http://www.worldthreats.com/middle_east/Haim Harari.htm
Speech by Haim Harari on War on Terror
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. During his years as President of the
Institute, the Institute entered numerous new scientific fields and
projects, built 47 new buildings, raised one Billion Dollars in
philanthropic money, hired more than half of its current tenured
Professors and became one of the highest royalty-earning academic
organizations in the world. Throughout all his adult life, Harari has
made major contributions to three different fields: Particle Physics
Research on the international scene, Science Education in the Israeli
school system and Science Administration and Policy Making.
A View from the Eye of the Storm; Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a
meeting of the International Advisory Board of a large multi-national
corporation, April, 2004.
As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological
"entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our Chairman
suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the part of
the world from which I come. I have never been and I will never be a
Government official and I have no privileged information. My perspective
is entirely based on what I see, on what I read and on the fact that my
family has lived in this region for almost 200 years. You may regard my
views as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you are supposed to
question, when you visit a country.
I could have shared with you some fascinating facts and some personal
thoughts about the Israeli-Arab conflict. However, I will touch upon it
only in passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the broader
picture of the region and its place in world events. I refer to the
entire area between Pakistan and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab,
predominantly Moslem, but includes many non Arab and also significant
non-Moslem minorities.
Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because
Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read
or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been
the central issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there is a 100
year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is.
The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with
Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab
Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to
do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of
hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have
nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait,
endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of
Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own
citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The Taliban
control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with
Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do
with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.
The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally
dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even
if Israel would have joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine
would have existed for 100 years. The 22 member countries of the Arab
league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of
300 millions, 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. These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources,
have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and
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. The total number of
scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6
million Israelis. 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.
Do I say all of this with the satisfaction of someone discussing the
failings of his enemies? On the contrary, I firmly believe that the
world would have been a much better place and my own neighborhood would
have been much more pleasant and peaceful, if things were different.
I should also say a word about the millions of decent, honest, good
people who are either devout Moslems or are not very religious but grew
up in Moslem families. They are double victims of an outside world,
which now develops Islamophobia and of their own environment, which
breaks their heart by being totally dysfunctional. The problem is that
the vast silent majority of these Moslems are not part of the terror and
of the incitement but they also do not stand up against it. They become
accomplices, by omission, and this applies to political leaders,
intellectuals, business people and many others. Many of them can
certainly tell right from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.
The events of the last few years have amplified four issues, which have
always existed, but have never been as rampant as in the present
upheaval in the region. 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". I have no better name for the present
situation. A few more years may pass before everybody acknowledges that
it is a World War, but we are already well into it.
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. It
is spectacular. It is frightening. It is a very cruel death with bodies
dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to many of the
wounded. It is always shown on television in great detail. 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. The U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their
defense against the last murder, not the next one. We may arrange for
the best airport security in the world. But if you want to murder by
suicide, you do not have to board a plane in order to explode yourself
and kill many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in the midst of
the crowded line waiting to be checked by the airport metal detector?
How about the lines to the check-in counters in a busy travel period?
Put a metal detector in front of every train station in Spain 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 killing the guards themselves. You
can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by preventive and defensive
measures and by strict border controls but not eliminate it and
definitely not win the war in a defensive way. And it is a war!
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.
No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you expect some
of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into
doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren't
they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they send
outcast women, naïve 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.
There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures,
countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with
explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more
despair in Saddam's Iraq then in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one
exploded himself. 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 that
the forces on the offensive be united and 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. The United
States understands this now, after September 11. Russia is beginning to
understand it. Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid that
most of Europe still does not understand it. Unfortunately, it seems
that Europe will understand it only after suicide murders will arrive in
Europe in a big way. In my humble opinion, this will definitely happen.
The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings are only the beginning. The
unity of the Civilized World in fighting this horror is absolutely
indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will not be achieved.
The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies. Words can be
lethal. They kill people. 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 even 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.
But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration in
Berlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring
three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the
press and by political leaders as a "peace demonstration". You may
support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat
or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into an
Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with old people
and children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays the
bill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many
children, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is
called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the European
press. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and the
money flows. There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called
"the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is
now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called
the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such
Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but
also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many
people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities.
It was Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough,
people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.
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 living,
usually 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, feed the hungry
and provide some schooling, 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.
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.
Of the three circles described above, the inner circles are primarily
financed by terrorist states like Iran and Syria, until recently also by
Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the Communist regimes. These
states, as well as the Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of the
wholesale murder vendors. 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?
Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably on
their loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in
Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad
"soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots, while
some of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives in
Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands Dollars per month
from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority while a typical local
ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives only a
cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing murders at
the retail level?
The fourth element of the current world conflict is the total breaking
of all 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 naïve 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. Every student of political science debates
how you prevent an anti democratic force from winning a democratic
election and abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized society
must also have limitations. Can a policeman open fire on someone trying
to kill him? Can a government listen to phone conversations of
terrorists and drug dealers? Does free speech protects you when you
shout "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be death penalty, for
deliberate multiple murders? 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? Do you
search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to
reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to
be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back
at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of
children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental
hospital? 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? Well, you do
not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.
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. In the same way that no
country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister, because
such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killers
shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected
by their Government or society. 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. International law does not know how to deal with a
leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted by a country,
which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be too weak to
arrest him. 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. The punishment
for suicide murder should be death or arrest before the murder, not
during and not after. After every world war, the rules of international
law have changed and the same will happen after the present one. 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? In
the short run, only fight and win. In the long run ? only educate the
next generation and open it to the world. 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.
Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi driver
and return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may remove
the tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by preventing new
blood from reaching it from other parts of the body, thereby preventing
new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you want to be sure, it is
best to do both.
But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to realize
that you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more years. In
order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the terrorist regimes,
so that no Government in the world will serve as a safe haven for these
people. I do not want to comment here on whether the American-led attack
on Iraq was justified from the point of view of weapons of mass
destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I can look at the
post-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are
out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran, Syria and Lebanon,
the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan should be added to the
list. As a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq, both Iran and
Syria are now totally surrounded by territories unfriendly to them. Iran
is encircled by Afghanistan, by the Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem
republics of the former Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by Turkey,
Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a significant strategic change and it
applies strong pressure on the terrorist countries. It is not surprising
that Iran is so active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I
do not know if the American plan was actually to encircle both Iran and
Syria, but that is the resulting situation.
In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran
and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to
expand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy
over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can execute
elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces, using Iranian
Embassies. It is clearly trying to develop Nuclear Weapons. Its
so-called moderates and conservatives play their own virtuoso version of
the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game. Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it
is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the
Hizbullah and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it
performed acts of terror at least in Europe and in South America and
probably also in Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a
multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as minor players,
Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most
European countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and refuse
to read the clear signals.
In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial
resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to
understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaida
and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbullah, Sadr and other Iranian
inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of them
collaborate beautifully.
It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer
circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is important
to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic
organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief
organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any small
sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism. It is
also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies and
fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate with it
out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.
Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether the
recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result, if not
for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not
matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they caused the
result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story
will surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries,
including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and forbidding
veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the long run,
Spain itself will pay even more.
Is the solution a democratic Arab world? If by democracy we mean free
elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial
system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel,
exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial
incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior
regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes, democracy
is the solution. If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that
the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and
fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in
Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, if
the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a certain
transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary solution,
paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that an
immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not have
worked in China.
I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer it
takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more costly
and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other region, is
the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the horrors of
World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent lives, before
the tide will turn.
--
Med venlig hilsen
GB