October, 2001

September 11th





On September 11 the world changed for all of us in an instant. There is hardly anyone who was not affected to some extent by the catastrophe which unfolded within the space of a couple of hours. The stunning simplicity of the idea to turn our own jetliners into lethal bombs which destroyed the World Trade Center totally, and the Pentagon partially, has brought home to us how fragile our lives are. Only the heroic acts of passengers on another doomed jetliner prevented a further disaster of untold proportions.

Osama bin Laden - if it was indeed his network - has brought our country literally to its knees and the country turned to God in prayer. The bitter, and in part irrational, fight waged by some for separation of Church and State had become irrelevant. The leaders of our country bowed their heads in prayers led by Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergymen. The much vaunted multiculturalism which pitted our citizens of various ethnic and religious backgrounds against each other was shown up as a charade as all of us became simply Americans rather than hyphenated ones. The problems discussed in the August and September updates: Congressman Condit's affair, federal funding of stem cells research, the disappearance of the budget surplus, raiding of the social security trust fund have all passed, at least temporarily, from our TV screens as we were shown over and over again the pictures of the jets crashing into our symbols of superpower status.

Nevertheless the current unity of our people and the high approval rating of the President's handling the disaster may evaporate when media pundits will begin to clamor for drastic actions with immediately visible results. This is the danger because the enemy is not only outside but inside our borders and we simply cannot "nuke 'em," as has been proposed. There are some "journalists" who appear daily on our TV screens who seem to be unable to grasp the simple concept that you have to investigate the causes of terrorism in order to achieve a permanent cure. It is tragic that when some well-meaning relatively prominent people advance this idea they are being insulted as "peaceniks," "incompetents" or worse. It is these journalists who need to be educated in the fundamentals of life before they fuel the flames of hate and revenge.

The tragedy, apart from loss of life and property, is that some of our "public opinion molders" actually help the terrorists to achieve their objective by spreading fear among our citizenry. Life is a precious gift but we are doomed to die the moment we are born. This is an incontrovertible fact. The only question is what we do with the span of years which is allotted to us. We can fritter them away in the "pursuit of happiness" or we can endow our lives with meaning. Unfortunately the type of meaning which we give to our lives differs considerably depending upon our life experiences and upbringing. But let there be no doubt: the people who hijacked the planes and those who organized this crime firmly believed that they were doing God's will.

All three major religions involved in this tragedy profess to believe in the One God of the universe Who is just, loving and merciful, Yet in actual practice individuals tend to believe in their tribal deity who will aid or avenge them as the case may be. Even Hitler believed he was doing God's work when he persecuted the Jews. In Mein Kampf he wrote "So glaube ich heute im Sinne des allmaechtigen Schoepfers zu handeln: Indem ich mich des Juden erwehre, kaempfe ich fuer das Werk des Herrn" (I, therefore, believe today that I am acting in accordance with the intention of the Almighty Creator: By defending myself against the Jew I am fighting for the work of the Lord). The Second World War was portrayed as a battle between good and evil on both sides. This seems incredible in retrospect but the German soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front were convinced that they were saving Western civilization from Bolshevism, and on the Western front they hoped to defeat Jewish-Capitalist interests which would enslave the fatherland. At the same time the Americans and British were saving that same Western civilization from Nazism. At Placentia Bay, before the signing of the Atlantic Charter in August of 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" while the Wehrmacht was fighting the atheistic Soviet Union. To portray a struggle in apocalyptic terms makes good propaganda on both sides because it fires the emotions but it fosters hate rather than reason. We clamor for justice but most of our pundits fail to see that justice is, or at least should be, indivisible. By aligning ourselves unequivocally with the policies of the state of Israel we have turned a blind eye to the injustices which are being perpetrated against the native Palestinians in the territories conquered during the 1967 war.

