Don’t slam Islam; but don’t tolerate intolerance, either!

Paris is in shock again and with it the entire civilised world.  Although, truth be told, this has not come as a surprise.  Nor have the reactions of Western politicians and journalists.  On one hand, we hear again the predictable but oh-so-idiotic claim that acts perpetrated in the name of Allah and Muhammad ‘have nothing to do with Islam’; on the other hand, we are treated to the bigoted implication that believing in Allah and Muhammad counts as ‘fifth column’ membership.  Both approaches are cowardly populist; both are terribly wrong; worse – both are pathetically unhelpful.

No, we can’t start accusing or suspecting everyone who embraces Islam as his/her religion; or even as his/her main identity.  But neither should we stick our heads in the ground, close our eyes to reality and plug our ears with politically-correct cotton wool, denying that a certain strand of Islam has everything to do with terrorism.

There will never be a shortage of imbeciles eager to find excuses and to ‘explain away’ terrorism.  Yes, the West has made war in Iraq and Afghanistan; but then, Russia is making war in Ukraine – and yet Ukrainians don't blow themselves up in Moscow’s stadiums or in Sankt Petersburg’s concert halls.  Yes, Western colonialists have left a lousy legacy in the Middle East; but they did worse, much worse elsewhere.  Indians don’t try to blow up the Wembley Stadium.  Armenians don’t murder patrons in Istanbul’s restaurants and Israeli Jews don’t fly airplanes into Frankfurt’s office buildings.

There’ll also be bigots who will point to passages from the Qur’an and claim that there’s something inherently violent in Islam.  But I can equally quote passages from the Torah and from the New Testament that would seem to incite to violence.  What about the injunction to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven”?  And didn’t Jesus say “I came not to send peace, but the sword”?  Oh, and I can find for you Qur’anic verses praising peace – just like one finds in every scripture.

No, Islam is not a religion of peace; nor is it a religion of war.  Religions aren’t ‘of’ anything; people are.  There is no denying that acts of terrorism are currently more likely to be committed in the name of Islam than in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or Shintoism.  If a suicide bomber detonates himself tomorrow, it is more likely that he’ll be called Muhammad, rather than Paul, Moshe or Jitendra.  That is a fact.  Most Muslims are not radicals; it's just that there are more radicals among Muslims.

But why?  Islam is not fundamentally different from Christianity or Judaism.  It is just younger, much younger.  It appeared on the grand scene of history about 14 centuries ago.  Christianity is considerably older – more than 2000 years; Judaism is ancient.  Age is of consequence: religions (like all human endeavours) have a life of their own.  Just like human beings.  Youngsters are more impetuous; more impulsive; less patient and less tolerant.  Thankfully, they mellow as they grow old.  So do religions.  Want to understand radical Islam?  Violent Jihad?  Think 14th century Christianity, with its crusades and Inquisition.

In 14th century Europe, religion pervaded every aspect of human life; so it does these days in most parts of the Middle East.  14th century Europeans may have called themselves ‘French’, ‘German’ or ‘English’; but their primary identity was ‘Christians’.  Just as these days hundreds of millions of people will tell you that they define themselves first and foremost as ‘Muslims’.

Jihadis are nothing more – and nothing less, and nothing else – than the ‘modern’, Muslim version of medieval Crusaders.  They may be armed with assault rifles and grenades, rather than swords and maces; but they are just as blood-thirsty; just as self-righteous; just as ready to achieve martyrdom and earn their ticket to heaven.  Are you still wondering why they behead people?

OK, you’ll say; that may well be so, but how does this help?  Will we have to endure centuries of Jihad?  Well, not necessarily.  Things have changed somewhat from the real 14th century.

Think about it: why did so many people (not just kings and knights, but simple peasants and tradesmen) leave behind their homesteads, their families, their lives – to make war on the infidels?  To kill, maim, pillage and rape?  No, Popes did not use Twitter to stir up trouble – not in those times.  They used preachers.  That has not changed: it is still the preachers of hate that brainwash people into becoming butchers.

Wanna deal with Jihadi terrorism?  You can try to track all the tens of thousands that have already been radicalised – and the millions that will be; or you can go after a few thousand hate preachers. Those preachers may not practice violence themselves; but they kill, maim, pillage and rape – however indirectly.  Jail them if you can; kill them if you have to; or just prevent their odious message from reaching its target.  That means tighter border controls.  It means closing websites, monitoring social media, controlling school activities, raiding mosques, banning radical madrassahs.  If that implies changing our laws, so they protect the tolerant, rather than tolerating the bigot – then so be it; if it means making law enforcement more intrusive, then that’s a price we’ll have to pay, for our safety and that of our children.  Make no mistake: it’s the price we’ll have to pay to maintain rule of law; to avoid rule of the mob.  There will have to be limits to freedom: your freedom must end where you want to take away mine.

