ISRAEL WAR OUR WAR

[RAYMOND]

Domestic Sovietization

Just as the democracies are the only true, long-term allies of the United States, so the Soviet Union develops its deepest ties with totalitarian governments. That the Asad years have witnessed a turn away from authoritarianism (government control of politics) and toward totalitarianism (government control of everything) is apparent from changes that have occurred in the economic, social, and cultural realms. Although the Syrian government yet lacks the all-encompassing institutions of state control of the U.S.S.R., the trend is clearly in that direction.

The Syrian economy has come increasingly under bureaucratic jurisdiction. In agriculture, the government has reduced the proportion of private farms from 82 percent in 1972 to 66 percent in 1982, while increasing the proportion of state-controlled cooperatives. In manufacturing, the state owns all of what are called "strategic industries." Besides the obvious ones, this also includes such enterprises as sugar refining and wool spinning. Attendant on this has been a Soviet-style inefficiency, drop in quality, and misdistribution of goods.

Asad gains direct influence over many Syrians by having them work for him. Civilian employment by the government rose from 12 percent of total employment in 1973 to 22 percent in 1983. Growth in military employment has been even more dramatic, rising from 6 percent of adult males in 1968 to 15 percent in 1982.

As in most Soviet-bloc countries, Syria's leaders devote an extraordinary proportion of their country's resources to military strength. According to highly-placed officials, the Syrian government earmarked 60 percent of its budget in 1980 for military expenditures, 70 percent in 1981, and 60 percent in 1986. Outside sources estimate this to be 30 percent of the country's GNP. Such expenditures give the Syrian military a prominence that matches its Soviet counterpart. Its activities permeate the country's life. The military, for example, freely requisitions land and material resources, interferes in private life via the intelligence services, takes up large portions of the school day for pre-military training, and owns one-third of the motor vehicles in Syria. When added to the "strategic industries" and the vast resources devoted to military power, the picture emerges of a society dominated by Soviet-style militarism.

To offset its economic burden, the Syrian government receives a large percentage of Soviet bloc economic aid, with the U.S.S.R. providing about half and the states of East Europe the other half. This money mostly goes for infrastructure projects such as railroads, ports, dams, land reclamation, and oil refineries. It is spent in such a way as to assure Soviet-style control of the economy as well as dependence on Soviet parts and technicians. Over 1,000 Soviet economic advisors work in Syria. Unofficial estimates place the military debt to the U.S.S.R. at $14 billion.

Soviet-style media have emerged in Asad's Syria. Soviet movies and television-which never attract an audience if an alternative is available-play frequently in Syria. In its official pronouncements, Damascus uses boilerplate leftist language with the numbing regularity of all Soviet-bloc regimes. According to the World Press Encyclopedia, Syrian media, "like the nation, speaks with one voice,... a de facto state-mobilized press exists." The same reference work points out that the two leading papers, Ath-Thawra and Al-Ba'th, published respectively by the Ministry of Information and the Ba'th Party, serve as the Izvestia and Pravda of Syria.

Foreign journalists find that, as in the Soviet bloc, citizens are scared to talk to them about politics. But the Syrian regime has gone farther than the Soviet prototype in that it forbids Western journalists to take up residence in Syria. This means that they are prevented from cultivating personal contacts, and must rely almost entirely on official sources. Following Soviet practice, even the most innocuous military information is deemed a state secret.

The similarities to the Soviet Union do not end with this, however, but extend to the repression of citizens. Like all Soviet-bloc regimes, Syria disregards the rule of law, controls speech, persecutes religion, and engages in torture. Reports of brutality are numerous. One day after an attempt on Hafiz al-Asad's life in July 1980, 600 to 1,000 political prisoners held in a jail in Palmyra were massacred. According to an eye witness, the prisoners were lined up against walls and machine-gunned until all were killed; in reward each of the soldiers was given 100 Syrian pounds.

The regime's violence has been greatest in the city of Hama, which was three times the scene of massacres-in April 1980, April 1981, and February 1982. The last occasion was the largest-scale killing of civilians in the Middle East in many years; 12,000 troops attacked opposition strongholds with field artillery, tanks, and air force helicopters, killing about 24,000 citizens. In addition, 6,000 soldiers lost their lives and most of the 10,000 inhabitants of Hama who were jailed then disappeared. In all, one-tenth of Hama's population died.

Amnesty International's report on Syria in 1983 stated:
Syrian security forces have practiced systematic violations of human rights, including torture and political killings, and have been operating with impunity under the country's emergency laws. There is overwhelming evidence that thousands of Syrians not involved in violence have been harassed and wrongfully detained without chance of appeal and in some cases have been tortured; others are reported to have 'disappeared' or to have been the victims of extrajudicial killings carried out by the security forces.
The Department of State concurs. Its annual review of human rights practices regularly points to Syrian government offenses. It stated in 1983 that "activities which the regime considers to be a threat to its security can lead to detention without charge, severe prison sentences, mistreatment, torture, or execution." The authorities "pursued dissident elements, carried out cordon-and-search operations without judicial safeguards against invasion of the home, carried out arrests, in many cases causing persons to 'disappear,' and engaged in torture and other brutal practices." More recently, the State Department has noted that "while the more public forms of repression have diminished in the past 3 years, there have been no indications of a trend toward a more open political system or greater respect for the integrity of the person." Stalin's methods, in other words, have been replaced by Brezhnev's.

Although the Syrian government denies these accusations, it publicly celebrates brutality. For example, in October 1983 (according to a report in The Jerusalem Post), Syrian television showed
16-year-old girls-trainees in the Syrian Ba'ath Party militia-fondling live snakes as President Hafez Assad and other Syrian leaders looked on approvingly. Martial music reached a crescendo as the girls suddenly bit the snakes with their teeth, repeatedly tore off flesh and spat it out as blood ran down their chins. As the leaders applauded, the girls then attached the snakes to sticks and grilled them over the fire, eating them triumphantly.
After this, militiamen "strangled puppies and drank their blood." Such demonstrations are clearly intended to send a message to the regime's domestic opponents.

These internal developments are not in of themselves unusual in the Middle East, nor do they require close ties to the Soviet Union. But when combined with close relations with the U.S.S.R., hostility to the U.S., and aggression toward neighbors, they contribute in an important way to the regime's overall Soviet orientation.

 

[RAYMOND]

"Helping American Hostages: A Special Case

There is a prominent anomaly in Hafiz al-Asad's pattern of alignment with the Soviet Union; the Syrian government has repeatedly helped return American hostages-or their remains-from the Middle East. On five separate occasions since 1983, Asad has gone out of his way to make this gesture. The acting president of the American University of Beirut, David S. Dodge, was released from a year's captivity with Syrian assistance. Syrian forces shot down U.S. Navy pilot Lieut. Robert O. Goodman over Lebanon on 4 December 1983 and released him a month later. Jeremy Levin, a correspondent for CNN, escaped his Lebanese captors by fleeing to Syrian-controlled territory, from where he was returned to the U.S. During the hijacking of a TWA airline in June 1985, the Syrian government positioned itself as an intermediary between the United States and the Shi'i radicals. When the body of Leon Klinghoffer, the invalid killed on the Achille Lauro, washed up on the Syrian coast, it was immediately turned over to American authorities. In addition Damascus has offered to help win the freedom of American hostages held in Lebanon.

While Asad has undeniably been helpful, three considerations diminish the political significance of his acts. First, in many of these cases the regime played a double game. David Dodge was abducted with Syrian complicity, for how else could he have been taken from Beirut to Iran? In the effort to win release of the TWA passengers, Asad stressed his agreement with the hostage-holders' goals ("We stand with them firmly, and they admit our support is basic"), but appealed for the release of the hostages on tactical guards; holding the Americans was counterproductive because it might provoke the United States to a major strike in Lebanon. In the Jeremy Levin case, Damascus first said that it had won Levin's release through negotiations, only to retract this claim later when the falsehood became evident.

Second, these acts are transparent attempts to improve Asad's image. The White House had to issue a statement that the U.S. was "grateful" to Hafiz al-Asad and his brother for their "humanitarian" efforts on David Dodge's behalf. Lieutenant Goodman was delivered to the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a presidential candidate at the time and a leading critic of the U.S. policy of confronting Syria. By getting involved in a U.S. political campaign, Asad garnered enormous favorable publicity. Though the Syrian government lied about its role in Jeremy Levine's escape, President Reagan nevertheless called Asad to express his gratitude and a State Department spokesman thanked Damascus for its "positive role" in this affair. Syrian help with the TWA hijacking won it exclusion from President Reagan's listing of states that sponsor terrorism; as a ranking White House aide explained, "Obviously you don't return a favor with harsh language."

These efforts have had a wide effect: many Americans view the Syrian regime as one not unfriendly to the United States and very few associate it with terrorism. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll taken in February 1986, whereas 29 percent of Americans associate Libya with state-sponsored terrorism, a mere 3 percent mentioned Syria in this connection.

