HAIM HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson Institute of
Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001, of the Weizmann
Institute of Science. ......snip


Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main
show is. snip It's a red herring to the root causes I wish to discuss. The
root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is dysfunctional, by any
standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel had joined the Arab
league and an independent Palestine had existed for 100 years. The 22 member
countries of the Arab league, have a total population of 300 million, larger
than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion. They have a
land area larger than either the US or all of Europe. (but) These 22 countries,
with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP ...equal to half
of the GDP of California alone. Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich
and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by
succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers. The social status of women
is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years ago. Human rights are
below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was
elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission. According to a report prepared
by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the
U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab world is much smaller
than what little Greece alone translates. Birth rates in the region are very
high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline. And
all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to
be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at
some point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world.

It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented breeding ground for cruel
dictators, terror networks, fanaticism, incitement, suicide murders and general
decline. It is also a fact that almost everybody in the region blames this
situation on the United States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism
and Christianity, on anyone and anything, except themselves. snip

These are the four main pillars of the current World Conflict, or
perhaps we should already refer to it as "the undeclared World War III":

1. The first element is the suicide murder. Suicide murders are not
a new invention but they have been made popular, if I may use this expression,
only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that most of the Western World
does not yet understand this weapon. It is a very potent psychological weapon.
Its real direct impact is relatively minor. The total number of casualties from
hundreds of suicide murders within Israel in the last three years is much
smaller than those due to car accidents. September 11 was quantitatively much
less lethal than many earthquakes. More people die from AIDS in one day in
Africa than all the Russians who died in the hands of Chechnya-based Moslem
suicide murderers since that conflict started. Saddam killed every month more
people than all those who died from suicide murders since the Coalition
occupation of Iraq. So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It creates
headlines. One such murder, with the help of hysterical media coverage, can
destroy the tourism industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in Bali
and in Turkey. But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that no defense
and no preventive measures can succeed against a determined suicide murderer.
This has not yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World. Who could stop a
suicide murder in the midst of the crowded line waiting to be checked by the
airport metal detector? Put a metal detector in front of every train station
and the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses and they will explode
in movie theaters, concert halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and
hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall and there will always be a
line of people to be checked by the guards and this line will be the target, not
to speak of the guards themselves.



What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded murderous
incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true fanatic religious
beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself up. No son of an Arab
politician or religious leader has ever blown himself. ... Instead, they send
outcast women, naive children, retarded people and young incited hotheads.
They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the next world, and pay their
families handsomely after the supreme act is performed and enough innocent
people are dead.


Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair. The poorest
region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there. ..... A
suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel, inhuman, cynical,
well-funded terrorists, with no regard to human life, including the life of
their fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to their own affluent
well-being and their hunger for power.


The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is identical to the only way in
which you fight organized crime or pirates on the high seas: the offensive way.

Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial .. to reach the top of the
crime pyramid. You cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the little
drug dealer in the street corner. You must go after the head of the "Family."
If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it, many are afraid of it and
some try to explain it away by poverty or by a miserable childhood, organized
crime will thrive and so will terrorism. snip


2. The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies. It is often said that
politicians, diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must
sometimes lie, as part of their professional life. But the norms of politics
and diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total
absolute deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region
we are talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe
that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even
better, a Jewish plot. You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information, Mr.
Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf and his press conferences when the US forces were already
inside Baghdad.



Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic. But to stand, day after
day, and to make such preposterous statements, known to everybody to be lies,
without even being ridiculed in your own milieu, can only happen in this region.
Mr. Sahaf eventually became a popular icon as a court jester, but this did not
stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from giving him equal time. It also
does not prevent the Western press from giving credence, every day, even now, to
similar liars. After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are subtle
ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that the holocaust never happened,
and that the Jewish temple in Jerusalem never existed. But millions of Moslems
are told by their leaders that this is the case. When these same leaders make
other statements, the Western media report them as if they could be true.

It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who finance, arm and dispatch
suicide murderers, condemn the act in English in front of western TV cameras,
talking to a world audience, which partly believes them. It is a daily routine
to hear the same leader making opposite statements in Arabic to his people and
in English to the rest of the world. Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by
horror pictures of mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of those who
lie, distort and want to destroy everything. Little children are raised on deep
hatred and on admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World does not
notice it because its own TV sets are mostly tuned to soap operas and game
shows. I recommend to you, even though most of you do not understand Arabic,
to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You will not believe your own eyes.
snip



3. The third aspect is money. Huge amounts of money, which could have solved
many social problems in this dysfunctional part of the world, are channeled into
three concentric spheres supporting death and murder. In the inner circle are
the terrorists themselves. The money funds their travel, explosives, hideouts
and permanent search for soft vulnerable targets. ... They are surrounded by a
second wider circle of direct supporters, planners, commanders, preachers, all
of whom make a ... very comfortable living, by serving as terror infrastructure.
Finally, we find the third circle of so-called religious, educational and
welfare organizations, which actually do some good, .... but brainwash a new
generation with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle operates mostly
through mosques, madrasas and other religious establishments but also through
inciting electronic and printed media. It is this circle that makes sure that
women remain inferior, that democracy is unthinkable and that exposure to the
outside world is minimal. It is also that circle that leads the way in blaming
everybody outside the Moslem world for the miseries of the region.



The outer circle is largely financed by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from
certain Moslem communities in the United States and Europe and, to a smaller
extent, by donations of European Governments to various NGO's and by certain
United Nations organizations, whose goals may be noble, but they are infested
and exploited by agents of the outer circle. The Saudi regime, of course, will
be the next victim of major terror, when the inner circle will explode into the
outer circle. The Saudis are beginning to understand it, but they fight the
inner circles, while still financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.
Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the guardian, which makes sure that
the people look and listen inwards to the inner circle of terror and incitement,
rather than to the world outside. Some parts of this same outer circle
actually operate as a result of fear from, or blackmail by, the inner circles.
The horrifying added factor is the high birth rate. Half of the population of
the Arab world is under the age of 20, the most receptive age to incitement,
guaranteeing two more generations of blind hatred.

4. The fourth element ...is the ...laws. The civilized world believes in
democracy, the rule of law, including international law, human rights, free
speech and free press, among other liberties. There are naive old-fashioned
habits such as respecting religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and
hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of dead bodies and not using
children as human shields or human bombs. Never in history, not even in the
Nazi period, was there such total disregard of all of the above as we observe
now. snip


Can a government listen to phone conversations of terrorists and drug dealers?
.... These are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But now we have an entire new set.
Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you
return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken
over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? snip Do you shoot an
arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always
surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the
Palestinian areas. What do you do? .... Suppose, for the sake of discussion,
that someone would openly stay in a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the
Iranian Government and financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in
Spain or in France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting
responsibility for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of
the same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his acts
but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and treat him as a
great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure out what Spain or
France would have done, in such a situation.


The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule
of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey by
sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a heavyweight boxer
by a chess player. ... International law does not know how to handle someone who
sends children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and
cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. .... The amazing
thing is that all of these crooks demand protection under international law, and
define all those who attack them as "war criminals," with some Western media
repeating the allegations.

The good news is that all of this is temporary, because the evolution of
international law has always adapted itself to reality. .... But during the
twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done.

The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it? .... The
inner circles can and must be destroyed by force. The outer circle cannot be
eliminated by force. Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite,
more power to women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever
feasible and access to Western media, internet and the international scene.
Above all, we need a total absolute unity and determination of the civilized
world against all three circles of evil. snip