the Afghanistan, Philippines and Mindanao Islands by the USA, Napalm bombs in Vietnam by the USA, daisy cutter bombs in Afghanistan and Iraq, and vacuum bombs in Chechnya by Russia it has no moral higher ground to condemn Islam for al-Qaeda's WTC attack and the Chechen hostage-taking in Beslan. If the "civilized" world cannot condemn Judaism for the Jewish state's rampant and indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon that continues to kill and maim civilians, it would be downright hypocritical to condemn Islam for suicide attacks by dispossessed Palestinian youths.

Moreover, as has been duly noted before, the tactics used by today's Muslim fighters or terrorists are no different than those employed by the Jewish leaders during the British Mandate of Palestine. Today's Muslim terrorists are simply copycatting old Jewish terrorism. We shouldn't also dodge the fact that the total death count brought about by these individual terrorist acts pales by comparison with those of state governments. However, the "civilized" world has learned to overlook such gruesome crimes of the state, as the playwright Arthur Miller once wrote, "The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

As to the western media's preferential reporting of Muslim acts of violence, while more atrocious state terrorism is under-reported, John Pilger, the renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, bemoaned the fact that when on September 7, 2004, Palestinian suicide bombers killed 16 Israelis in the town of Beersheba every television news report marked the end of a five-month period of "relative peace and calm" and "a lull in the violence". They forgot to tell us that "during those five months of relative peace and calm, almost 400 Palestinians were killed, 71 of them in assassinations. During the lull in the violence, more than 73 Palestinian children were killed. A 13-year-old was murdered with a bullet through the heart, a five-year-old was shot in her face as she walked arm in arm with her two-year old-sister. The body of Mazen Majid, aged 14, was riddled with 18 Israeli bullets as he and his family fled their bulldozed home. None of this was reported in Britain as terrorism. Most of it was not reported at all. After all, this was a period of peace and calm, a lull in the violence. On 19 May, Israeli tanks and helicopters fired on peaceful demonstrators, killing eight of them. This atrocity had a certain significance; the demonstration was part of a growing non-violent Palestinian movement, which has seen peaceful protest gatherings, often with prayers, along the apartheid wall." Let's do the math: 16 against 400, that's - 4%. Why that 4% crime statistics becomes the headline news while the hefty 96% is hidden under the rug?

One wonders who is terrorizing whom! However, in the western vocabulary such barbarous acts by their governments (and surrogates like the Israeli government against the Palestinian people) against unarmed Muslim civilians are considered to be non-terrorist acts. Trigger-happy soldiers, pilots, bombers and missile men in the armed forces are routinely decorated for their patriotism and gallantry for killing civilians in the line of duty. Not only that: the crime of a rapist and murderous occupying soldier who terrorizes an innocent Muslim family is brushed off as vital to survival in a combat area. These military trials make a mockery of justice and fair play.

The ultimate question in this regard is: does Islam justify and/or promote terrorism?

Islam categorically condemns terrorism of all sorts, individual and state, maintaining that the killing of one innocent human being is like killing the entire human race. (Qur'an 5:32) Those who commit such crimes are doomed for hell. From the very beginning, the Prophet of Islam and the early Islamic Caliphs laid out definitive rules stipulating that unarmed civilians, even during a war, cannot be attacked. This clause alone is sufficient to prove that Islam has a higher moral ground than both Judaism and Christianity whose Rabbis and Priests approve not only preemptive strikes against the enemy but also condone violent acts against unarmed civilians.

An objective and unbiased analysis would also show that not a single Muslim state (outside Sudan) today can be accused of state terrorism, something that cannot be said about some non-Muslim countries like the USA, the UK, Serbia, Russia, Burma, Sri Lanka, China, India and Israel, just to name a few.

Islam condemns suicide considering it a grave sin, with its perpetrator, according to Islamic Traditions, becoming a denizen of hell.