Third, the promise to help release the American hostages in Lebanon effectively prevents the United States from confronting Syria. David Dodge was freed just when Washington was most angry about Syrian rejection of the U.S.-arranged accord between Israel and Lebanon. Asad released Lieutenant Goodman to prevent further Navy attacks on his positions. Damascus placed itself an intermediary between the United States and the Shi'i radicals who held the TWA airliner in order to prevent an American attack. The October 1986 conviction of Nizar al-Hindawi in London for attempting to bomb an El Al plane led to the immediate release of an American, David Jacobsen, from Lebanon.

Syrian intermediation is taken so seriously that such high-ranking officials as Vernon Walters, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, have gone to Damascus to discuss the hostages with President Asad. Whispered promises of help from Asad undercut any possibility of U.S. sanctions against Syria. (This partially explains why the Libyan role in the Rome and Vienna airport massacres was played up, while the Syrian role was ignored.)

Though certainly welcome in a small way, the help Asad provides must be seen for what it is; a public-relations gesture which at no cost to himself aims to confuse American public opinion about the true relations of the two states and undercuts strong measures by the U.S. government. This minor matter should not obscure perceptions of the damage Asad does to American objectives-no more than the release of Anatoly Shcharansky should alter one's understanding of Soviet goals.

 

[RAYMOND]

U.S. Attitudes toward Syria

In the end, confusion about Syria's true position has less to do with hostages than with a habit of seeing it exclusively in terms of Middle East politics. Preoccupation with the Arab-Israeli conflict tends to obscure Syria's membership in the Soviet bloc. Once we extract Syria from the regional issues of the Middle East and viewing it through the prism of international relations, two points become clear.

First, the Syrian government is a full-fledged ally of the U.S.S.R. The relationship between these two countries is not a marriage of convenience but a close alignment. It results not from transitory considerations but is based on a wide-ranging and long-term reciprocity of interests. Syrian foreign policy agrees on all essential matters with Moscow's, while its domestic life increasingly resembles the Soviet prototype. True, the rulers of Syria are not Communists, but this hardly diminishes Syria's nexus of their relations with Moscow. Indeed, the voluntary quality makes this alliance with Moscow all the more dangerous, for it indicates that Syrian rulers profit from the relationship and sustain it out of self-interest, not compulsion.

Earlier efforts to balance relations with the Great Powers ended completely in 1982; since then, Syria's position vis-?-vis the Soviet Union increasingly resembles that of Cuba, Nicaragua, or Vietnam; it is becoming a functional member of the Soviet bloc. The plain truth is that Syria is the leading Soviet ally and the outstanding U.S. enemy in the Middle East. It deserves to be acknowledged as such, and the knowledge deserves to be acted upon.

Second, seeing Syria as a Soviet ally reveals that the opinions Americans hold on Syria, usually deemed pro-Arab or pro-Israel, are actually better seen as liberal and conservative positions. The liberal viewpoint translates into a policy of conciliating the Syrian government, the conservative view implies an anti-Syrian policy.

Four main assumptions guide liberal policy: that the U.S.S.R., its clients, and its allies are status-quo oriented; that these governments seek good relations with the West; that the West shares responsibility with them for existing international problems; and that concessions by the West are the key to an improvement in relations. The key characteristic of the liberal approach is a tendency to blame the West and a willingness to give the Soviet bloc the benefit of the doubt.

Applied to Syria, this approach translates into a belief that Hafiz al-Asad seeks good relations with the United States but is prevented from achieving them by American actions. Typical is the view expressed by an unidentified diplomat to The Christian Science Monitor: "The Syrians would like to get out of their marriage to the Soviets." If only the U.S. would pressure its allies-Israel especially, also Jordan and the pro-Western Lebanese-into making concessions to Syria, relations would improve; failing this, Damascus turns to the U.S.S.R. But its ties to the Soviet Union will remain strong only so long as the United States ignores Syrian needs. As with Cuba, Angola, and other Soviet-backed states, Syria can be detached from the Soviet connection and the U.S. should do this by satisfying its grievances, for example by pressuring Israel to return the Golan Heights or extending trade credits. In brief, Syria receives about the same portion of liberal good will as does Nicaragua.

Conservatives disagree with all four of the liberals' premises and therefore reach an opposite conclusion. They hold that Soviet-bloc governments are by their nature must be hostile to the West and must be aggressive. They believe that the Soviet bloc is alone to blame for tensions and that Western assertiveness, not accommodation, improves relations.

With reference to Syria, the conservative approach holds that the Syrian government has close and lasting ties to Moscow and conversely, that the animosity to the United states runs deep. It assumes that Syrian expansionism is endemic and can only be stopped by supporting Syrian's enemies. Wooing Syria from the U.S.S.R. is next to impossible, for Asad has a wide range of needs-everything from internal security to advanced missiles-that only the Soviets will provide. Therefore, favors are pointless; to the contrary, the United States should seek to contain and isolate Damascus. This can be done by supporting American allies in the region, especially Turkey and Israel. The U.S. should consider exacerbating Syrian problems by working with the regime's enemies in Lebanon and inside Syria itself.

Although the pro-Syrian position is in effect a liberal viewpoint and the anti-Syrian position is conservative, the confusion that surrounds the Middle East leads many conservatives to adopt a liberal position and vice-versa.

 

[RAYMOND]

As Hamas, the Islamist terror group, surges in the polls with a prospect of joining the Palestinian Authority or even running it, governments worldwide must decide on their responses.

An increasing number of voices are calling for Hamas to be recognized, arguing that the imperatives of governance would tame it, ending its arch-murderous vocation (it has killed around 600 Israelis) and turning it into a responsible citizen. Even President Bush made this argument in early 2005: "There's a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, ?Vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America.' ... I don't think so. I think people who generally run for office say, ?Vote for me, I'm looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table.'"

The historical record, however, refutes this "pothole theory of democracy." Mussolini made the trains run, Hitler built autobahns, Stalin cleared the snow and Castro reduced infant mortality ? without any of these totalitarians giving up their ideological zeal nor their grandiose ambitions. Likewise, Islamists in Afghanistan, Iran, and Sudan have governed without becoming tamed. If proof is needed, note the Iranian efforts to build nuclear weapons amid an apocalyptic fervor.

Hamas might have hired a spin doctor to improve its image in the West, but its leadership candidly maintains it has no intention of changing. Responding to a question on whether Bush is correct that U.S. engagement with Hamas would moderate the terror group, Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas founder, laughed and declared that this tactic "will not succeed." In recent days, Zahar has publicly reiterated that Hamas still intends to destroy Israel.

Fortunately, U.S. policy remains steadfast: "We haven't dealt with Hamas, and we won't deal with Hamas members who are elected," says U.S. embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle in Israel. That is a good start; ideally, there should be no dealings at all with a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas in its leadership.

It was a mistake to permit Hamas to compete in elections. Like al-Qaeda, Hamas should be destroyed, not legitimated, much less courted.

 

[RAYMOND]

Patterns of Global Terrorism, an annual report compiled by the Department of State, provides the authoritative U.S. government survey of the scourge of terrorism. Unfortunately, as I documented in an article about the 2001 edition ("State's Terror Untruths"), it is

a highly politicized document, reflecting the Washington debate and diplomatic imperatives, but this year it has veered into unreliability and even falsehood. It's a dangerous document likely to harm the war on terrorism.

Subsequent Patterns of Global Terrorism reports have been no less unsatisfactory, but they seemed untouchable, for who can or will tell State to clean up its act?

But, lo and behold, the 2003 report, issued on April 29, 2004, finally provoked so much flak, as acknowledged in a State Department press release and explained by Josh Meyer in the Los Angeles Times, it actually was revised. Meyer cites two main sources of criticism, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Democrat of California), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, and Raphael Perl, author of a Congressional Research Service analysis of Patterns of Global Terrorism. While State huffed and puffed about its objectivity and blamed the problems on "clerical errors," their criticisms were thorough and devastating.

I had hopes that the revision would lead to a Patterns of Global Terrorism that is statistically accurate, politically neutral, and academically reliable rather than the "dangerous document" that has muddied the waters in recent years. But when the Department of State finally released its revised version of Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2003, the results were most disappointing.

To take just one theater, the Palestinian-Israeli, a huge disparity remains between the revised report and terror attacks as reported by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). Appendix A of Patterns of Global Terrorism omits twenty-two fatal attacks against Israeli civilians claimed by various Palestinian terror groups ? or more than half their entire number for 2003.

Here follows a chronological list, compiled by Anna Krasko and Teri Blumenfeld (and confirmed by other research), of those terror attacks not reported in the revised Patterns of Global Terrorism, as they appear on the MFA website. (The incidents that follow do not include attacks in which soldiers were killed, even off-duty at military bases, or attacks that resulted in injuries but no fatalities.) All these attacks qualify as ?significant international terror incidents' under the State Department definition and do not differ in location, severity, identity of the victims or the perpetrators from incidents that did get noted in the report. Every effort has been made to match the State Department's criteria for inclusion, as defined thus:

The U.S. Government's Incident Review Panel has determined that the following incidents meet the criteria for significant international terrorist incidents. An International Incident is judged significant if it results in loss of life or serious injury to persons, major property damage (more than $10,000), and/or is an act or attempt that could reasonably be expected to create the conditions noted.