Samuel Johnson wrote in regard to the American War of Independence, which he thoroughly disapproved of, that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. The winner writes history. Had George Washington lost he and his most prominent followers would probably have been hanged. So it is with terrorism. Yesterday's terrorists can become Prime Ministers if the struggle succeeds but remain condemned if they fail. Terrorism is the ultimate weapon of the dispossessed and I am sure nobody wants to be reminded that Prime Minister Begin as well as Prime Minister Shamir started their political lives as terrorists against British rule (see Terror out of Zion. The Fight for Israeli Independence by J. Bowyer Bell). The axiom that the end justifies the means is still adhered to, by both sides, although one doesn't want to put it that crudely.



During the past two months I read, among others, three books which are highly á propos. One was Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly, Gloria Whelan's Angel on the Square and Die Rache Gottes. Radikale Moslems, Christen und Juden auf dem Vormarsch by Gilles Kepel. Tuchman eloquently described how nations have acted against their best self-interest by simply persevering on a given course when it had become obvious that it would lead to disaster. She closed her book with the example of the Vietnam War but had she lived longer she might have added a chapter on the policies of the state of Israel since the 1967 war. Whelan's book is aimed at adolescents to teach them the rudiments of the causes for the Russian revolutions of 1917 and shows exquisitely how the leading upper crusts of Imperial Russia utterly failed to recognize the intensity of the storm which was beginning to brew in their midst. The relevance to today's events is that we are likewise blinding ourselves to the anger of the dispossessed masses in the Muslim world which finds its outlet in religious fury.

Kepel's book was originally published in French under the title La Revanche de Dieu Chretiens, juifs et musulmans a la reconquete du monde and it is now available in English as The Revenge of God: The resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World. It is perhaps noteworthy that the French word reconquet would best be translated into German as Wiedereroberung, rather than Vormarsch, which means advance, and in English as re-conquest rather than resurgence. More important is, however, the fact that the book was originally published in 1991. I had bought it in Vienna in the early nineties but did not take it very seriously at the time. September 11 immediately brought the chilling contents back to memory and I re-read key sections. In short the author documents the return to biblical or Koranic Fundamentalism as a protest movement against the secular society the United States is regarded as promoting world wide. Yet all three groups have different goals. Evangelical Christians, steeped in the Revelation of St. John the Divine, want to help the Jewish state to build its Third Temple which in turn would herald the arrival of the Antichrist and subsequently Jesus' second coming. Fundamentalist Jews want the Temple built on the original site which would bring the Jewish Messiah who, obviously, would have no use for the return of an "avenging Jesus." Fundamentalist Muslims despise the presence of Christians as well as Jews in the Middle East which they regard as their patrimony. Thus the battle lines are drawn among Fundamentalists of any of the three versions. There cannot be any compromise because all of them are acting in the name of God. The last sentences of the book when translated from the German version read: "In the short run the parallel development of these religious movements, all of which want to re-conquer the world, has to lead to confrontation. As such the conflict between the 'believers', who make the resurgence of their religious identity a yardstick for their exclusive as well as limited truths, is preprogrammed."

It is obvious that a war of ideas of this type cannot be won by bombs, rockets or invasions but only by another idea which unites rather than divides humanity. The Sharon government insists on meeting terror with terror and wants to enlist us into this spiral of ever escalating violence. Seductive as the idea is it should be resisted because Israel has tried this strategy for the past thirty years at least and is nowhere nearer to a degree of peace. While Arafat is far from blameless for the impasse to place the entire burden on his shoulders, as is currently popular here and in Israel, is not necessarily justified. We are told over and over again that not only did he walk away at Camp David from the most wide ranging concessions ever offered by an Israeli Prime Minister but in addition answered them with Intifada II showing thereby that he does not want to coexist with a Jewish state. This opinion was most recently emphasized again by Norman Podhoretz in the October issue of Commentary.

