A Political Article

I read this very long article this morning. There are many points here that people should consider if we want a viable world in the future. This certainly includes my European friends who have their heads buried deep in their fertile soil.

UNDECLARED WWIII
Forwarded by Emanuel A. Winston
Middle East analyst & commentator

This speech by the former President of Weizmann Institute of Science, Haim Harari is
a lesson that the politicians and the Media would do well to learn. I doubt that
they will either read or absorb the lessons in this insightful analysis of Terror
and what it means towhat we call civilization. This is not a trite 'sound byte' for
the Media to toss of with a a one liner. Harari is not the average person speaking
his mind but, rather like listening to the thoughts of an Einstein. Most journalists
and politicians do not have time for deep thinkers who have matured over the years
into wise men with vision. In fact, they simply do not want to know and pursue
ignorance as the safest course. Well, perhaps a few will take the time to read and
absorb. This is a very insightful speech given by Haim Harari, the former
International Advisory Board of a large multi-national corporation, April, 2004.
It's very well worth reading.



UNDECLARED WWIII

By Haim Harari

"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 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 in 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, 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. 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 nderstands 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 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. 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
Goebbels 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, ideouts 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, madrassas 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 hot spots, 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
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. 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 Hezb'Allah 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 Uzbekhistan 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 Qaeda and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hezb'Allah,
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."