Those missing 22 fatal attacks against Israeli civilians:

Jan 2, 2003 - The charred body of Massoud Makhluf Alon, 72, from Menahemiya in the Lower Galilee, was found in the northern Jordan Valley in his burned out car. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the murder.

Jan 12, 2003 - Eli Biton, 48, of Moshav Gadish was killed and four people wounded when terrorists infiltrated the community and opened fire. Two terrorists were killed by Israeli forces. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

Mar 19, 2003 - Zion Boshirian, 51, of Mevo Dotan was shot and killed while driving in his car between Mevo Dotan and Shaked in northern Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 4, 2003 - The body of Tali Weinberg, 26, of Beit Aryeh, was discovered in a garage in Rosh Ha'ayin with numerous stab wounds. The suspect, Weinberg's boyfriend, arrested on June 11, a 21-year-old Arab resident of Kafr Qasem, is believed to have carried out the murder as part of a "loyalty test" administered by Palestinian terrorist organizations.

May 5, 2003 - Gideon Lichterman, 27, of Ahiya, was killed and two other passengers, his six-year-old daughter Moriah and a reserve soldier, were seriously wounded when terrorists fired shots at their vehicle near Shvut Rachel, in Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 11, 2003 - Zion David, 53, of Givat Ze'ev near Jerusalem, was shot in the head and killed by Palestinian terrorists in a roadside ambush half a kilometer from Ofra, north of Jerusalem. Both Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 17, 2003 - Gadi Levy and his wife Dina, aged 31 and 37, of Kiryat Arba were killed by a suicide bomber in Hebron. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

May 19, 2003 - Kiryl Shremko, 22, of Afula; Hassan Ismail Tawatha, 41, of Jisr a-Zarqa; and Avi Zerihan, 36, of Beit Shean were killed and about 70 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at the entrance to the Amakim Mall in Afula. The Islamic Jihad and the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades both claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 5, 2003 - The bodies of David Shambik, 26, and Moran Menachem, 17, both of Jerusalem, were found near Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital in Jerusalem, brutally beaten and stabbed to death. Believed to be terror victims.

June 12, 2003 - Avner Maimon, 51, of Netanya, was found shot to death in his car near Yabed in northern Samaria. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 17, 2003 - Noam Leibowitz, 7, of Yemin Orde was killed and three members of her family wounded in a shooting attack near the Kibbutz Eyal junction on the Trans-Israel Highway. The terrorist fired from the outskirts of the West Bank city of Kalkilya. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 19, 2003 - Avner Mordechai, 58, of Moshav Sde Trumot, was killed when a suicide bomber blew up in his grocery on Sde Trumot, south of Beit Shean. The suicide bomber was killed. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

June 26, 2003 - Amos (Amit) Mantin, 31, of Hadera, a Bezeq employee, was killed in a shooting attack in the Israeli Arab town of Baka al-Garbiyeh. The shots were fired by a Palestinian teenager, who was apprehended by police. The Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

July 7, 2003 - Mazal Afari, 65, of Moshav Kfar Yavetz was killed in her home on Monday evening and three of her grandchildren lightly wounded in a terrorist suicide bombing. The remains of the bomber were also found in the wreckage of the house. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

July 15, 2003 - Amir Simhon, 24, of Bat Yam was killed when a Palestinian armed with a long-bladed knife stabbed passersby on Tel Aviv's beachfront promenade, after a security guard prevented him from entering the Tarabin cafe and was wounded. The terrorist, who was shot and apprehended, is a member of the Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Aug 10, 2003 - Haviv Dadon, 16, of Shlomi, was struck in the chest and killed by shrapnel from an anti-aircraft shell fired by Hizbullah terrorists in Lebanon. Four others were wounded.

Aug 12, 2003 - Yehezkel (Hezi) Yekutieli, 43, of Rosh Ha'ayin, was killed by a teenaged Palestinian suicide bomber who detonated himself at the local supermarket.

Aug 29, 2003 - Shalom Har-Melekh, 25, of Homesh was killed in a shooting attack while driving northeast of Ramallah. His wife, Limor, who was seven months pregnant, sustained moderate injuries, and gave birth to a baby girl by Caesarean section. The Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

Sept 9, 2003 - Nine IDF soldiers were killed and 30 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at a hitchhiking post for soldiers outside a main entrance to the Tzrifin army base and Assaf Harofeh Hospital. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. The victims: Senior Warrant Officer Haim Alfasi, 39, of Haifa; Chief Warrant Officer Yaakov Ben-Shabbat, 39, of Pardes Hanna; Cpl. Mazi Grego, 19, of Holon; Capt. Yael Kfir, 21, of Ashkelon; Cpl. Felix Nikolaichuk, 20, of Bat Yam; Sgt. Yonatan Peleg, 19, of Moshav Yanuv; Sgt. Efrat Schwartzman, 19, of Moshav Ganei Yehuda; and Cpl. Prosper Twito, 20, of Upper Nazareth. Sgt. Liron Siboni, 19, of Ramat Gan died of her wounds on November 19.

Sept 26, 2003 - Eyal Yeberbaum, 27, and seven-month-old Shaked Avraham, both of Negohot, south of Hebron, were killed during the holiday meal on the eve of Rosh Hashana in the Yeberbaum home when a Palestinian terrorist who infiltrated the settlement opened fire with an M-16 assault rifle. The terrorist was killed by IDF forces. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.

Nov 22, 2003 - Two Israeli security guards, Ilya Reiger, 58, of Jerusalem, and Samer Fathi Afan, 25, of the Bedouin village Uzeir near Nazareth, were shot dead at a construction site along the route of the security fence near Abu Dis in East Jerusalem. The Jenin Martyrs' Brigades, affiliated with Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec 25, 2003 - Adva Fisher, 20, of Kfar Sava; St.-Sgt. Noam Leibowitz, 22, of Elkana; Cpl. Angelina Shcherov, 19, of Kfar Sava; and Cpl. Rotem Weinberger, 19, of Kfar Sava were killed and over 20 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at a bus stop at the Geha Junction, east of Tel Aviv, near Petah Tikva. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack.

That the Department of State, even in revising its basic research document on terrorism, does such a shoddy job points to its inability to carry out this task which needs to be handled by some other department or agency, one that can properly do objective work.

Other items in category US politics

 

[RAYMOND]

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe."

This sentence, spoken last week by George W. Bush, is about the most jaw-dropping repudiation of an established bipartisan policy ever made by a US president.

Not only does it break with a policy the US government has pursued since first becoming a major player in the Middle East, but the speech is audacious in ambition, grounded in history, and programmatically specific. It's the sort of challenge to existing ways one expects to hear from a columnist, essayist, or scholar ? not from the leader of a great power.

Bush spoke in a candid manner, as heads of state almost never do: "In many Middle Eastern countries, poverty is deep and it is spreading, women lack rights and are denied schooling. Whole societies remain stagnant while the world moves ahead. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export."

This is not the first time Bush has dispatched decades' worth of policy toward a Middle East problem and declared a radically new approach.

He also did so concerning Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict:

Iraq: He brushed aside the long-standing policy of deterrence, replacing it in June 2002 with an approach of hitting before getting hit. US security, he said, "will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." This new approach provided justification for the war against Saddam Hussein, removing the Iraqi dictator from power before he could attack.

Arab-Israeli conflict: I called Bush's overhaul of the US approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict in June 2003 perhaps "the most surprising and daring step of his presidency." He changed presumptions by presenting a Palestinian state as the solution, imposing this vision on the parties, tying results to a specific timetable, and replacing leaders of whom he disapproved.

And this time:

Democracy: The president renounced a long-accepted policy of "Middle East exceptionalism" ? getting along with dictators ? and stated US policy would henceforth fit with its global emphasis of making democracy the goal.

He brought this issue home by tying it to American security: "With the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo." Then, on the premise that "the advance of freedom leads to peace," Bush announced "a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."

Drawing explicit comparisons with the US success in sponsoring democracy in Europe and Asia, he called on Americans once again for "persistence and energy and idealism" to do the same in the Middle East.

Understanding the rationale behind the old dictator-coddling policy makes clear the radicalism of this new approach. The old way noticed that the populations are usually more anti-American than are the emirs, kings, and presidents. Washington was rightly apprehensive that democracy would bring in more radicalized governments; this is what did happen in Iran in 1979 and nearly happened in Algeria in 1992. It also worried that once the radicals reached power, they would close down the democratic process (what was dubbed "one man, one vote, one time").

Bush's confidence in democracy ? that despite the street's history of extremism and conspiracy-mindedness, it can mature and become a force of moderation and stability ? is about to be tested. This process did in fact occur in Iran; will it recur elsewhere? The answer will take decades to find out.

However matters develop, this gamble is typical of a president exceptionally willing to take risks to shake up the status quo. And while one speech does not constitute a new foreign policy ? which will require programmatic details, financial support, and consistent execution ? the shift has to start somewhere. Presidential oratory is the appropriate place to start.

And if the past record of this president in the Middle East is anything by which to judge ? toppling regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, promoting a new solution to Arab-Israeli conflict ? he will be true to his word here too. Get ready for an interesting ride.