So why the suicide bombing, which has become a trademark of many individual terrorists in the post-9/11 period? The answer is provided by Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist. In a study of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2001, he found that, of the 188 separate attacks he identified, 179 could have their roots traced to large, coherent political or military campaigns. He also noted that "there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any religion for that matter. In fact, the leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion (they have committed 75 of the 188 incidents)."

Terrorism is anti-thesis of Islam, the latter in general preaching love, mercy and peace as against hatred, cruelty and chaos, which are salient features of terrorism. Terrorism is hopeless and derives its strength from nihilism within the very society where it emerges, while Islam is about hope and love. The phrase - Islamic terrorism - is, thus, an oxymoron, nurtured by governments, groups and agencies to license their own atrocities and brutalities against Muslim masses. As much as this terror is practiced by repressive governments in states like Egypt and Algeria, it is also practiced in countries like Israel, the UK, Germany, France, Russia and the USA where racism, xenophobia and bigotry often run in parallel.

In reviewing false charges of violence lodged against Islam and its Prophet, Karen Armstrong commented, "Far from being addicted to warfare, Islam insists on the importance of peace. The message of the Qur’an is a plural vision; it respects and values other traditions."

The conclusion drawn by veteran journalist John Pilger was no different. He said, "Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims - that is, the victims of American fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms, military, strategic and economic, is the greatest source of terrorism on earth." (New Statesman, September 17, 2001)

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Part 7: Dynamics of Terrorism

With all the specter of violence around us, the foremost question of our time seems to be: how can terrorism be defeated? This billion dollar question however cannot be answered without understanding the rather complex dynamics of terrorism, its meaning to various groups, peoples and state authorities, its modi operandi, means or tools and its contributing factors.

In our earlier discussion, we have established that, as a technique of warfare, terrorism is used by specific people, group or state generally for understandable political purposes. Thus behind almost every terrorist act lurks a political problem. Terrorism purposely relies on brutal strikes against its enemies - objects of hatred, which may include civilians, government officials, symbolic persons or physical objects - to achieve a political effect. Sometimes their ruthless activity starts the vicious cycle of violence and more violence (attacks and counter-attacks) that help them to gain increasing support and even legitimacy of their act.

To Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94), one of the best known Jacobin figures of the French Revolution who promoted the Reign of Terror, "Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country. … The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny"

To Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76) and Sergey Nechayev (1847-82), terrorism's two of the earliest ideological proponents, both nihilists - the purpose of revolutionary terror is not to gain a support of masses but, to the contrary, inflict misery and fear on the common population. Karl Heinzen (1809–1880) claimed that not only the assassinations of leaders, but even the mass murders of innocent civilians, could be effective political tools and should be used without regret. To them, those committing such acts of terror were not terrorists but revolutionaries. To adapt Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), terrorism is the continuation of politics by other means.

Terrorists, whether or not they are affiliated with state authorities, usually have a political strategy. And their vision stretches over years if not decades. Accordingly, coping with terrorism requires a well thought-out plan not only to disarm terrorists but also to identify and then to address the political impulses that underlie their actions.

Modi Operandi of Terrorism

While state authorities routinely use their planes and drones to drop bombs and fire missiles (often touted as "precision guided weapons" – LGBs and PGMs) on civilian targets, in the name of exterminating terrorists, nowadays car bombing has become too common a tactic of warfare that is employed by most terrorists. This is now dubbed, with much justification, as poor man's air force. Interestingly, this tool has been used by many spy organizations - e.g., Israel's Mossad, America's CIA and Russia's KGB/FSB - to hit at their enemies since at least the early 1950s. Sometimes this has been used as a tactic by government agencies to start gang warfare between rival groups. The Italian authorities used this tactic rather successfully to weaken the Mafia.