That won’t stop tomorrow’s terrorist attack; it won’t provide an instant solution.  But, in time, it will choke the flow of hatred.

The Torah says “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, so that you and your offspring will live”.  I’m sure the Qur’an won’t disagree.

At sixes and sevens

In a recent novel entitled ‘I am Pilgrim’, British-born writer Terry Hayes describes a jihadist plot to smuggle deadly pathogens into the United States.  The plot is narrowly foiled by the modern version of super-hero: a brilliant secret agent, who saves the day – and the lives of tens of millions of Americans.

It’s fiction, of course; but it’s not far-fetched.  In fact, it's very likely that, somewhere in the Middle East, jihadists are busy plotting some version of a chemical or biological attack.  After all, 9/11 has proven that for jihadists mass murder is a worthy deed; and that they are capable of careful planning and executing complex operations.

Well, I guess we should not worry too much.  Bond-like secret agents may be fictional; but Her Majesty’s Government is diligently dealing with the challenge posed by jihadists.  Isn't it?

Six days of political wheeling and dealing; six hours of speech-making; six Tornado warplanes to attack ISIL in Iraq.  The other side of the equation is not known yet: will it be 600 dead civilians?  6,000?  60,000?

In a press statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu re-affirmed his support for UK’s right to defend itself against incessant rocket attacks coming from Iraq.  However, Mr. Netanyahu also expressed ‘deep concern’ for the large number of Iraqi casualties and called on the British government to do more to protect civilians.  The Israeli Prime Minister asked Britain to act in a proportional way, in strict compliance with International Law.  He called on both sides – UK and ISIL – to show restraint, avoid further escalation and negotiate an immediate ceasefire.  The Israeli leader has also expressed support for the mediation efforts by North Korea.  A British delegation is expected to arrive in Pyongyang, for indirect talks with a joint delegation of ISIL, Al-Nusra and the Mahdi Army.

One can and should joke.  But the only laughable thing is yesterday’s decision itself.

Firstly, because it is so ineffective as to merit the description ‘much ado about nothing’.  What exactly are six warplanes supposed to achieve??  How will they make a difference – ANY difference – against guerrilla fighters spread over a large territory and able to easily ‘hide in plain view’, being indistinguishable from the general population?

Secondly, because of the pathetic efforts to portray the decision as ‘ethical’ and ‘legal’.  Of course, nobody (not even Al-Qaeda!) disputes that ISIL are a bunch of berserk murderers and that the world would be a more habitable place without them.  Yet, to a weak leadership and a political class plagued by moral relativism, that’s not reason enough.

Hence, the pathetic efforts to ‘engineer’ a bit of ‘moral high ground’:

Like the ‘request for assistance’ issued by the ‘Iraqi government’.  Of course, that ‘government’ represents at most one religious and political faction in an artificial (and failed, and in practice non-existent) state.  The ‘government’ of the ‘People’s Republic of Donetsk’ has issued a similar request for Russian assistance against ‘Ukrainian aggression’.

Like the attempt to hide behind a ‘local coalition’ of Arab states which (nominally, at least) oppose ISIL.  Of course, those ‘states’ are in reality disgusting dictatorial regimes, some even more skilled in the ‘art’ of beheading than ISIL itself.  Not to mention that, even assuming those regimes were representative (they aren’t) and Iraq was a real state (it isn’t), it would still remain unclear exactly what right the former have to intervene in the internal affairs of the latter.

Like the ridiculous pretence of operating only in Iraq, not in Syria – ‘for now’.  This, surely, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Iraq (like Libya) has oil, while Syria has not.  Nah, it can’t be that!  It’s only because, you see, the (factional) ‘government’ of the (artificial) ‘state’ of Iraq has ‘requested assistance’; while the (factional) ‘government’ of (the equally artificial, fellow colonial contraption) ‘Syria’ has not.  So, just out of curiosity, I ask: will the six warplanes taking off from bases in former British colony Cyprus make a long detour in order to ‘respect the sovereignty’ of former French colony Syria, before dropping their bombs somewhere in the former British Mandate of Mesopotamia?  Sweet ‘moral high ground’!!!

Thirdly, because of the way this decision has been taken.  What a display of weak leadership when a party in government – one elected by an uncontested majority in a democratic process – seeks to cover its quivering hinds by making a ‘deal’ with the opposition!