Other items in category US foreign policy

 

[RAYMOND]

Bush on Israel: Heartburn for All
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
March 4, 2003




Consistency and predictability are core strengths of George W. Bush as a politician. Be the issue domestic (taxes, education) or foreign (terrorism, Iraq), once he settles on a policy he sticks with it. There is no ambiguity, no guessing what his real position might be, no despair at interpreting contradictions. Even his detractors never complain about "Tricky George" or "Slick Bush."

But there is one exception to this pattern. And - couldn't you have predicted it? - the topic is the Arab-Israeli conflict. Here, Bush not only seems unable to make up his mind, but he oscillates between two quite contrary views.

For example, at the height of the Palestinian assault against Israel last April, the president delivered a major address that contained within it a flagrant contradiction.

* He began by slamming Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) for its terrorism against Israelis, and he fingered several groups, one of them (Al-Aqsa Brigades) under Arafat's control, attempting to destroy Israel. In this spirit, not surprisingly, Bush approved of Israeli efforts at self-protection, saying that "America recognizes Israel's right to defend itself from terror."

* Then, in concluding the speech, he drew policy conclusions at odds with this analysis. The president asked Palestinian leaders to make some nominal gestures to prove they are "truly on the side of peace," then demanded that Israel's government reciprocate with four giant steps (halt its military efforts, withdraw from areas it had recently occupied, cease civilian construction in the occupied territories and help build a viable Palestinian state).

In sum, Bush theoretically backed Israel and condemned Arafat while practically he backed Arafat and punished Israel. All this left most observers stumped.

Their puzzlement then grew, specifically about the requirements for a Palestinian state. In June 2002, amid much fanfare, the president unveiled a major initiative making this contingent on significant changes in Palestinian behavior: "When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors," he said, "the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state."

Three months later, the State Department furtively unveiled a contrary initiative, something it called the "concrete, three-phase implementation road map." This road map can plan on a Palestinian state by 2005 by dispensing with Bush's requirements of the PA and instead requesting only token assurances from it.

This duality leads to heartburn on all sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as no one can quite figure out U.S. policy. One thesis is that the White House and the State Department have separate plans. That appears to be what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon thinks and explains why he has ignored the road map and focused on the president's June speech.

As though in reply to this, in a major address to the American Enterprise Institute last week, Bush signaled his endorsement of the road map: "It is the commitment of our government - and my personal commitment - to implement the road map," he said.

And yet, doubts persist.

When a politician acts inconsistently, it usually signals an attempt to please opposed constituencies. In this case, President Bush feels pressure from the Republican voters who put him in office to help Israel protect itself. A Gallup poll last month showed 80 percent of Republicans holding a favorable opinion of Israel, and no politician ignores a number like that.

But the pressure for a Palestinian state is no less impressive, coming from a wide range of influential forces, ranging from Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Democrats in Congress and beyond them to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Arab leaders.

Observing these contradictions through two years of the Bush administration leads me to one main conclusion: In key ways - sympathy for Israel's plight, diplomatic support, providing arms - Bush tends to ignore his own Palestinian-state rhetoric and stand solidly with Israel. His statements demanding this from Israel and promising that to the Palestinians appear to be a sop to outside pressure, not operational policy.

In short, look at what President Bush does, not what he says, and you'll find his usual consistency, this time hiding under a veneer of apparent indecision.

If this is accurate, then the road map is for show, not true policy, and U.S. endorsement of a Palestinian state remains remote.

 

[RAYMOND]

What do Muslims think of Osama bin Laden?

Ask Westerners and you'll hear how marginal he is. President Bush says bin Laden represents a "fringe form of Islamic extremism . . . rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics." American specialists on Islam agree. "Osama bin Laden is to Islam like Timothy McVeigh is to Christianity," says Mark Juergensmeyer of the University of California. Karen Armstrong, author of a bestselling book about Islam, reports that the "vast majority of Muslims . . . are horrified by the atrocity of Sept. 11."

Well, that "vast majority" is well hidden and awfully quiet, if it even exists. With the exception of one government-staged anti-bin Laden demonstration in Pakistan and very few prominent Islamic scholars, hardly anyone publicly denounces him. The only Islamic scholar in Egypt who unreservedly condemns the Sept. 11 suicide operations admits he is completely isolated.

American officials are still waiting for Muslim politicians to speak up. "It'd be nice if some leaders came out and said that the idea the United States is targeting Islam is absurd," notes one U.S. diplomat.They don't because the Muslim world is bursting with adulation for the Saudi militant.

* "Long live bin Laden" shout 5,000 demonstrators in the southern Philippines.

* In Pakistan, bin Laden's face sells merchandise and massive street rallies have left two persons dead. Ten thousand march in the capitals of Bangladesh and Indonesia.

* In northern Nigeria, bin Laden has (according to Reuters) "achieved iconic status" and his partisans set off religious riots leading to 200 deaths.

* Pro-bin Laden demonstrations took place even in Mecca, where overt political activism is unheard of.

Everywhere, The Washington Post reports, Muslims cheer bin Laden on "with almost a single voice." The Internet buzzes with odes to him as a man "of solid faith and power of will." A Saudi explains that "Osama is a very, very, very, very good Muslim." A Kenyan adds: "Every Muslim is Osama bin Laden." "Osama is not an individual, but a name of a holy war," reads a banner in Kashmir. In perhaps the most extravagant statement, one Pakistani declared that "Bin Laden is Islam. He represents Islam." In France, Muslim youths chant bin Laden's name as they throw rocks at non-Muslims.

Palestinians are especially enamoured. According to Hussam Khadir, a member of Arafat's Fatah party, "Bin Laden today is the most popular figure in the West Bank and Gaza, second only to Arafat." A 10-year-old girl announces that she loves him like a father. Nor is she alone. "Everybody loves Osama bin Laden at this time. He is the most righteous man in the whole world," declares a Palestinian woman. A Palestinian Authority policeman calls him "the greatest man in the world & our Messiah" even as he (reluctantly) disperses students who march in solidarity with the Saudi.

Survey research helps us understand these sentiments. In the Palestinian Authority, a Bir Zeit poll found that 26 percent of Palestinians consider the Sept. 11 attacks consistent with Islamic law. In Pakistan, a Gallup found a nearly identical 24 percent reaching this conclusion.

Even those who consider the attacks an act of terrorism (64 percent of both Palestinians and Pakistanis) show respect for these as acts of political defiance and technical prowess. "Of course we're upset that so many died in New York. But at the same time, we're in awe of what happened," said a young Cairene woman.

An online survey of Indonesians found 50 percent seeing bin Laden as a "justice fighter" and 35 percent a terrorist. More broadly, I estimate that bin Laden enjoys the emotional support of half the Muslim world.

That America's politicans and experts on Islam insist on seeing bin Laden as an isolated McVeigh-like figure is worrisome; they miss the danger that bin Laden's militant Islam poses to existing governments - perhaps their greatest challenge of recent times. Their fear of him goes far to explain why the authorities so heavily discourage pro-bin Laden sentiments (forbidding posters of him, arresting militant Islamic leaders, blocking street gatherings, closing schools and universities, patrolling streets with loaded machine guns, and even shooting demonstrators).

The wide and deep Muslim enthusiasm for bin Laden is an extremely important development that needs to be understood, not ignored.

 

[RAYMOND]

The current round of hostilities between Israel and its enemies differs from prior ones in that it's not an Arab-Israeli war, but one that pits Iran and its Islamist proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, against Israel.

This points, first, to the increasing power of radical Islam. When Israeli forces last confronted, on this scale, a terrorist group in Lebanon in 1982, they fought the Palestine Liberation Organization, a nationalist-leftist organization backed by the Soviet Union and the Arab states. Now, Hizbullah seeks to apply Islamic law and to eliminate Israel through jihad, with the Islamic Republic of Iran looming in the background, feverishly building nuclear weapons.

Non-Islamist Arabs and Muslims find themselves sidelined. Fear of Islamist advances ? whether subversion in their own countries or aggression from Tehran ? finds them facing roughly the same demons as does Israel. As a result, their reflexive anti-Zionist response has been held in check. However fleetingly, what The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh calls "an anti-Hizbullah coalition," one implicitly favorable to Israel, has come into existence.

It began on July 13 with a startling Saudi statement condemning "rash adventures" that created "a gravely dangerous situation." Revealingly, Riyadh complained about Arab countries being exposed to destruction "with those countries having no say." The kingdom concluded that "these elements alone bear the full responsibility of these irresponsible acts and should alone shoulder the burden of ending the crisis they have created." George W. Bush's spokesman, Tony Snow, a day later described the president as "pleased" by the statement.

On July 15, the Saudis and several other Arab states at an emergency Arab League meeting condemned Hizbullah by name for its "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts." On July 17, Jordan's King Abdullah warned against "adventures that do not serve Arab interests."