Car bombing was a common tool employed by anarchists and can be traced back to at least 1920 when Mario Buda exploded his parked horse-drawn wagon near the corner of Wall and Broad streets, directly across from J P Morgan Company. While the intended target Mr. J.P. Morgan was unhurt since he was nowhere close to the blast site, it killed 40 and injured nearly 200 people. It showed how a poor Italian immigrant with some stolen dynamite, a pile of scrap metal, and an old horse could manage to bring unprecedented terror to the inner sanctum of American capitalism.

Buda's wagon, the prototype of today's car bomb, was not imitated until January 12, 1947 when the Jewish terrorist group - Stern Gang - drove a truckload of explosives into a British police station in Haifa, Palestine, killing 4 and injuring 140. The Stern Gang (Lehi) would soon use truck and car bombs to kill Palestinians as well. As Mike Davis has shown vehicle bombs thereafter were used sporadically -- producing notable massacres in Saigon (1952) by the CIA, Algiers (1962) by the French OAS against Algerian civilians and Palermo, Sicily (1963) as part of rivalry between Mafia gangs to continue until the mid-1990s. According to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, the CIA itself was involved in failed attempt to kill Lebanese Shiite leader Fadlallah in 1985 by car bombing. Israeli Mossad has repeatedly used car bombs to kill Arab and Palestinian leaders.

To coin Mike Davis, the "gates of hell" were only truly opened in 1972, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) accidentally improvised the first ammonium nitrate-fuel oil (ANFO) car bomb. Since that improvisation car bomb suddenly became a semi-strategic weapon that, under certain circumstances, was comparable to airpower in its ability to knock out enemy positions. The technique was employed successfully using trucks in Lebanon in 1983 against the French and US Embassies and the US marine barracks; City of London in April 1993 by the IRA; Oklahoma City in 1995 by Tim McVeigh; Khobar Towers, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1996; Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam against the US embassies in 1998; and unsuccessfully in 1993 to knockdown the WTC. Both Ramzy Yousef, the plotter for the 1993 WTC attempt, and his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, were reportedly trained by the CIA on the use of explosives against the Russians. Little did the CIA realize that yesterday's comrade-in-arms could become today's arch-enemy!

Then came September 11, 2001 when fully-loaded planes were used to knockdown the WTC. This was like the ultimate of what Buda's 1920 innovation could do.

Between 2004 and 2005 some 1293 car bombs exploded in Iraq, making it the most dangerous place on earth. While Zarqawi's terrorist group was responsible for most of those blasts, he was not the first one to try car bombing in Iraq. That credit goes to Dr. Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, which planted bombs in the early 1990s under the CIA directives.

The Iraq War also saw the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which were first used against the German forces during WW II, and more recently by the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. The IEDs have been responsible for at least 40% of coalition deaths in Iraq since 2003.

Outside the use of vehicles to transport and explode bombs, the old method of planting bombs and dynamites to blow off enemy's target is also used whenever suitable. There are strong evidences that the Mossad and the CIA were behind the bomb blast on Feb. 22, 2006 in the Shiite "Golden Mosque" in Samarra that sparked off the sectarian violence in Iraq.

While in recent years, radiological dispersal devices (RDDs), more commonly referred to as the dirty bombs, have been touted by the US government as the next lethal arsenal with the terrorists, so far we have not seen its use, and may not do so unless a blowback phenomenon happens. It is believed by many analysts that the Attorney General's office was stoking public fear to justify detainment of Jose Padilla without any criminal charges being formally made against him since March of 2002.

These days there is an unholy campaign to sanction, let alone overlook, barbarism of strategic or so-called precision bombing and shelling that kills civilians indiscriminately that are perpetrated by some states while crying foul about victims killed in car or truck bombings by others. Both activities are criminal and should be condemned.