But fourthly – and most tragically – because the symbolic ‘gesture’ of six warplanes (or, rather, the larger operation that gesture is meant to ‘support’) is yet another short-term tactic reaction devoid of any long term, proactive strategy.  Throughout six hours of clueless ‘debate’, none of the six hundred and fifty MPs asked the six-million-dollar-question: ‘WHERE ARE YOU GOING WITH THIS?’  What’s the strategy?  How do you want ‘Iraq’ – and indeed the entire Middle East – to look like in ten or twenty years?  And how are you going to achieve that vision?  And please don’t bother answering ‘it’s none of our business, it’s for them people to decide’; why is tactical bombing ‘our business’, but political strategizing isn’t??

Her Majesty’s Government (along with the rest of the ‘political class’) has just wasted many thousands of taxpayer-funded men-hours to choreograph a ‘debate’ on sending six warplanes to ‘precision bomb’ (LOL!!) shadows, in the hope of hitting a few of the tens of thousands of operatives belonging to one terrorist organisation in one small corner of the Middle East; can we please have a debate on long-term strategies aimed at tackling that problem-region as a whole?  Can we please do so without much regard to ‘borders’ drawn decades ago by colonial interests?  Can we please aim to achieve not just selfish oil-enabling ‘political stability’, but also a bit of welfare, happiness and freedom to the hapless inhabitants of said problem-region?  And can we please have that debate sooner rather than later, preferably before the problem really rears its ugly head and kicks us in the nuts??  Thank you!

Nazism, Communism, Islamism: how to kill your way to the 'Perfect World’

The 20th century saw the rise and fall of two murderous ideologies: Hitler’s Nazism and the ‘Communism’ practiced by the likes of Stalin and Mao.  The former was (hopefully) eradicated by mass re-education, after a world war that cost the lives of 70 million human beings; the latter eventually collapsed from within, under the burden of its own profound immorality – but not before claiming the lives of around 100 million people.

These days, we see the rise of yet another vicious ideology – Islamism.  Why do I place it in the same category?  Quite simply: because it fits there.

True, despite being already guilty of horrendous crimes, Islamism has not – yet – caused tens of millions of victims; but neither had Nazism or Communism by the 1930s.

On the other hand, all three extreme ideologies share the same fundamental characteristics.

Firstly, all three are predicated on supremacist propositions – namely that a group of people is inherently superior to all the others.  What exactly that Master Group is depends on the specific differentiator that the particular ideology is centred upon.  Since Nazism saw the world through a ‘racial’ perspective, its fundamental proposition was the superiority of the ‘Aryan race’ (the Master Race or Herrenvolk); centred on ‘social’ differences, the Communists decreed that the ‘proletariat’ was inherently loftier than every other class; for the Islamists, whose particular angle is ‘religious’, it is the adherents of Islam that are ‘entitled’ to unquestioned, divinely-ordained supremacy.

Take for instance the following statement:

It is the duty of members of other races to stop disputing the sovereignty of the Aryan Race in this region, because the day these other races should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror. 

Such statement sounds is surely reminiscent of early Nazi ideology, or of that espoused currently by neo-Nazi movements.  Yet it originates from neither; it simply paraphrases (by merely replacing ‘religious’ with ‘racial’ terminology) a paragraph from The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).  The exact quote is:

It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror.

Initially, the Nazi ideology did not advocate the physical extermination of ‘other races’ – that came later.  For early Nazi ideologues, these races could be allowed to live, provided they accepted Aryan supremacy and did not attempt to ‘pollute’ the Master Race.  The Racial Tenet (Rassegrundsatz) printed on every Nazi-issued ‘Aryan Certificate’ declared:

In line with national socialist thinking which does full justice to all other peoples, there is never the expression of superior or inferior, but alien racial admixtures.

Hamas’s version is somewhat wordier, but fundamentally similar:

The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement.  It takes care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions.  It does not antagonize anyone of them except if it is antagonized by it or stands in its way to hamper its moves and waste its efforts.  Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam.

When groups like ISIS issue ultimata to Christians to ‘convert to Islam, accept its supremacy or die’, they express, in a more practical way, the same ideological tenet.

The Communist variety of supremacism is obvious, for instance, in the words of Trotsky:

When we speak of a labour government we mean that the hegemony belongs to the working class.  […]  Political supremacy of the proletariat is incompatible with its [current] economic slavery.  […] A Socialist revolution in the West would allow us to turn the temporary supremacy of the working class directly into a Socialist dictatorship.

Secondly, all three extreme ideologies promote a world view in which there is an inherent, perpetual and inevitable conflict between the superior or ‘Master Group’ (race, class or religion) and ‘the others’.  ‘The others’, needless to say, despite being fundamentally inferior, are intent on subjugating the Master Group.   The conflict (call it ‘Kampf um Lebensraum’, ‘class struggle’ or ‘jihad’) is fundamental not just to the ideology, but also to its practical implementation.  Conflicts (especially when portrayed as global and quasi-existential) represent ‘exceptional circumstances’ or ‘force majeure’; as such, they justify employing ‘exceptional means’.