A number of commentators began to take up the same argument, most notably Ahmed Al-Jarallah, editor-in-chief of Kuwait's Arab Times, author of one of the most remarkable sentences ever published in an Arab newspaper: "The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community." Interviewed on Dream2 television, Khaled Salah, an Egyptian journalist, condemned Hassan Nasrallah of Hizbullah: "Arab blood and the blood of Lebanese children is much more precious than raising [Hizbullah's] yellow flags and pictures of [Iran's Supreme Leader] Khamene'i."

A leading Wahhabi figure in Saudi Arabia even declared it unlawful for Sunni Muslims to support, supplicate for, or join Hizbullah. No major Arab oil-exporting state appears to have any intention of withholding its oil or gas exports out of solidarity with Hizbullah.

Many Lebanese expressed satisfaction that the arrogant and reckless Hizbullah organization was under assault. One Lebanese politician privately confided to Michael Young of Beirut's Daily Star that "Israel must not stop now ? for things to get better in Lebanon, Nasrallah must be weakened further." The prime minister, Fuad Saniora, was quoted complaining about Hizbullah having become "a state within a state." A BBC report quoted a resident of the Lebanese Christian town of Bikfaya estimating that 95 percent of the town's population was furious at Hizbullah.

The Palestinian Legislative Council expressed its dismay at these muted Arab reactions, while a women's group burned flags of Arab countries on Gaza's streets. Nasrallah complained that "Some Arabs encouraged Israel to continue fighting" and blamed them for extending the war's duration.

Surveying this opinion, Youssef Ibrahim wrote in his New York Sun column of an "intifada" against the "little turbaned, bearded men" and a resounding "no" to Hizbullah's effort to start an all-out war with Israel. He concluded that "Israel is finding, to its surprise, that a vast, not-so-silent majority of Arabs agrees that enough is enough."

One hopes that Ibrahim is right, but I am cautious. First, Hizbullah still enjoys wide support. Second, these criticisms could well be abandoned as popular anger at Israel mounts or the crisis passes. Finally, as Michael Rubin notes in the Wall Street Journal, coolness toward Hizbullah does not imply acceptance of Israel: "There is no change of heart in Riyadh, Cairo or Kuwait." Specifically, Saudi princes still fund Islamist terrorism.

Arab disavowal of Hizbullah represents not a platform on which to build, only a welcome wisp of reality in an era of irrationality.

 

[RAYMOND]

As the Iranian regime barrels forward, openly calling for the destruction of Israel and overtly breaking the nuclear non-proliferation rules, two distinctly undesirable prospects confront the West.

The first is to acquiesce to Tehran and hope for the best. Perhaps deterrence will work and the six-decade moratorium on using atomic weapons will remain in place. Perhaps the Iranian leadership will shed its messianic outlook. Perhaps no other states will repeat Iran's decision to flaut the rules they had promised to obey.

The key words in this scenario are "hope" and "perhaps," with the proverbial wing and prayer replacing strategic plans. This is not, to put it mildly, the usual way great powers conduct business.

The second prospect consists of the U.S. government (and perhaps some allies) destroying key Iranian installations, thereby delaying or terminating Tehran's nuclear aspirations. Military analysts posit that American airpower, combined with good intelligence and specialized ordnance, suffice to do the needed damage in a matter of days; plus, it could secure the Straits of Hormuz.

But an attack will have unfavorable consequences, and especially in two related areas: Muslim public opinion and the oil market. All indications suggest that air strikes would cause the now-alienated Iranian population to rally to its government. Globally, air strikes would inflame already hostile Muslim attitudes toward the United States, leading to a surge in support for radical Islam and a further separation of civilizations. News reports indicate that Tehran is funding terrorist groups so that they can assault American embassies, military bases, and economic interests, step up attacks in Iraq, and launch rockets against Israel.

Even if Western military forces can handle these challenges, air raids may cause Iranians and their supporters to withhold oil and gas from the market, engage in terror against energy infrastructure, and foment civil unrest, all of which could create an economic downturn rivaling the energy-induced recession of the mid-1970s.

Faced with these two unappealing alternatives, I conclude, along with Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, that "There's only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option. That is a nuclear-armed Iran."

But is there a third, more palatable option? Finding it is the goal of every analyst who addresses the topic, including this one. That third option necessarily involves a mechanism to dissuade the Iranian regime from developing and militarizing its atomic capabilities. Does such a deterrence exist?

Yes, and it even has a chance of success. Iran, fortunately, is not an absolute dictatorship where a single person makes all key decisions, but an oligarchy with multiple power centers and with debate on many issues. The political leadership itself is divided, with important elements dubious about the wisdom of proceeding with nukes, fearful of the international isolation that will follow, not to speak of air strikes. Other influential sectors of society ? religious, military, and economic in particular ? also worry about the headlong rush.

A campaign by Iranians to avoid confrontation could well prevail, as Iran does not itself face an atomic threat. Going nuclear remains a voluntary decision, one Tehran can refrain from making. Arguably, Iranian security would benefit by staying non-nuclear.

Forces opposed to nuclearization need to be motivated and unified, and that is made more likely by strong external pressure. Were Europeans, Russians, Chinese, Middle Easterners, and others to act in sync with Washington, it would help mobilize opposition elements in Iran. Indeed, those states have their own reasons to dread both a nuclear Tehran and the bad precedent this sets for other potential atomic powers, such as Brazil and South Africa.

That international cooperation, however, is not materializing, as can be seen at the United Nations. The Security Council meanders on the Iran issue and an Iranian official has been elected to, of all things, the UN's disarmament commission (which is tasked with achieving nuclear disarmament).

Deterring Tehran requires sustained, consistent external pressure on the Iranian body politic. That implies, ironically, that those most adverse to U.S.-led air strikes must (1) stand tight with Washington and (2) convince Iranians of the terrible repercussions for them of defying the international consensus.

Such steps offer no guarantee of success, but they do present the only realistic way to prevent grave dangers.

 

[RAYMOND]

Thanks to the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a new word has entered the political vocabulary: mahdaviat.

Not surprisingly, it's a technical religious term. Mahdaviat derives from mahdi, Arabic for "rightly-guided one," a major figure in Islamic eschatology. He is, explains the Encyclopaedia of Islam, "the restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world." The concept originated in the earliest years of Islam and, over time, became particularly identified with the Shi?ite branch. Whereas "it never became an essential part of Sunni religious doctrine," continues the encyclopedia, "Belief in the coming of the Mahdi of the Family of the Prophet became a central aspect of the faith in radical Shi?ism," where it is also known as the return of the Twelfth Imam.

Mahdaviat means "belief in and efforts to prepare for the Mahdi."

In a fine piece of reporting, Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor shows the centrality of mahdaviat in Mr. Ahmadinejad's outlook and explores its implications for his policies.

As mayor of Tehran, for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to have in 2004 secretly instructed the city council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi. A year later, as president, he allocated $17 million for a blue-tiled mosque closely associated with mahdaviat in Jamkaran, south of the capital. He has instigated the building of a direct Tehran-Jamkaran railroad line. He had a list of his proposed cabinet members dropped into a well adjacent to the Jamkaran mosque, it is said, to benefit from its purported divine connection.

He often raises the topic, and not just to Muslims. When addressing the United Nations in September, Mr. Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi's appearance: "O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace."

On returning to Iran from New York, Mr. Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech:

one of our group told me that when I started to say "In the name of God the almighty and merciful," he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. ? And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

What Mr. Peterson calls the "presidential obsession" with mahdaviat leads Mr. Ahmadinejad to "a certitude that leaves little room for compromise. From redressing the gulf between rich and poor in Iran, to challenging America and Israel and enhancing Iran's power with nuclear programs, every issue is designed to lay the foundation for the Mahdi's return."

"Mahdaviat is a code for [Iran's Islamic] revolution, and is the spirit of the revolution," says the head of an institute dedicated to studying and speeding the Mahdi's appearance. "This kind of mentality makes you very strong," the political editor of Resalat newspaper, Amir Mohebian, observed. "If I think the Mahdi will come in two, three, or four years, why should I be soft? Now is the time to stand strong, to be hard." Some Iranians, reports PBS, "worry that their new president has no fear of international turmoil, may think it's just a sign from God."

Mahdaviat has direct and ominous implications for the U.S.-Iran confrontation, says an Ahmadinejad supporter, Hamidreza Taraghi of Iran's hard-line Islamic Coalition Society. It implies seeing Washington as the rival to Tehran and even as a false Mahdi. For Mr. Ahmadinejad, the top priority is to challenge America, and specifically to create a powerful model state based on "Islamic democracy" by which to oppose it. Mr. Taraghi predicts trouble ahead unless Americans fundamentally change their ways.

I'd reverse that formulation. The most dangerous leaders in modern history are those (such as Hitler) equipped with a totalitarian ideology and a mystical belief in their own mission. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fulfills both these criteria, as revealed by his U.N. comments. That combined with his expected nuclear arsenal make him an adversary who must be stopped, and urgently.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 11, 2006 update: Jackson Diehl provides more information on this topic in "In Iran, Apocalypse vs. Reform," which I excerpt below:

QOM, Iran?In a dusty brown village outside this Shiite holy city, a once-humble yellow-brick mosque is undergoing a furious expansion. Cranes hover over two soaring concrete minarets and the pointed arches of a vast new enclosure. Buses pour into a freshly asphalted parking lot to deliver waves of pilgrims.