Factors Contributing to Terrorism

Terrorism has been motivated by a plethora of factors from street and state gangsterism to social, economic, political, ethnic and religious. Of these, overt state terrorism is the worst kind since the state authority practicing it not only believes in its cause but also has the wherewithal at its disposal to continue the process. This form of terrorism, when practiced internally, is often tolerated by other states, who consider such violent activities as internal matters of the perpetrating state. Naturally, this form of terrorism is most difficult to eradicate. Suffice it to say that the theater of overt state terrorism is not necessarily limited to the territory of the state, and can be extra-territorial.

Some examples of overt state terrorism can be found in practices of: (1) repressive regimes against their own people (e.g., the Myanmar regime); (2) racist, bigoted and xenophobic regimes against the 'other' people – who could be either majority or minority group (e.g., Israeli regime against the Palestinian people, Apartheid South Africa against the indigenous Black majority, Myanmar regime against minority Rohingyas and Karens, Soviet/Russian regime against Chechen and Tatar Muslims, Yugoslav/Serbian regime against Muslims in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and Chinese regime against Uighur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists); (3) occupation forces (e.g., American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia; Japanese occupation during WW II in China and Malaysia, Indian occupation of Kashmir, and many colonial governments); and (4) hegemonic powers, e.g., US Navy's shooting down of an Iranian jetliner in the Persian Gulf that killed hundreds of civilian passengers during the Iran-Iraq war, and destruction of Sudan's only pharmaceutical lab during the Clinton era.

Covert state terrorism can happen through spy organizations and surrogates or proxies (who are harbored, trained, financed and underwritten) to further the cause of the sponsor. Examples include: CIA's overthrow of Iran's Musaddeq regime to bring the Shah to power; terrorism of the settler Jews in Israel against the Palestinian people; terrorism of Karen Buddhist Army against Karen Muslims and Christians in the Karen state of Burma; Rakhine terrorism against the Rohingyas of Arakan state of Burma; NATO-led Gladio “stay behind” network (a secret right wing effort to prevent left wing forces from taking power in Europe) that sometimes staged false-flag bombings and assassinations blamed on left-wing groups to discredit them; Israeli sponsorship of now-abolished Southern Lebanese Army and the Phalange in Lebanon; and American underwriting of the 2008 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia -- that terrorized the citizens.

Generally speaking, terrorism derived from social grievances, even if ideologically reinforced by a dogma such as radical Marxism, tends to fade if the societies in question fail to support the terrorists' cause. This explains why in Latin America various "social revolutionaries" have miserably failed to bring about the desired changes that had hoped for. Violence becomes not just the means to an end but also their raison detre.

However, terrorism rooted in ethnic, national, or religious resentment is the most enduring and the least susceptible to simple eradication. Even when such factors contributing to terrorism are removed, past grievance, resentment, hatred and bitterness can become a rallying ground for committing violence against the other group(s). As has been noticed from the Armenian terrorism directed against the Turks in the 20th century, it takes decades, if not, generations to eradicate the group instinct for terrorism rooted in ethnic, national and religious factors.

The perpetrators of terrorism may or may not be affiliated with an established government. But when it does, it is the worst form of terrorism to cope with. State authority may use opportunities prevalent at the time to unleash its brand of terrorism against its victims. Thus, on September 12, 2001, taking advantage of the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, the Israeli military stormed a West Bank village in pursuit of three alleged Islamic Jihad activists, firing missiles and shells on the building where they had barricaded themselves. In the three-hour exchange of fire, five Palestinian civilians were killed—among them a 12-year-old girl—and 50 wounded. The next day, Israeli tanks roared into West Bank towns again, setting off gun battles that left three Palestinians dead and 21 wounded. The incursions, the Israeli military said, were intended to "root out terror." But as Prof. Rashid Khalidi has shown Israel's military strategy simply has not worked: Striking civilian centers in which guerrilla actions may be hatched only tightens the spiral of vengeance. Israel's own military coordinator for the West Bank and Gaza, General Amos Gilad, said that Israel's repression of Palestinians in the occupied territories produces "a fool's cycle of violence in which Hamas grows stronger, we respond, and as a result the hardship in the territories grows and Hamas grows even stronger. If the situation continues, we are likely to be confronted with . . . five terror attacks a day."