Just like today’s Islamists, both Nazis and Communists made extensive use of torture and executions.  (Interestingly, Nazis practiced beheading as a form of execution, as do today’s Islamists; at times, Nazis also used the more expedient pistol bullet to the back of the neck, as did Stalin’s executioners and Palestinian Islamists against ‘collaborators’.)  All three movements sought to use terror in order to discourage dissent and weaken resistance.

Thirdly, all three ideologies have a similar ultimate goal: to do away with the extant ‘injustice’ and replace it with a ‘new global order’.  The end is thus, invariably, the ‘Perfect World’; so perfect, in fact, that that end justifies and even sanctifies the murderous means.  That ‘Perfect World’ – call it Millenarian Reich, Global Commune or Islamic Caliphate – will be achieved as a result of the Master Group’s final victory over ‘the others’.

Islamism belongs in the same category as Nazism and Communism; but what does that mean, in practical terms?  Does it mean that we will have to fight another world war?  Or wait for decades, in a horrendous equilibrium of terror, until this new murderous ideology will find its own way to history’s rubbish bin?

Well, not necessarily; not if we recognise the similarity and apply the lessons learned from dealing with the previous two forms of supremacism.

Given their ultimate goal (‘the Perfect World’), extreme ideologies are inherently expansionist.  They both desire and need territorial gain.  ‘Desire’, because expansion demonstrates success (‘the proof of the pudding…’); ‘need’ in order to supply the human and material resources for both survival and further expansion.  It follows that they need to be contained geographically – and not allowed territorial gains.  As explained in another article, resisting Hitler’s invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia would not have led to a World War; tolerating those aggressions did.

But while geographical containment is a tactical imperative, it is not a strategy.  On its own, containment simply turns an acute ailment into a chronic disease.  Which may eventually disappear – but only after decades of suffering, and only if none of its acute outbursts succeeds in killing the patient.

Let us remember, however, that what eventually did away with Nazism was not the Allied victory in the Second World War; millions of brainwashed Germans, Austrians, etc. did not change their minds overnight, just because the Nazis lost the war.  The real solution was the process of mass re-education that followed the war and continued for years or even decades.   Similarly, while the Communist bloc collapsed from within, that did not happen while the West sat idle; nor was it the result of the containment policy alone.  There was intense Western propaganda activity; for instance, two radio stations – Free Europe and Radio Liberty – were transmitting uncensored news, education to democracy and other programmes.  The programmes were put together by dissidents and anti-Communist activists originating from the Communist bloc and were transmitted in Russian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, etc.   Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty had an important role in informing and educating people beyond the Iron Curtain and contributed to the weakening and eventual collapse of the Communist regimes.  In fact, those regimes perceived the radio programmes as so dangerous, that huge efforts were made to jam the transmissions.  And when jamming proved ineffective…  In 1981, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (a Palestinian terrorist of Venezuelan extraction, nicknamed Carlos the Jackal) bombed the Munich headquarters of the two radio stations, causing heavy damage and injuring several of the stations’ employees.  Secret service documents found after the fall of the Communist regimes showed that it was Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu who paid The Jackal to perpetrate the bombing.

One wonders why there are no similar propaganda efforts being made today?  Why are there no ‘Radio Liberty’-style stations transmitting unabashed pro-democracy and anti-Islamist programmes in Arabic, Farsi, Dari, Pashto and Urdu?  Better still, why not television stations, to counter the ‘official line’ decreed by Middle Eastern dictators and the more subtle propaganda conveyed by the likes of Al Jazeera?  A much stronger, much more assertive Internet-based propaganda is also a must.

To many in the West, the word ‘propaganda’ sounds pejorative; but what’s wrong with promoting the message of liberal democracy, human rights and progress, as an alternative to the hate, obscurantism and primitiveness pushed by the Islamists?  How exactly are the Middle East masses (who have never actually experienced liberal democracy) supposed to reject the Islamist brainwashing, when the only alternative they know is the brutal, incompetent and corrupt regime of ‘secular’ dictators?

Contrary perhaps to popular belief, there are Arabs, Iranians, Afghans and Pakistanis who believe in liberal democracy and oppose Islamism.  Let’s give them the tools needed, so they can make a difference.  It’s not weapons that they need – they need a voice.  Let’s give it to them NOW and in 10 years we’ll view this as the best investment we've ever made.

Schools of Terror

Breaking news: terrorists kill people!