The expansion is driven by an apocalyptic vision: that Shiite Islam's long-hidden 12th Imam, or Mahdi, will soon emerge?possibly at the mosque of Jamkaran?to inaugurate the end of the world. The man who provided $20 million to prepare the shrine for that moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly told his cabinet that he expects the Mahdi to arrive within the next two years. Mehdi Karrubi, a rival cleric, has reported that Ahmadinejad ordered that his government's platform be deposited in a well at Jamkaran where the faithful leave messages for the hidden imam.

Such gestures are one reason some Iranian clerics quietly say they are worried about a leader who has become the foremost public advocate of Iran's nuclear program. "Some of us can understand why you in the West would be concerned," a young mullah here told me last week. "We, too, wonder about the intentions of those who are controlling this nuclear work."

Qom is a place where the possible ends of Iran's slowly crumbling Islamic regime can be glimpsed?both the catastrophic and the potentially benign. There is the rising, officially nurtured last-days cult at Jamkaran, and the extremist rants of Ahmadinejad's own spiritual adviser, Ayatollah Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, who recently suggested that future elections were superfluous because a true Islamic government had arisen.

 

[RAYMOND]

Truth on Terror
by Priya Abraham
World Magazine
October 11, 2003

Daniel Pipes is not a typical historian. When the 53-year-old Middle East scholar gave a public lecture a year ago at the University of Washington, Professor Edward Alexander drove him to an underground entrance at the auditorium. Armed policemen whisked him to a hiding place backstage. Long lines of audience members inched forward as bag checkers inspected their belongings. Mr. Alexander had never seen such a tight phalanx of security surround a university speaker. Mr. Pipes is beginning to see college campuses that way more often.

Letters protesting that lecture, "The War on Terrorism and Militant Islam," streamed into Mr. Alexander's e-mail inbox within half an hour of sending an inter-office message about the event. Daniel Pipes "is a rabid Muslim hater," wrote one man, representing a local Muslim group. "If he goes any further he will be in the same company as Hitler when he told Mussolini the Jews are like 'TB Bacilli' and must be eradicated."

Criticism of Mr. Pipes has only increased since then. In April, President Bush nominated him to serve on the board of directors of the United States Institute for Peace, a federal think tank whose directors are required by law to "have appropriate practical or academic experience in peace and conflict resolution."

The Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) launched a campaign to block his appointment. Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) all decried the choice as the worst fit for the organization. The Senate delayed a vote on Mr. Pipes's nomination, forcing President Bush to appoint him during the congressional summer recess. That means Mr. Pipes will only serve until 2005, when a new Congress takes office, rather than a full four-year term.

How does an academic appointed to a somewhat obscure post stir such rancor? Mr. Pipes's flaw, in the eyes of his critics, seems to be his willingness to point out who?and which religion?is behind terrorism. "Pipes enrages many people because he says that our enemy is not 'terror' but radical Islam," Mr. Alexander said, "and that it makes no more sense for Bush to say that we are at war with 'terror' than it would have done for FDR to have said, after Pearl Harbor, that we are at war with 'sneak attacks' instead of saying, as he did, that we are 'now at war with the empire of Japan.'"

Mr. Pipes has advocated racial profiling of Middle Easterners as an unpleasant necessity to root out terrorists. He estimates that 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide are Islamists and therefore potential killers. He's rung warning bells about national Muslim advocacy groups such as CAIR and the American Muslim Council, saying their leaders aim to further radical Islam in America. And while Mr. Pipes doesn't condemn Islam as a whole, he doesn't call it a "religion of peace," either.

On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Mr. Pipes argues that the Oslo Peace Accords 10 years ago and President Bush's road map today are failures. They made the critical mistake of allowing the Palestinians to think Israel was weak when it made concessions. Only unmitigated force from Israel, he says, will convince the Palestinians that they cannot rub out the Jewish state, and only then will they agree to coexist with Israel.

His critics harvest sumptuous fodder from such blunt views. His supporters see them as common-sense deductions, and point to his prediction of a day like 9/11 as proof of his insight. Either way, Mr. Pipes seems to attract only hatred or adoration.

A Harvard-educated historian, Mr. Pipes started down his career path by studying medieval Islamic history. He began traveling alone in Northern Africa when he was 18, and after college spent three years in Egypt while pursuing his doctoral studies and becoming fluent in Arabic. What fascinated him was the influence Islam had on the politics and life of the region. "Working on the subject some 35 years ago, it was obscure," he said.

At about the same time, Mr. Pipes was cementing the beliefs he grew up with in a politically conservative home. His college days at Harvard came during the height of the cultural revolution of the late '60s and early '70s. His father, Richard Pipes, was a Harvard professor who specialized in the Soviet Union and went on to spearhead the Reagan policy in the 1980s of chucking appeasement and confronting the Cold War arch enemy instead. His son Daniel watched campus anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and lost friends because of his opinions. Those were character-sculpting times.

"That was more difficult than anything since, just starting out in the world," he said. Mr. Pipes challenged himself on why he was a conservative: "That was a question I asked myself repeatedly. I had traveled a great deal and therefore had an understanding of the U.S. and the world and therefore this country in a way that others did not." College roommate and long-time friend Arthur Waldron remembers him sitting on the floor at home, leaning against a bookcase with soft classical or jazz music playing in the background as he wrote in a diary?where he thinks Mr. Pipes hashed out his views.

"What I think it reflects is a seriousness about life," he said. "He was someone who was outgoing but introspective. He's analytical?he holds himself to very high standards." Mr. Pipes was a deep thinker right from childhood. He loved to read?especially the classics (his favorite was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice). "My image of him as a teenager is riding up a ski lift in Switzerland, reading a book," said his father, Richard.

By 1979, Mr. Pipes's chosen field of study was no longer so obscure, as radicalized students held Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 444 days. It was the first hit that America took from militant Islam, which Mr. Pipes came to see as an enemy of the United States. He compares militant Islam, which he defines as an ideology seeking control of states, to fascism in World War II and Marxism-Leninism in the Cold War. Terrorism is only a symptom of the ideology. (Mr. Pipes's signature phrase is "militant Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution.")

An appreciation for American stability and freedom led him to establish the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum in 1990, a think tank devoted to advancing American interests in the region. Mr. Pipes also founded campus-watch.org two weeks after 9/11, a website whose mission is to challenge blindly pro-Islamic or anti-American views in the area of Middle East Studies taught in universities. The site presents surveys of individual universities and documents instances where professors' politics influenced their teaching and highlights support for terrorist tactics.

In the two weeks following its launch, the site received 80,000 individual hits. It also drew academics' ire and widespread media coverage?in particular for individual files on eight different professors the site identified as "apologists" for militant Islam. A few weeks later, 108 professors asked to be added to the list in a show of solidarity. Eventually, Mr. Pipes removed the list singling out the original eight professors after scholars accused him of trying to abridge academic freedom. (He opted to include on the website information on the eight in the context of the larger surveys of universities.)

Tashbih Sayyed, the editor of the national weekly Pakistan Today, is one of the few Muslims in the country who supported Mr. Pipes's nomination at the U.S. Institute for Peace. "Radical Islam is intrinsically opposed to American values," he said. "It has set up in America in order to destroy America from within. Daniel Pipes has done nothing but to warn, point out, underline such efforts of radical Islam to destroy America."

CAIR sent letters asking the U.S. Institute for Peace to reject and President Bush to withdraw his nomination of Mr. Pipes to the organization. The group also issued action alerts to Muslims to e-mail and call the president and institute, and sprang a last-ditch public call-in to the White House days before the appointment. Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, one of Mr. Pipes's most vocal critics, takes issue with how he characterizes Islam. "He defines all Muslims as radical Muslims, and his moderates are those who attack Islam," he said. "The guy is a bigot, and he's an Islamophobe, and his hatred of Islam drips from everything he writes." (CAIR later claimed the "moral victory" for the tens of thousands of people whose opposition, it said, helped truncate his term.)

Mr. Pipes referred to his Sept. 23 New York Post column on prominent moderate Muslims in the West. He said some are very pious, such as the Tunisian-born Abdelwahab Meddeb, author of Malady of Islam. "The common element is being anti-militant Islam," Mr. Pipes said. "This is what Hooper wants to deny. He wants to make it so they're not allowed to say it."

At the institute, Mr. Pipes wants to highlight the suffering of Muslims under radical Islamic governments. He already writes a weekly column for the New York Post and others for publications such as the Jerusalem Post. He speaks on college campuses frequently, and has appeared on television shows such as Fox News' Hannity and Colmes. His new role will add to a work week that's hit 70 hours since 9/11. "It's been kind of pressed the last two years," he says mildly.

The opposition may force him to use underground entrances, but Mr. Pipes vows to continue to reach lecture halls. Between now and the end of the year, he has lectures scheduled from New York to California, and in Italy.

 

[RAYMOND]

Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves." Thus spoke Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, referring to Muslims. Explaining his apparent rejection of Jesus' admonition to his followers to "turn the other cheek," De Paolis noted that "The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century ? and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights."