Yet, let us be honest with each other, Podhoretz concedes that no minutes of the Camp David sessions have ever been published and we have, therefore, no idea what Arafat rejected and why. Was the Palestinian state as envisaged by Israel and the U.S. viable or was it an assortment of Palestinian and Israeli enclaves in what was supposed to have been the state? We simply don't know but we should insist on seeing the documents because there does not seem to be any reason for secrecy in regard to a failed meeting in our free society. The policy of creating settlements, in the occupied territories which has been pursued by all Israelis governments since 1967 has led to a such a patchwork quilt that it is extremely difficult to see how national sovereignty could be established in that area. One glance at the map published on page 104 in Whither Zionism? clearly shows the tremendous difficulty of establishing a viable truly independent state in the area even if the partners in the peace process were to proceed with the best of intentions. Podhoretz does not address the problem and seems to believe that Israel can just continue with its past policies and in the long run the Palestinians will see the errors of their way. September 11 changed the outlook irrevocably. The entire world has been affected economically and the genie is literally out of the bottle. If Prime Minister Sharon wants to "go it alone," as he has promised, he can do so but under these circumstances America should not be held hostage to failed and failing policies.



What is to be done now? In order to formulate a correct strategy we must first of all understand what each side to the conflict really wants. But In order to do so we must see ourselves through the eyes of the adversary. We will disagree with his perception but that does not make it less real for the perceiver. Osama bin Ladin, as the symbol of radical Islam, sees the United States as a decadent country bent on the pursuit of material happiness in disregard of the moral laws of God, and controlled by Jewish interests. America supports and props up the state of Israel as a colonial outpost in an area of the world which, apart from the Crusades' era, has always been Islamic. Jewish secular culture perverts established morals and customs while political Zionism strives for an enlargement of their state. In order to rid the land of Palestine from Infidels the power of the United States must be broken. This is best achieved by involving America in a drawn out war especially in Afghanistan where other superpowers of the past (Imperial Great Britain and the Soviet Union) have ground out their eye teeth. In addition the Muslim masses who hate their non-elected secular regimes, as stooges of the Great Satan, must be mobilized, especially, if and when an Islamic country is invaded by foreigners. The disenfranchised young people in the Muslim countries are sufficiently restless to yearn for change and Islamic revolutions on the model of Iran are to be brought about. Therefore, major military action by the United States is a requirement to bring this plan to fruition and continued provocation through a variety of terror attacks is the only way to accomplish this objective.

What does Israel want? Here the answer is less clear because there are too many factions in the country. The majority of the people just want to live in peace with their neighbors but this is at present difficult to achieve. We, therefore, have to ask what the leadership wants. Obviously it also wants peace but there are considerable differences of opinion as to how this can be accomplished. The governing Sharon faction believes that only a hard line military approach will succeed while the Peres group has not yet given up on a negotiated settlement. In addition the country is quite divided as to what kind of state it is supposed to be. Is it to be a secular democracy with majority rule or a Jewish state governed by ancient Jewish law? Ever since the creation of the state there were two major factions which co-existed uneasily. These may be called political Zionism and religious Zionism. Political Zionism, which founded the country, was secular in nature and as such opposed by religious Zionists who felt that the state was illegitimate because only the Messiah can bring about the ingathering of the dispersed and the erection of the Third and Final Temple. Over the years political and religious aspirations were fused by some visionaries in the attempt to create a Greater Israel beyond the UN established 1948 borders. For them it is not Israel which is the intruder onto Muslim lands but Israelis are simply reclaiming their inheritance, promised by God, which they had lost temporarily. This goal has not yet been abandoned as the settlement policies of the various Israeli governments prove. Although the settlements have considerable popular approval, the problem what to do with a relatively large and probably hostile minority Arab population within the Jewish state tends to be ignored. There are, however, some fanatics who envision a Final Solution (to use a well known phrase) which in their eyes will ensure a permanent peace. The autocratic governments of neighboring Arab states such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and may be Jordan have to be toppled and regimes favorable to Jewish values installed. This can only be accomplished by war with the help, or at least the tacit approval, of the United States. To achieve this end terrorism against the United States can be silently welcomed because it is expected to lead to an intensification of hatred against Arabs in the U.S. and thereby a further identification of America's goals with those of Israel. America's current war on terrorism is to be not only fully supported in its present stage but needs to be expanded to other Muslim "rogue" states. With America fully occupied and radicalized by subsequent further acts of Islamic terrorism Israel can then finally achieve its borders promised to Abraham.