Within days of 9/11, Sharon's deputy said, "We are operating in the Jenin area and nobody's complaining." In addition to Jenin, the population centers of Jericho, Gaza, Ramallah, and Qalqiliya all came under sustained attack from Israeli forces.

Israel was not alone in the wake of 9/11 to have exploited America's war on terror to terrorize minorities. Russia, China, India, Philippines, Thailand and Burma seized the moment, as did many other governments to bring their brand of state terrorism which hitherto they did not dare to use for fear of international reaction.

The collective sense of hopelessness, discrimination, loss, persecution, harassment and dehumanization of a community by an offending state authority may contribute to terrorism that is directed not only against the sources of such deprivation, but also against the civilian population belonging to the powerful ruling group. Many of the rebel movements, e.g., the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka and the various Palestinian resistance groups in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, against the established authorities have sometimes succumbed to group identification for victimizing civilians.

As is well known from the IRA experience, harsh torture tactics of interrogation usually backfire and help to recruit more terrorists. The Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prison tortures have similarly recruited more terrorists in Iraq than ever before.

Regardless of the gravity of the crime, the perpetrators are fanatical about the very correctness of their cause. They are naturally willing to be hanged or shot dead for standing up to their cause.

In this regard, the example of Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the Hindu terrorist, affiliated with the Hindu Maha Sabha, who killed Mahatma Gandhi is quite revealing. He justified his action in his 150 points statement presented to the jury wherein he accused Gandhi as having “proved to be the Father of Pakistan” instead of the Father of the Hindu nation – an epithet of high reverence. "The Father of the nation" forgot his “paternal duty”, he said in his statement. He further said, "If devotion to one's country amounts to a sin, I admit I have committed that sin. If it is meritorious, I humbly claim the merit thereof. I fully and confidently believe that if there be any other court of justice beyond the one founded by the mortals, my act will not be taken as unjust. If after the death there be no such place to reach or to go, there is nothing to be said. I have resorted to the action I did purely for the benefit of the humanity. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought wreck and ruin and destruction to lakhs of Hindus."

An interview of Ariel Sharon, who commanded the Israeli commando Unit 101 that targeted civilian Arabs, is equally informative to understand the mind of a terrorist leader. In the Qibya massacre of 1953, 69 Palestinian civilians, some of them children, were killed by Sharon's troops. In the documentary Israel and the Arabs: 50 Year War, Sharon recalls what happened after the raid: "I was summoned to see Ben-Gurion. It was the first time I met him, and right from the start Ben-Gurion said to me: "Let me first tell you one thing: it doesn't matter what the world says about Israel, it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive."" If this be the attitude of dovish Ben-Gurion, just imagine those of the Jewish hawks that guided Israeli history ever since!

With such a twisted logic, Israel has been able to justify her immoral occupation and sadistic aggression against the Palestinian people. Her heavy handedness has resulted in a disproportionate amount of casualty figures on the Arab side: at least 25 killed for every Israeli killed by a Palestinian gunman or suicide bomber (since the birth of the Jewish state).

Unfathomed hatred and jealousy can also lead to terrorizing the 'other' people. In this regard, the statement of Rabbi David Batzri, head of the Magen David Yeshiva in Jerusalem, is quite revealing. He said, "The nation of Israel is pure and the Arabs are a nation of donkeys. They are an evil disaster, an evil devil, and a nasty affliction. The Arabs are donkeys and beasts. They want to take our girls. They are endowed with true filthiness. There is pure and there is impure and they are impure." [Haaretz, March 21, 2006] With such a hateful mindset it becomes so kosher to practice the worst form of terrorism against the foe, something that we have also witnessed before in Hitler's Germany. Not surprisingly, a case by case analysis would show that terrorism of Hamas and Hizballah pales in comparison to those practiced by the Jewish state.