After playing ‘useful idiots’ to Islamist propaganda emanating from Gaza, Western politicians and mainstream ‘journalists’ were suddenly sent into a frenzy by a gruesome video showing yet another jihadist ‘executing’ an American hostage – who happened to be a journalist himself.  Leaving aside the ‘execution method’ (which is nothing new either, beheading is being practiced on a large scale by the ‘Western-friendly’ Saudi monarchy), what’s the surprise here?  Breaking news, folks: from Munich 1972 to Karachi 2002 to Gaza 2014, that’s what terrorists do: they kidnap and murder people, in order to generate terror.  That’s why they’re called terrorists (by persons equipped with moral compass; confused and confusing media outlets such as the BBC call them ‘militants’ – as if they marched in protests and chanted slogans, rather than slaughtering innocent people).

Terrorist holding hostage Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.  All 11 hostages were killed.
("Ap munich905 t" by Russell McPhedran - © 1972 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of Munich massacre via Wikipedia)

In that particular video, the executioner happened to sport a British accent.  Well, surely it should not come as a surprise to anyone (not after 7/7, the murder of Lee Rigby, etc. etc. etc.) that the ranks of the terrorists include Western jihadis.  Across Europe, hundreds of young Muslims (born and bred in the democratic West) are joining ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra and other terrorist outfits.  MI5 thinks they constitute 10% of the foreign ‘fighters’ in Syria and Iraq.

It's not the poverty

Hamas terrorists 'execute collaborators' in Gaza City (photo: Fox News, free to use & share, even commercially)

But for some ‘journalists’, this does not change the pre-conceived script.  Or rather, the script dictated by their own blind and rigid ideological line – so blind and rigid that it looms completely opaque between their cognisance and the reality in front of their very eyes.  That ideological line, a nauseating mixture of neo-Marxism and crypto-racism (I call it Marxist racism), asserts that misbehaviour is simply generated by socio-economic factors; and – in the mind of these neo-Marxist-racists – if one is not ‘white British’, one is by definition poor and frustrated.

Take, for instance, a certain Anna Holligan, employed – surprise-surprise! – by good ol’ BBC.  Just a few days ago, she wrote about concerns in the Netherlands:

More than 100 Dutch citizens are thought to be fighting for various groups in Syria and Iraq, and hundreds more have been identified as potential jihadists.

These are the facts.  But then comes the analysis.  The ideology-tainted ‘analysis’:

Many young Muslims are struggling to find work and acceptance in the Netherlands, he tells me. The promise of a glorified existence extolled by radical preachers resonates with the vulnerable and disaffected.  While there is little appetite for the bloodthirsty approach espoused by Islamic State militants, the idea of going to defend fellow Muslims appears to be compelling for some young people who lack hope at home but see potential abroad.

Got it??  It’s not their fault, or the fault of radical preachers – it’s because these young Muslims struggle to find work; it’s because they are “vulnerable and disaffected” and “lack hope at home”.

I beg your pardon???  We are talking about people who are born in the Netherlands; who have Dutch as their mother tongue.  Netherlands is a liberal democracy, an economically developed country.  It boasts one of the best, most generous social solidarity networks in the whole effing world!  Unemployment in Netherlands is considerably lower than in Morocco, Turkey or Egypt – the countries most Dutch Muslims originate from; the levels of youth unemployment are among the lowest in Europe.  Netherlands is home to Europe’s second highest proportion of Muslim population – the vast majority of whom (even those who were not born in the country and speak Dutch as a foreign language) – are productive citizens.  So why exactly are these young men struggling to find work?  Why are they “vulnerable”, let alone “disaffected” and hopeless??

Someone should tell Ms. Holligan that obstinate facts refuse to align with her ideological preconception.  That the majority of terrorists are neither poor nor vulnerable; that Osama bin Laden was a Saudi-born multi-millionaire; that Mohamed Atta, one of the main ringleaders in the 9/11 attacks, was a scion of a wealthy Egyptian family.  The four perpetrators of the London 7/7 attacks were neither particularly poor nor particularly ‘vulnerable’; nor were the 21 men implicated in the 2004 Madrid train bombings.

Ms. Holligan could have taken the trouble to at least read a report entitled 'Who are the British jihadists in Syria', published just a few months ago by none other but a BBC colleague, Jenny Cuffe.  Speaking to that reporter, a jihadi 'fighter' calling himself Abu Muhadjar says:

I grew up in fairly nice area. I come from a decent family, close-knit family, well educated. Everyone in my family is a university graduate. I'd consider it a middle class family.

In a paper presented to the World Federation of Scientists Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism, Scott Atran (director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Anthropology, and Natural Resources at the University of Michigan) summarised:

Studies by Princeton economist Alan Krueger and others find no correlation between a nation’s per capita income and terrorism [...] study after study demonstrates that suicide terrorists and their supporters are not abjectly poor, illiterate, or socially estranged.