De Paolis is hardly alone in his thinking; indeed, the Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed. The estimated 40 million Christians in Dar al-Islam, notes the Barnabas Fund's Patrick Sookhdeo, increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them, he goes on, are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.

These harsh circumstances are causing Christians to flee their ancestral lands for the West's more hospitable environment. Consequently, Christian populations of the Muslim world are in a free-fall. Two small but evocative instances of this pattern: for the first time in nearly two millennia, Nazareth and Bethlehem no longer have Christian majorities.

This reality of oppression and decline stands in dramatic contrast to the surging Muslim minority of the West. Although numbering fewer than 20 million and made up mostly of immigrants and their offspring, it is an increasingly established and vocal minority, granted extensive rights and protections even as it wins new legal, cultural, and political prerogatives.

This widening disparity has caught the attention of the Church, which for the first time is pointing to radical Islam, rather than the actions of Israel, as the central problem facing Christians living with Muslims.

Rumblings of this could be heard already in John Paul II's time. For example, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, noted in late 2003 that "There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens." Tauran pushed for reciprocity: "Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well."

Catholic demands for reciprocity have grown, especially since the accession of Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, for whom Islam is a central concern. In February, the pope emphasized the need to respect "the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all." In May, he again stressed the need for reciprocity: Christians must love immigrants and Muslims must treat well the Christians among them.

Lower-ranking clerics, as usual, are more outspoken. "Islam's radicalization is the principal cause of the Christian exodus," asserts Monsignor Philippe Brizard, director general of Oeuvre d'Orient, a French organization focused on Middle Eastern Christians. Bishop Rino Fisichella, rector of the Lateran University in Rome, advises the Church to drop its "diplomatic silence" and instead "put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities."

The Danish cartoons crisis offered a typical example of Catholic disillusionment. Church leaders initially criticized the publication of the Muhammad cartoons. But when Muslims responded by murdering Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria, not to speak of scores of Christians killed during five days of riots in Nigeria, the Church responded with warnings to Muslims. "If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us, " said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State. "We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," added Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, its foreign minister.

Obtaining the same rights for Christians in Islamdom that Muslims enjoy in Christendom has become the key to the Vatican's diplomacy toward Muslims. This balanced, serious approach marks a profound improvement in understanding that could have implications well beyond the Church, given how many lay politicians heed its leadership in inter-faith matters. Should Western states also promote the principle of reciprocity, the results should indeed be interesting.

 

[RAYMOND]

Might Muslim Zionism be stronger than Jewish Zionism?

Although the question may sound preposterous, it is not.

Jewish Zionism evolved out of a steadfast three-millennium-old love of Jerusalem that flourished despite a dispersion that settled Jews far from their holy city. This love of Zion inspired the most extraordinary nationalist movement of the 20th century, one that motivated a far-flung population to relocate to their ancient homeland, revive a dead language, and establish a new polity ? and to do so against intense opposition.

Muslim Zionism, by contrast, has a conditional and erratic history, one based on an instrumental view of the city. Each time Jerusalem has emerged as a focal point of Muslim religious and political interest since the seventh century, it has been in response to specific utilitarian needs. When Jerusalem served Muslim theological or political purposes, the city grew in Muslim esteem and emotions. When those needs lapsed, Muslim interest promptly waned. This cyclical pattern has repeated itself six times over 14 centuries.

In the first such instance, an account in the Koran tells how God instructed Muhammad in 622 to pray toward Jerusalem and 17 months later redirected him to pray toward Mecca. The Arabic literary sources agree that the Jerusalem interlude constituted a failed effort to win over Jews to the new Islamic religion.

The same utilitarian pattern holds in modern times. Ottoman neglect of Jerusalem in the 19th century prompted the French novelist Gustav Flaubert to describe it as "Ruins everywhere, and everywhere the odor of graves. ? The Holy City of three religions is rotting away from boredom, desertion, and neglect." Palestinian Arabs rediscovered Jerusalem only after the British conquered it in 1917, when they used it to rouse Muslim sentiments against imperial control. After Jordanian forces seized the city in 1948, however, interest again plummeted.

It revived only in 1967, when the whole city came under Israeli control. Muslim passion for Jerusalem has soared over the past four decades, to the point that Muslim Zionism closely imitates Jewish Zionism. Note two similarities:

Emotional significance: Ehud Olmert, today the prime minister of Israel, said in 1997 that Jerusalem represents "the purest expression of all that Jews prayed for, dreamed of, cried for, and died for in the 2,000 years since the destruction of the Second Temple." The Palestinian Authority's Yasser Arafat echoed his words in 2000, declaring that Jerusalem "is in the innermost of our feeling, the feeling of our people and the feeling of all Arabs, Muslims, and Christians."

Eternal capital: Israel's President Ezer Weizman reminded Pope John Paul II en route to his visit to Jerusalem in March 2000 that the city remains Israel's "eternal" capital. A day later, Arafat welcomed the pontiff to "Palestine and its eternal capital, Jerusalem." Jewish and Muslim religious leaders meeting with the pope likewise spoke of Jerusalem as their eternal capital.
Generalizing, the analyst Khalid Dur?n observed in 1999 that "there is an attempt to Islamize Zionism ? in the sense that the importance of Jerusalem to Jews and their attachment to it is now usurped by Palestinian Muslims." (Interestingly, this follows a larger pattern of Palestinian Arab nationalism imitating Jewish nationalism.)

This effort is working, to the point that, as secular Israelis increasingly find themselves unmoved by Jerusalem, Muslim Zionism is emotionally and politically more fervid than its Jewish original. Note the example of rival Jerusalem Days.

Israel's Jerusalem Day commemorates the city's unification under its control in 1967. But, as Israel Harel writes in Ha'aretz, this tribute has declined from a national holiday to just "the holiday of the religious communities." By contrast, the Muslim version of Jerusalem Day ? instituted 11 years later, by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 ? attracts crowds of as many as 300,000 people in distant Tehran, serves as a platform for rousing harangues, and is gaining support steadily around the Muslim world.

A 2001 poll found that 60% of Israelis are willing to divide Jerusalem; just last month, the Olmert government announced its plans to divide the city, to little outcry.

Therefore, I conclude that the Muslim use of Zion represents a more powerful force today than the Jewish love of Zion.

 

[RAYMOND]

Iran's stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon [i.e., Israel]. We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region."


Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (?2005 Allan Tannenbaum/Polaris Images)



No, those are not the words of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking last week. Rather, that was Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic of Iran's supreme leader, in December 2000.

In other words, Ahmadinejad's call for the destruction of Israel was nothing new but conforms to a well-established pattern of regime rhetoric and ambition. "Death to Israel!" has been a rallying cry for the past quarter-century. Mr. Ahmadinejad quoted Ayatollah Khomeini, its founder, in his call on October 26 for genocidal war against Jews: "The regime occupying Jerusalem must be eliminated from the pages of history," Khomeini said decades ago. Mr. Ahmadinejad lauded this hideous goal as "very wise."

In December 2001, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former Iranian president and still powerful political figure, laid the groundwork for an exchange of nuclear weapons with Israel: "If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce minor damages in the Muslim world."

In like spirit, a Shahab-3 ballistic missile (capable of reaching Israel) paraded in Tehran last month bore the slogan "Israel Should Be Wiped Off the Map."

The threats by Messrs. Khamenei and Rafsanjani prompted yawns but Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement roused an uproar.

The U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, expressed "dismay," the U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned it, and the European Union condemned it "in the strongest terms." Prime Minister Martin of Canada deemed it "beyond the pale," Prime Minister Blair of Britain expressed "revulsion," and the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, announced that "for France, the right for Israel to exist should not be contested." Le Monde called the speech a "cause for serious alarm," Die Welt dubbed it "verbal terrorism," and a London Sun headline proclaimed Ahmadinejad the "most evil man in the world."

The governments of Turkey, Russia, and China, among others, expressly condemned the statement. Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a leading opposition group, demanded that the European Union rid the region of the "hydra of terrorism and fundamentalism" in Tehran. Even the Palestinian Authority's Saeb Erekat spoke against Mr. Ahmadinejad: "Palestinians recognize the right of the state of Israel to exist, and I reject his comments." The Cairene daily Al-Ahram dismissed his statement as "fanatical" and spelling disaster for Arabs.

Iranians were surprised and suspicious. Why, some asked, did the mere reiteration of long-standing policy prompt an avalanche of outraged foreign reactions?

In a constructive spirit, I offer them four reasons. First, Mr. Ahmadinejad's virulent character gives the threats against Israel added credibility. Second, he in subsequent days defiantly repeated and elaborated on his threats. Third, he added an aggressive coda to the usual formulation, warning Muslims who recognize Israel that they "will burn in the fire of the Islamic umma [nation]."

This directly targets the Palestinians and several Arab states, but especially neighboring Pakistan. Just a month before Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke, the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, stated that "Israel rightly desires security." He envisioned the opening of embassies in Israel by Muslim countries like Pakistan as a "signal for peace." Mr. Ahmadinejad perhaps indicated an intent to confront Pakistan over relations with Israel.