As can be seen from the above brief discussion, the dynamics of terrorism can be rather complex, requiring detailed analysis on a case by case basis to understand its various modes of operations and factors contributing to this problem.

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Part 8: How Can Terrorism be Defeated?

As is well-known among experts, terrorism cannot be fought without understanding its underlying causes (and not symptoms). Unless the sources of the motivation for terrorism are diluted, attempts to thwart and eliminate it will see little success. Hatred will breed fresh recruitment. In his must-read book – The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership – Dr. Brzezinski argues that to make certain that their ranks are not replenished, however, a careful political strategy is needed in order to weaken the complex political and cultural forces that give rise to terrorism. Bottom line: what creates them has to be politically undercut.

Thus, if we are serious about not seeing a repeat of events like the 9/11, we ought to understand and mitigate the contributing factors. As has been concluded by most experts, including President Jimmy Carter and Dr. Brzezinski, there is no escape from the historic reality that American involvement in the Middle East is clearly the main reason why terrorism has been directed at America – just as, e.g., English involvement in Ireland precipitated the IRA's frequent targeting of London. The British have recognized that basic fact and have tried to react to it on both military and political levels. In contrast, America has shown an incredible reluctance to confront the political dimensions of terrorism and to identify terrorism with its political context. The state of affairs simply worsened during G.W. Bush's Administration. Soon after coming to power in 2001, President Bush not only ignored the Palestinian grievances but worse still, condoned and rewarded Israeli brutality against the Palestinian people. If American policy in the Middle East were even-handed and just, rather than being lopsided in favor of Israel, 9/11 may never have happened.

American relationship with the world of Islam is complicated by strong emotions and a great deal of reciprocal prejudices. It started deteriorating since at least the time of Henry Kissinger when he served as America's top diplomat. He tilted the U.S. foreign policy very heavily in favor of the Jewish state. This, in spite of Israel's bombing of the USS Liberty in 1967. The Iranian hostage crisis after the fall of the Shah was definitely a low point in Muslim-American relationship.

During Reagan Administration the relationship worsened further with Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. There is little doubt among terrorist experts that when on April 18, 1983 a delivery van blew up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut killing 46 people (including 16 Americans) the chief motivation was the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut that was orchestrated by Sharon. As the Lebanese Civil War escalated, American and French forces sided with the Lebanese Christian forces, thus making a travesty of the UN peace mission. On September 13, 1983, Reagan called for heavy bombing and shelling of Muslim positions to help the Christian forces. That provided the stimulus for the reprisal attack on Oct. 23, 1983 when truck bombs killed American marines and French soldiers.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, she claimed that the invasion was justified in retaliation for PLO attacks on Israelis. But as Tom Friedman, the Jewish correspondent for the New York Times and an unabashed apologist for the Israeli government, noted in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem, the number of Israeli casualties the PLO guerillas in Lebanon actually inflicted were minuscule - one death in the 12 months before the invasion. (As later events testify Israeli terrorism has only been emboldened by a docile and compliant US Congress and White House. Israel's casualties from rockets fired by the Hizballah and Hamas in recent years were so little that they could not have justified the latest invasion of Lebanon and Gaza, respectively. And yet, the Bush Administration sided with Israel for slaughter of Muslims. Such a carte blanche to rogue Jewish state is dangerous and immoral.)

The events of 1983 clearly demonstrate how American support of Israeli terrorism leads to terrible consequences for the United States. But even after 9/11, it seems America does not get it right. Arrogant and confident about her hyper power status, American leaders continue to ignore lessons of history, overlook what is so obvious and follow failed path like obsessed fools.