But don’t bother Ms. Holligan with such evidence; she is the kind of ‘journalist’ (all too common in the West these days) for whom pre-conceived opinions count far more than facts.

It's not 'the occupation', either

When it comes to Palestinian terrorism, of course, the same ideological preconception finds an additional twist: not only are the perpetrators poor, they are also rendered ‘hopeless’ by ‘the occupation’.  Cherie Blair put it in the starkest – and most blatantly stupid – way:

As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.

This smiling, baby-faced terrorist blew himself up in a Tel Aviv pub. He was not an 'oppressed Palestinian', but a British Muslim, who had never experienced 'the Israeli occupation'.
(photo from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3snFKgi5fsw)

They have no choice, you see!  They simply have to blow themselves up.  Again, don’t bother the ideologues with the cold logic of facts.  Like the fact that many Hamas suicide bombers were not poor at all (nor were they ‘besieged’ in 2001), but came rather from well-to-do Palestinian families; or the fact that, rather than being ‘driven to despair’ by insufferable occupation, some actually arrived from abroad to experience a better life in the West Bank; or the simple fact that other people are ‘occupied’, too – and they don’t blow themselves up in restaurants or on city buses.

It's the education, stupid!

But if terrorism is not an expression of good ol’ Marxist ‘class struggle’, then what is it that drives these people to perpetrate such horrific crimes?

It is tempting to lay the blame on Islam.  After all, what all these terrorists have in common is their faith.  All 19 September 11 perpetrators were Muslims; so were the 4 London terrorists and the men guilty of the Madrid train bombings.  Nearly 200 men and women blew themselves up in order to kill Israelis; but none of them was a Palestinian Christian.

It is tempting to blame Islam for corrupting these people’s souls.  But it is also superficial and counter-productive.  Because, quite simply, while the terrorists are Muslims, the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists.  Islam is a widespread monotheistic religion, as complex and diverse as Christianity or Judaism; and while some strains of Islamic theology may teach violence, many others do not.

Schools of Terror: Gaza children posing with mock guns, against a cardboard model of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock.  The 'educators' are outside the frame...
(photo: The Israel Project, public domain)

The problem is to be found, of course, in education.  The problem is that it’s precisely those extreme strains of Islam that – either insidiously or through overt political and military power – take charge of education.  They literally ‘groom’ their adepts, brainwashing them first as small children, then as teenagers and young people.

And that is the problem we are not dealing with.  Immersed in a culture of short-termism, neither political leaders nor Western journalists really pay attention to this long-term but critical issue.

Yes, a few ‘home-grown’ terrorists might come back from Iraq and wreck havoc on the streets of London, Paris or Amsterdam; and yes, it may happen tomorrow morning.  Yes, Hamas may once again start firing rockets at Israeli cities, while butchering Palestinians who oppose its rule.  Yes, ISIS and Al-Qaeda may behead and torture more innocent people.  These are all immediate problems.

But the root cause is education.  In London, Birmingham, Paris and Amsterdam.  But even more in Gaza, the West Bank, Northern Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran – because in those places the Islamists have free reign, because they are actually in charge of 'educating' (read: poisoning) young, innocent minds.

My Western reader: you can choose to do nothing about it; you can pretend that it will all go away, or that it isn’t a problem at all.  You can complacently shrug it off and say ‘What do you want me to do?’  But what will you do in a few years’ time, when a new, much larger generation of terrorists spills out of Islamist-run Schools of Terror?  What will you answer when your own children ask you: ‘Why did you not do something about it?  Why did you let this problem snowball – and bequeathed it to me??’

The rat and the mongoose: a modern fable

No, this did not happen ‘a long time ago, in a galaxy far-far away’.  It happened in the Hawaiian archipelago; and it all started towards the end of the 19th century.

Brought as natural rat exterminators, the mongooses soon proved to be just another pest...

At the time, Caribbean plantation owners were tired of their relentless war against field rats – the rodents were eating into their precious sugar cane crops.  Come 1872, a chap called W.B. Espaut had an original idea: why not bring over a few Indian mongooses – those unpretentious mammals known as enthusiastic rat hunters?  Espaut travelled to India, had some mongooses captured and brought them to Jamaica.  Proud of his achievement, the fellow even wrote a journal article, praising the mongoose as the best thing since sliced bread.  The carnivorous mammals had, it seems, multiplied and prospered.  They ate lots of rats, but also, explained Espaut with satisfaction,

"snakes, lizards, crabs, toads and the grubs of many beetles and caterpillars have been destroyed."