Let me make it unequivocally clear that the overwhelming majority of Israelis do not harbor such Machiavellian fantasies and are genuinely distressed about the loss of innocent lives on September 11; but it is also dangerous to ignore the latent streak of fanaticism in a small minority which pursues only its goals regardless of the costs to others.



What does America want? There is absolutely no doubt that the vast majority of the population just wants to be left in peace to pursue its own personal goals in freedom. This why most of us came here in the first place. Even our leadership does not want war but to get the economy moving and to work for global prosperity. Nevertheless in spite of the current unity the country's opinion makers are split on how to set things right in the world. On account of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition (a term which, by the way, is rejected by observant Jews), there are strong emotional ties to Judaism and the state of Israel. Powerful military action is urged by the majority of journalists. Currently in the minority is another group which regards war as folly but has as yet no strong support from the media. This is bound to change if and when body bags were to arrive in larger numbers.

For these reasons a major war against Islamic states is not in the best interest of the United States but serves only the purposes of Radical Muslims and proponents of a Greater Israel. The Eye for an Eye policy which has been tried by Israel for decades is inappropriate for the United States and a paradigm shift has to take place. Our country is made up not only of evangelical Christians and Jews but of a wide variety of individuals with other belief systems which our political leadership needs to take into account. While simply turning the other cheek is not an option, judicious pursuit of policies which do not pour fuel on the flames is called for and our leadership has indeed resisted to be stampeded into precipitous action.

We can be very grateful that the September 11 attack fell into the first year of the Bush presidency rather than the last year of Clinton's tenure. Politics would have dictated a war, Al Gore would, in all probability, have won the election and the country would have had a Jewish vice-President. This is not to impugn Senator Lieberman's patriotism but some further tilt to the Israeli side would have been unavoidable. President Bush is in the fortunate position of not having to worry about re-election at this time and even if there were to be no second term it would not be a personal disaster for him. He truly serves the country rather than political ambition and the same goes for his wife Laura, which is welcome contrast to our previous leadership. Thus Mr. Bush and his cabinet can act in a statesman-like manner rather than in a purely political one. Let me re-emphasize, therefore, in my opinion America has nothing to gain by major military actions but only a great deal to lose. We will not only lose lives and property but most of all our soul as a free and peace loving people. We will foster further hate which in turn begets hate and events are likely to spin totally out of control.



What is required of us now in these most difficult circumstances is steadfastness of purpose with the goal of bringing a degree of peace as well as hope for a better future to the impoverished Muslim masses. It is obvious that the perpetrators of the crime should be found, through international efforts, and brought to justice, but this is only one step. We have to convince the minds of the people in the region that we are indeed determined to bring justice to all the people in the area and not just some. America is still the world's best hope and if we combine our economic resources with those of the other developed nations we can change the current image of the Great Satan. The road is difficult indeed but what we need to do as individual citizens is to keep our heads, don't give way to irrational fears and pray that our leadership will continue to show forbearance and wisdom.



10-7-2001



The update as it appears above was written between October 5 and 6. Today the world has changed again and as may be apparent, from my point of view, not for the better. Nevertheless, the sentiments expressed above are, to my mind, still true and this is why I am not changing the contents. The bombing campaign against Afghanistan which began today will have consequences which are as yet unforeseeable and we can only pray that eventually reason will prevail over passion.
 
 
 
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