Information sharing between intelligence groups is important to stop some terrorist activities. However, in an increasingly cynical world ruled by mostly immoral political leaders with ignoble agendas that are at odds with goodwill for humanity such does not happen all the time. The Los Angeles Times, in discussing a revealing book by a former agent of the Israeli Mossad, showed that the Mossad had foreknowledge of the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, but treacherously did not warn America. That wasn't the only time that Israel committed treachery against the USA. There are credible reports of Mossad's foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack, which were not shared with the FBI. Such a willful avoidance to share sensitive information can only be explained in Israel's wicked intent to swing American public opinion towards an all-out war that is scripted by Jewish neocons to reshape the geopolitical map of the Middle East, and making the region impotent against Israeli aggression. Thus, when on September 12, 2001 the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked what the 9/11 attacks meant for relations between the US and Israel, he replied, “It’s very good.” In a recent speech (April 16, 2008), quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, he repeated: "We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor." [Interestingly, notice his choice of the word "struggle", meaning Jihad in Arabic!]

Soon after 9/11 there was genuine empathy for America in most Muslim countries, including Iran. However, within six months, the nearly unanimous support for America gave way to increasing skepticism, when Bush's War on Terror was increasingly viewed as a neo-Crusade against the world of Islam. The US inclination, in the spring of 2002, to embrace even the more extreme and brutal forms of Israeli suppression of Palestinians further worsened the matter. In recent years, Bush's never-ending war on terrorism has morphed into a campaign to vanquish all potential enemies of her hegemony -- from Iran to Somalia via Syria.

In his tunnel-vision approach to our world, i.e., seeing the world in terms of "us vs. them," President Bush has forgotten that it is his evil, immoral and bad policy in the Middle East that has spawn new terrorists faster than his forces can kill old ones. He also forgets that violence against civilians, esp. dehumanization of enemy, contributes to replenishment amongst the victims' friends and families. Simply exterminating them all will not solve the problem. Bush Administration also forgot that extreme torture tactics only help to recruit for terrorism. Not surprisingly, there are more 'terrorists' today in Afghanistan and Iraq than ever before! And in all likelihood, terrorism will not end with Osama's capture or death either, as it has not ended in Iraq with Zarqawi's assassination.

America is also heedless about the cost of terrorism. This attitude is simply insane and untenable, especially, in the light of a recently published CRS Report for Congress (April 11, 2008) on the cost of war in Afghanistan and Iraq that shows that a total of $700 billion was approved as of December 2007 by the Congress since the 9/11 attacks. In February 2008, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the funding could reach from 1.1 to 1.7 trillion USD for fiscal years 2001-2018. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already killed some 5000 occupation soldiers (almost twice the number killed in the WTC attack of 9/11), let alone killing more than a million Muslim civilians. Those wars were partly motivated by oil. And what did war deliver other than Americans having have to pay now three times in gas stations, with ripple effects felt everywhere?

Bush Administration's unwillingness to recognize a historical connection between the rise of anti-American terrorism and America's hegemonic involvement in the Middle East, plus immoral and unquestioning support of the rogue, racist state - Israel, is a dangerous and delusional form of denial and makes the formulation of an effective strategic response to terrorism that much difficult.

To win war against Middle Eastern terrorists, as Dr. Brzezinski has suggested in his book "The Choice" America must promote a political process that confronts the conditions that lead to the terrorists' emergence. This is precisely what the British has been doing in Ulster and the Spaniards in Basque country, and ought to be followed by every government that wants to tackle the problem earnestly. It is that simple.

As any genuine expert would testify, addressing these political conditions is not a concession to terrorists but an important component of a strategy to eliminate and isolate the terrorist underworld. This formula for rooting out terrorism in the Arab world can start with finding a just and equitable solution to the Palestinian problem that allows repatriation of the uprooted people to their ancestral homes.

