Jewish World Review
Dennis Prager
Of
course, the great majority of Muslims are peaceful -- so what?
Whenever the question of Islam and violence, specifically terror, is raised, we
are repeatedly told
that "the vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceful people"
who never engage in terror. This is entirely accurate.
And entirely irrelevant.
The vast majority of Germans living in the Nazi era were also peaceful; very few
ever so much as laid a hand on a Jew. So, too, the vast majority of Russians
never killed anyone while 20-40 million of
their fellow citizens were murdered by their Communist regime under Stalin. The
point here is that the threat to civilization emanating from within Islam is no
more obviated by the fact that the great
majority of Muslims are not violent than the threat that emanated from Nazism
was obviated by the peaceful behavior of the great majority of Germans or the
threat from Soviet Communism was nullified by the nonviolence among the great
majority of Russians.
Germany was a threat to civilization because Nazis and their ideology took over
German society while the majority of Germans (the "good Germans")
either supported Nazi ideals or did nothing. Russia was a threat to civilization
because Communists took over the country, and the great majority of Russians
either supported Papa Stalin or did nothing. Some Islamic societies are today
becoming a threat to civilization because Islamic totalitarians and terrorists
are taking over those societies while a majority of Muslims either support their
ideals or do nothing.
That is why it is meaningless at best and dishonest at worst to deny the threat
to civilization coming from various Muslim countries by noting that most Muslims
are not violent. Only a handful of Saudis
terrorized America on 9-11-01, but a large majority of Saudis support Osama bin
Laden. Few Palestinians strap bombs onto their children's bodies, but the
majority of them support such evil and none others publicly morally condemn it.
At this moment, the dominant strain of Islamic thought is totalitarian, meaning
that wherever possible, a government should be Islamic and govern according to a
strict interpretation of the Sharia
(Muslim religious law). Furthermore, when necessary and when possible, the
Islamists believe these religious laws should be imposed violently -- as in
Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
In addition, the dominant ideological trend in much of Islamic society is
hate-filled. What is said daily about Jews in Middle Eastern mosques rivals what
the Nazis said about Jews. And not only
in mosques. During Ramadan, Egyptian television is running a 41-part series
based on the anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion."
For all these reasons, one's moral assessment of what is taking place in the
Muslim world must be made independent of the fact that the great majority of
Muslims are peaceful people. Their peaceful
lifestyle is not influencing the bellicose trends in their religion.
Thus, what is most frightening is not that there are Muslim terrorists, but by
how little criticism of Islamic terror emanates from normative Islamic groups.
While some Muslim groups have condemned individual acts of Islamic terror such
as 9-11, not one significant Muslim group in the world, including here in free
America, has condemned Islamic terror generally. And the leaders of Al-Azhar
University, the most prestigious institution of Islamic learning, have actually
morally and religiously come out in support of Islamic suicide terror against
Israelis.
So the fact that the majority of those living in the Islamic countries are good
people is of no consequence. Unless they do something to condemn and to isolate
the Muslim totalitarians and
terrorists in their midst, history will judge them as it has all the good
Germans during the Holocaust.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
The Jerusalem Post,
November 20, 2002
15,000 and counting
By Michael Freund
[msfreund@netvision.net.il]
Though hardly anyone seems to have noticed, Israel recently set a new world's
record.
It is unclear when precisely it occurred, or what the exact circumstances were.
But at some point earlier this month, Israel became the first country to endure
its 15,000th terrorist attack in just
over a two-year period.
That's right, you read that correctly. According to statistics compiled by
the IDF, as of November 17, 2002, there had been a total of 15,298 Palestinian
terror attacks against Israel since the intifada began in September 2000. That
works out, on average, to nearly 1 terror attack every hour of every day over 25
consecutive months.
But that is not what qualifies Israel for a place in the record books.
After all, many countries have experienced periods of civil unrest, subversive
violence and lethal terrorism, albeit not nearly as intense or as prolonged as
that which Israel has known of late.
What truly puts the Jewish state in a category all its own, however, is its
willingness to tolerate this ongoing terror campaign, which should have been
defeated long ago.
Everyone, it seems, knows what the answer is to the current predicament.
Everyone, that is, except for the government, which has neither the courage nor
the vision to move into Judea, Samaria and Gaza and topple the Palestinian
Authority once and for all.
Instead, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon prefers to play ping-pong with the
terrorists, sending in the army only to withdraw it a few days later, bouncing
back and forth with no long-term plan and certainly no clear-cut strategy.
Indeed, much of the military activity undertaken by the army seems purely
reactive in nature, coming only after Jews have been killed, rather than before.
Take, for example, the recent IDF response to the terror attack on Kibbutz
Metzer, in which a member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction murdered five
Israelis.
Two hours later, Israeli helicopters fired four rockets into a car-repair shop
in Gaza City that was being used as a clandestine weapons factory. Army
spokesmen said that terrorists were using it to
manufacture explosive devices and mortar shells.
If Israel knew that the place was a death factory, one in which the terrorists
were actively producing tools to murder the innocent, then why did we wait until
after the Metzer attack to knock it out? The
minute the intelligence information regarding the garage's true nature was
confirmed, why wasn't it taken out of commission forthwith?
Similarly, after last Friday's massacre in Hebron, when terrorists killed 12
Israelis near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the IDF re-entered
Palestinian-controlled portions of the city which it had evacuated
just three weeks earlier, on October 25th. According to a statement issued by
the IDF Spokesman's Office, the purpose behind retaking the city was "to
continue the determined action against the Palestinian terror
infrastructure."
That sounds good, except for one nagging question: if Hebron's terrorist
infrastructure was still in place, then why did the army withdraw last month?
Why did it leave the job only half-finished?
Israel's critics at home and abroad suggest that the government's response to
Palestinian terror is immoral because it results in the needless deaths of
innocent Arabs. Frankly, I think they have it all
wrong. If the government's policy qualifies as immoral, it is because it results
in the needless deaths of innocent Jews.
For, by allowing the intifada to continue, and by refraining from taking the
necessary steps to dismantle the PA and defeat the terror organizations, the
government has undermined Israel's security and that of its citizens, leaving
the terrorist threat in place to regroup and fight another day.
But we, the public, must also acknowledge our share of the blame for the current
situation. We have been too silent in expressing our outrage over Palestinian
terror and the government's feeble response. There have been no demonstrations
in the streets, no hunger strikes, no prayer vigils, no mass awakening of
indignation or fury.
Histadrut workers went on strike recently over a 2.1% cost of living increase,
which amounts to just 70 shekels per month, but many people are unwilling to
protest when it comes to the 73 Israelis who have been killed by terrorists over
the past three months.
It is incumbent upon us to wake up from this nightmare. With elections
approaching, we have an opportunity to use all the democratic and legal tools at
our disposal, and to send a clear signal to those running for office. We must
let them know that the people of Israel have had enough,
and that we will no longer tolerate a continuation of the current policy, which
amounts to little more than a series of tired and half-hearted measures.
The time has come for Israel to sweep into the territories, reassert control,
and eliminate the terrorist infrastructure and those who sponsor it. Yasser
Arafat should be led away in handcuffs and put on
trial, along with the rest of the Palestinian leadership. We must stop being
afraid of what the world might say, and start being more concerned about what
the terrorists are doing to us, day in and day out.
Israel has already passed the 15,000 mark when it comes to Palestinian terror.
If the current trend continues, we will hit the "milestone" of 20,000
some time early next summer. That is one record we can not afford to break.
---------------
The writer served as
Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning in the Prime Minister's
Office from 1996 to 1999.