This unreserved praise grabbed the attention of Hawaiian sugar cane planters, who also suffered from the rats.  Bringing mongooses to Hawaii as natural pest exterminators seemed such an elegant idea.  True, around 1883 some wise Hawaiian farmer wrote a letter to the ‘Planters Monthly’, urging caution:

"Whether it would be wise to introduce the animal to these Islands may be a question. It would be important to first learn more of the nature of the creature, for they may prove an evil."

But who listens to such prophecies of doom?  Why work hard to hunt or trap the rats, when one could simply let the mongooses do away with them?  ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’.  Long live the alliance between man and mongoose!

...while the rats continued to multiply and prosper.

The problem – it soon turned out – was that the mongooses did not just kill rats; they killed birds, ate eggs, insects, useful reptiles, even small deer fawns.  True, the mongooses also hunted and killed lots of rats; but they did not kill them all.  In fact, the rodents continued to multiply – and so did the mongooses.  Worse, both rats and mongooses carry a disease called leptospirosis, which can be lethal to humans.  To cut a long story short, rather than getting rid of one pest, the hapless Hawaiians ended up with two.  To this day, they still have to use poison and traps – only now they fight both rats and mongooses.

Given his childhood spent in Hawaii, one would expect US President Barack Obama to be familiar with that historic blunder.  Which would be useful, because there’s an important lesson to be learned from it.

These days, a gang of religious fanatics has taken control of large swathes of what used to be called Syria and Iraq.  They see themselves as God’s deputies on earth, and are intent on bringing the joys of medieval-style Sunni Islam to everybody – or else.  In short – they’re a pest.  And a dangerous one, too: they have already killed untold thousands of people – mostly Shi’a Muslims and Alawites.

So what’s to be done?  USA, UK or NATO could, of course, intervene militarily.  But getting involved in yet another war in the House of Islam is unpopular with the Western public; and fighting ISIS would mightily displease the Sunni oil sheikhs who pass for ‘allies’ of the West in the Middle East.

Which is why the idea of subcontracting the ISIS problem to Iran got floated.  After all, the Shi’a Islamic Republic is the only thing Sunni fanatics hate even more than liberal democracy.  ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’.  Or ‘fight fire with fire’.  Or any of the other similarly shallow clichés politicians use to justify morally repugnant acts.

US Secretary of State John Kerry lost no time before discussing the matter with the mullahs’ regime.  Asked whether military cooperation was in the cards, Kerry answered:

"I wouldn't rule out anything that would be constructive to providing real stability."

Stability??  What about morality?  What about common sense?  Isn’t this the same regime that held American diplomats hostage – in violation of age-old rules of human behaviour?  Isn’t this the same regime guilty of mass murdering innocent people, both in Iran and abroad?

But the idea of fighting the ISIS pest by supporting the equally malignant mullahs is not just nauseatingly immoral – it is also incredibly stupid.  Yes, ‘stupid’ is the only way to characterise those who endlessly repeat the same mistakes, never seeming to learn from them.  Did we not commit precisely this type of mistakes – several times already??  Did the West not back with money, weaponry and 'moral' support (both directly and via Saudi Arabia) the Afghan jihadis against the Soviet pest – only to ‘reap’ Taliban and their Al-Qaida ‘guests’?  Did the West not aid Iraq’s ruthless dictator Saddam Hussein against the Iranian ‘common foe’ and did not that Middle Eastern version of Frankenstein later haunt us, his people and the entire region?  In fact, even the mullahs’ nuclear programme – which the West is now struggling in extremis to contain – was born out of Islamic Iran’s fear of an Iraq backed by the West and armed with weapons of mass destruction.  So what do Messrs. Obama and Kerry suppose it’ll happen this time, if the West is now seen to back a potentially nuclear Iran in its clash with Sunni extremists?  Where do they reckon, for instance, that the Sunni, nuclear Pakistan will stand, vis-à-vis of such conflict??

This is not ‘realpolitik’; it’s just a really, really bad idea.  As ill-conceived as bringing the mongoose to fight rats – but infinitely more damaging.  Like the hapless Hawaiian farmers, we are sure to end up with two pests.  Nuclear-armed ones, to boot!

When to be 'ecumenical' – and when not

With three teenagers kidnapped by terrorists in the West Bank, a huge search operation is underway.  Every branch of Israel’s security forces is involved – from the Border Police to the Air Force, from the Army Intelligence to the Paratroopers Corps.  Even Palestinian Authority policemen reportedly cooperate.  But there is one type of uniform that one does not encounter among those active in the search: the beige vests of EAPPI – the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel.  That’s because help with rescuing three kids whose only ‘crime’ is being Jewish is not within the ‘ecumenical’ remit of that organisation.