However, with an overarching influence of the Israel Lobby, no American politician is bold enough to formulate a Middle-East policy that is meaningful to combat terrorism. As a matter of fact when it comes to the Middle East, it is virtually all the same with either major political party. Not surprisingly, therefore, that we got a good dose of genuflection from presumptive presidential candidates in the 2008 AIPAC conference. Both McCain and Obama sounded more Likudnik than real Likud members of the Knesset. Obama's statement there that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided" even exceeds what most current Israeli leaders would say and was a reminiscent of the days of Menachem Begin's Likud. He, like most American politicians, forgets that no Palestinian, no Arab, no Muslim will make peace with Israel if the Haram-al-Sharif compound (also called the Temple Mount), one of the three holiest places of Islam and the most outstanding symbol of Palestinian nationalism, is not transferred to Palestinian sovereignty. That is one of the core issues of the conflict.

Even an ingenuous President Carter is ostracized for his frank assessment of the apartheid like condition prevailing in Israel for the Palestinian people. He is treated like a political leper in the USA. Such an attitude to silence one of the most courageous American souls paints a very sad picture about American politics and needs to be corrected for greater good of humanity.

In the wake of 9/11, America needs to examine, carefully and calmly its complex relationship with the world of Islam. That is the pre-requisite to any effective long-term American engagement in pacifying the twin dangers of terrorism and proliferation of weapons. She cannot allow militant supporters of Israel within the State Department to underwrite American foreign policy for the Middle East. She cannot deny Iran her rights to exploring nuclear energy while shuts her eyes to latter's possession of 150 nuclear bombs, let alone arming Israel tooth and nail. That behavior is grossly hypocritical and irresponsible. (An equitable approach would be to dismantle Israel's nuclear arsenal and enforce a nuclear-free zone for the entire Middle East.) She cannot allow Israel to use American weapons to kill unarmed civilians. She must also take into consideration rising anti-American political and religious hostility produced by American unilateralism. She simply can't afford Pharaohnic arrogance and Hamanic despotism.

Terrorism can be eliminated only through a sensitive recognition of motives and passion that drive it. In their quest - in which terrorism in fact is viewed (not necessarily correctly) as a ruthless tool of the weak against the powerful – the weak have one great psychological advantage: they have little to lose and, they believe, everything to gain. The power of weakness allows, according to Dr. Brzezinski, four novel realities of modern life. The first is that access to the means of inflicting large-scale lethality is no longer restricted to organized and powerful states. Second, worldwide mobility and worldwide communication both facilitate coordination and planning of underground cells. Third, democratic permeability facilitates penetration of terrorism, which is difficult to detect, something that is slightly less possible, but not altogether impossible, in authoritarian regimes. Fourth, the systemic interdependence of a modern society tends to set off chain reactions. If even a single key element of the system is disrupted, it prompts escalating social disruption and wildfire panic.

According to Dr. Brzezinski, the weak becomes strong by oversimplifying the focus of their hatred, whereas the strong become weak by doing the same. Both gain supports by demonizing what they despise. Unlike the weak, the powerful cannot afford the luxury of oversimplification. They become weak by oversimplifying their fears. Because their interests are broad and their stakes interdependent, the powerful must not simply demonize the challenge posed by the weak or reduce it to a one-dimensional scale. To do so is to risk focusing only on the symptom, while ignoring more complex and historically rooted impulses. Power and force alone are not sufficient to preserve American hegemony. It needs cooperation and not coercion at the global level.

In September 2004, the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero told something that is rarely spoken by a western leader in the United Nations about how to fight against terrorism: “It is legality, democracy and political means and ways that make us stronger and (terrorists) weaker…We can and must rationally analyze how (terrorism) emerges, how it grows, so as to be able to fight it rationally.”

He is right. Only such a multilayered approach, underpinned by a calm determination to resist the impact of terrorist attacks over a long period of time, will allow democratic politics, principles – and citizens – to prevail. Is America willing to heed to that advice? Or will she let herself drown in the bloody swamp of terrorism, some even self-instigated, because of her colossal arrogance?


by courtesy & © 2008 Habib Siddiqui