To be or not to be 'ecumenical'

Funded by the World Council of Churches and operated by the Society of Quakers, EAPPI “brings internationals to the West Bank to experience [Palestinians’] life under [Israeli] occupation”, but not Israelis’ life under Palestinian terrorism; it aims primarily to “provide protective presence to vulnerable communities [read: ‘non-Jewish communities’], monitor and report human rights abuses [read: ‘Jewish abuses’]”.  In practice, the EAPPI activists (who can’t speak the local languages and come equipped with little knowledge and loads of preconceptions) are easily manipulated and further indoctrinated by their Palestinian handlers.  Part of the mission is, upon return, to ‘tell others what they saw’; or, rather, what they were shown.

Given the outfit’s title, naïves may assume that this is just one of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programmes set up by the World Council of Churches – the one that acts ‘in Palestine and Israel’.  But it’s not.  It’s the only one.

Aftermath of suicide bombing near Mosul, Iraq

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Iraq, even while an Al-Qaeda splinter has taken control of large chunks of Iraqi territory and is threatening Baghdad itself.  The ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) has already conducted hundreds of summary executions of civilians and POWs.    So far, one million refugees have fled from the Jihadists.  And that’s on top of Iraq’s ‘normal’ level of inter-sectarian violence.  Which, according to the UN Mission in Iraq, has killed 10,679 people and injured 23,735 in the last 18 months.

Victims of war and inter-sectarian violence in Syria. There are at least 162,000 of these, at least 10,000 of them children. But not an 'ecumenical accompanier' in sight.

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for nearby Syria, where the UN has already given up counting the human lives lost – people are simply killed faster than the international organisation can tally.  The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that over 162,000 people were killed, including more than 10,000 children.  Only God knows how many were maimed, tortured, raped.  There are 9 million refugees.  Palestinian refugees (or rather ‘people born in Syria for generations, but denied Syrian citizenship because they descend from Palestinian refugees’) are abundantly represented among the dead, the maimed and the fleeing.  But Palestinians only qualify for ‘Ecumenical Accompaniment’ when they are wronged by Jews.

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Egypt, where kangaroo courts sentence people to death, hundreds at a time.

Lest we forget – just like the World Council of Churches – the three countries mentioned above are home to sizable Christian communities.  The ‘are’ in the sentence above is gradually turning into ‘were’, as Christians flee the persecution of Islamists; but there are of course no 'ecumenical accompaniers' to “provide protective presence to [those] vulnerable communities”.

Execution in Iran. Were they 'enemies of God' or have they 'sown corruption on earth'?

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Iran, where 1,000 people have been executed in the past 18 months, on charges including ‘terrorist acts’,  ‘corruption on earth’, ‘attempt to overthrow the government’ and ‘enmity to God’.

Afghanistan after 13 years of Occupation: infant mortality rate 117 deaths/1,000 live births -- worst in the world (West Bank 13, Gaza 15). Literacy ratio: Afghanistan 28%; West Bank & Gaza 95%

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Afghanistan, a country still under US and UK occupation, where 46 people were killed in just one day (yesterday), in what the BBC calls ‘low level attacks’.

And that’s just a small part of the Middle East.  I could make this list much, much longer, cataloguing all the numerous and painful diseases that trouble our world.  But what would be the purpose?  Who cares?  Certainly not the World Council of Churches, whose one-and-only Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in the whole wide world operates in the West Bank.

According to the (very unfriendly to Israel) United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in the past 18 months Israeli security forces have killed 27 West Bank Palestinians.  That number includes ‘Amer Ibrahim Naji Nassar and Naji ‘Abd a-Salam Naji al-Balbisi, shot while throwing Molotov cocktails at IDF soldiers; Yunes Ahmad Mahmoud a-Radaydeh, shot while bursting with a tractor into an IDF military base; Saleh Samir ‘Abd a-Rahman Yasin and Nafe’a Jamil Nafe’a a-S’adi, shot in an exchange of fire with IDF soldiers; and three armed members of an Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group, shot after refusing to surrender.

Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, Secretary General of the World Council of Churches and -- incidentally! -- also Co-Chair of the 'Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum'

The West Bank is, of course, hardly a place of harmony and safety, though it may seem such to many a human being forced to live in much, much worse circumstances; without an ecumenical accompanier anywhere in sight.

I am tempted to ask the leaders of the World Council of Churches and those of the Quaker Movement to explain their choices and priorities, as expressed by the one-and-only Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme.  But I know from experience that all I’d hear would be pathetic and dishonest attempts at post-rationalisation.

So, instead, I’m only going to propose a small change of name.  Why not call it, for the sake of honesty and God's Truth, Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Communities Vulnerable to Jews?