Finally, Israelis estimate that the Iranians could, within six months, have the means to build an atomic bomb. Mr. Ahmadinejad implicitly confirmed this rapid timetable when he warned that after just "a short period ? the process of the elimination of the Zionist regime will be smooth and simple." The imminence of a nuclear-armed Iran transforms "Death to Israel" from an empty slogan into the potential premise for a nuclear assault on the Jewish state, perhaps relying on Mr. Rafsanjani's genocidal thinking.

 

[RAYMOND]

A suicide bombing in Hadera, Israel, on October 26 that killed five people inspired the usual Palestinian joy: some 3,000 people took to the streets in celebration, chanting Allahu Akbar, calling for more suicide attacks against Israelis, and congratulating the "martyr's" family on the success of the attack.

But Palestinian Arabs were uncharacteristically morose after three explosions went off on November 9, killing 57 persons and injuring hundreds, in Amman, Jordan. That's because, for the very first time, they found themselves the main victim of those same Islamist "martyrs."

The massacre at a wedding in the Radisson SAS hotel ballroom took the lives of 17 family members attending the nuptials of what the London Times called a Palestinian "golden couple, beloved of their prominent Palestinian families and friends." The bombing also killed four Palestinian Authority officials, notably Bashir Nafeh, head of military intelligence on the West Bank.

After two decades of doling out this horror against Israelis, some of whom were also attending festive events (a Passover dinner, a Bar Mitzvah), Palestinians, who form a majority of the Jordanian population, unexpectedly found themselves at the receiving end.

And, guess what: They did not like it.

The brother of a woman injured in the attack told a reporter, "My sister, I love her. I love her to death, and if something happened to her, I'd be really..." Choked, he stopped speaking and cried. Another relative called the terrorists "vicious criminals." A third cried out, "Oh my God, oh my God. Is it possible that Arabs are killing Arabs, Muslims killing Muslims?"

I extend my deepest sympathy to the family. I also hope that Palestinian Arabs, who have established a worldwide reputation not just for relying heavily on suicide murder but for doing so enthusiastically, will benefit from this unique learning opportunity.

No other press and school system indoctrinates children to become suicide murderers. No other people holds joyous wakes for dead suicide bombers. No other parents hope their children will blow themselves up. None other receives lavish endorsement and funding for terrorism from the authorities. Nor has another people produced a leader so inextricably tied to terrorism as was Yasser Arafat, nor so bountifully devoted its allegiance to him.

The memorials of his death on November 11 were marked by effusive statements how "he will remain alive in our hearts" and reaffirmations to continue his work.

The Amman bombings, attributed to Al-Qaeda, exposed the hypocrisy of Palestinians and their supporters, who condemn terrorism against themselves but not against others, especially not Israelis. Shaker Elsayed, imam of Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Virginia, denounced the Amman wedding attack as a "senseless act." Very nice. But Brian Hecht of the Investigative Project notes that Mr. Elsayed has a long history of justifying terrorist attacks against Israelis: "The jihad is a must for everyone, a child, a lady and a man," he said. "They have to make jihad with every tool that they can."

Queen Noor of Jordan embodied this hypocrisy when she stated that the Amman terrorists "made a significant tactical error here, because they have attacked innocent civilians, primarily Muslims," implying her approval had the victims been non-Muslims.

Will the Palestinian Arabs' shameful love affair with suicide killings and "martyrdom" diminish after the atrocity in Amman? Might a taste of their own medicine teach them that what goes around comes around? That barbarism ultimately visits the barbarians too?

Small signs point to a shift in views, at least momentarily in Jordan. Survey research done in 2004 at Jordan University found two-thirds of Jordanian adults seeing Al-Qaeda in Iraq as "a legitimate resistance organization." After the bombings, the pollster found that nine of ten survey participants who previously endorsed Al-Qaeda had changed their minds.

To change Palestinian Arab behavior requires that civilized people finally get tough on suicide terrorism. That means rejecting Hamas as a political organization and excluding dialogue with it. It means shunning propagandistic movies such as Paradise Now, a film that whitewashes Palestinian suicide bombing. And it means convicting Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives Sami Al-Arian and his Florida cohorts.

The message to Palestinian Arabs needs to be simple, consistent, and universal: Everyone condemns suicide terrorism, unequivocally, without exceptions, whether the arena is electoral, diplomatic, or educational, and whether the bombing is in Amman or Hadera.

 

[RAYMOND]

According to Daniel Pipes, the Muslim world at the moment is trying, for the third time, to define itself in relation to the West. The two first attempts aimed at (or resulted in) imitating various aspects of the West. The third represents a totalitarian ideology, commensurate to fascism and communism.

_________

Philadelphia ? There is no name sign on the door, and it is locked. The visitor must pop in at a neighbor's to verify that the address is correct. Yes, that it is for sure. The Middle East Forum and Daniel Pipes are on the tenth floor of an anonymous skyscraper, just a stone's throw away from the building where the Fathers of the Nation assembled in 1787 to set down the country's foundation. Down on the street, a few middle-aged women are trudging away with voting posters in favor of John Kerry, who is in town to kick off the finish of his campaign. Pennsylvania is one of the so-called "swing states" that may well determine the outcome of the presidential election next Tuesday.

For Daniel Pipes himself, there is no doubt where his sympathy lies. He will vote for George W. Bush and describes himself as conservative. The 54-year-old historian, whose areas of special interest are the Middle East and the Middle Ages, has since 1994 headed the think tank "The Middle East Forum" which aims at "defining and facilitating American interests in the Middle East." Pipes spoke and wrote about the threat of Islamists long before September 11. Already in 1995 he observed that they had initiated an undeclared war on the U.S. and Europe.

Pipes' voice is so quiet that it is almost drowned out by the buzzing noise of the air conditioner in the modest office, but nevertheless, this voice, soft as velvet, has caused an uproar in academic, left-wing and certain Muslim circles. When Pipes talks about militant Islam at universities, his critics threaten with uproar and boycott. His appointment last year by President Bush to the board of the government's think tank, US Institute of Peace, triggered great clamor, and it is not coincidental that there is no name sign on the front door of the think tank's office.

A totalitarian ideology
For 20 years, Pipes has written and talked about militant Islam as a totalitarian ideology, commensurate to fascism and communism. His perspective on ideas, history and politics does not stem from far away. Daniel Pipes' father is Richard Pipes, one of the 20th century's foremost experts on Russian and Soviet history, who, opposed to the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s, insisted on the totalitarian nature of the Soviet regime and its hostile attitude towards the liberal democracies of the West.

The son recognizes his father's influence. "The Islamists' agenda is way different from that of communists or fascists. It is about belief, and as opposed to communism and fascism, they don't have large countries such as the Soviet Union or Germany behind them; but if you look at their methods and their goals, the likenesses are striking," Daniel Pipes says. "All three ideologies are radical utopias which, at their core, have a theory for how the human race can be improved. No more, no less. All three are dominated by a small, chosen elite that shall bring substance to the great idea. They are ready to resort to all conceivable means; they are true believers, fanatics, and they don't hesitate to resort to force and brutality to accomplish their project. They do not respect other perspectives and wish to control all areas of life. Once they have succeeded in one country, their ambition is to extend their control to other [countries]", he adds. "It makes sense to look at the current conflict between the civilized world and militant Islam in the light of the two earlier confrontations with communism and fascism. One we managed to defeat in a total war over a relatively short period of time, whereas the other conflict, the Cold War, lasted for decades. In this third confrontation, militant Islam is the challenge. The core of militant Islamic ideology is hidden in the expression "al-Islam huwwa al-hall", which means: Islam is the solution. No matter the context - education, upbringing, romance, work, public or private matters - Islam has the answer. This is a recipe for a totalitarian ideology."

Other than terror
Daniel Pipes' fascination with Islam and the Middle East started when he lived in Egypt in the early 1970s. Back then, he did not perceive Islamism as a threat. That did not happen until the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the assassination of the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat two years later and a surge of violations of American interests in the region.

Pipes thinks that it is misleading to speak of the current conflict with Islamists as a war against terror. He points out that wrong definitions and terms lead to erroneous proposals for a solution. When President Bush cites the numbers of killed Al Qaida leaders to state how well the war on terror is going, he misses the point. "It does not say anything - or at least very little. It is a euphemism, a paraphrase, to speak of a "terror threat" or a "war against terror". Terror is a tactic, not an enemy. We don't say either, here in the U.S., that the Second World War was against sneak attacks. It was a war against fascism", argues Pipes.

Moderates must be supported
He stresses that the conflict is not directed at Islam as a personal belief, but at militant Islam, an aggressive political ideology striving for the establishment of Islamic law, sharia, throughout the world. This difference bears in it the seed of the conflict's solution. "If militant Islam is the problem, then the opposite, namely moderate Islam, must be the solution," Daniel Pipes concludes. "I don't mean to say that Islam, once and for all, is condemned to be on a collision course with the modern world. The majority of Muslims do not wish to live the sort of life as under the Taliban in Afghanistan. We have millions of Muslims on our side. If you look deeply into this matter, the current conflict is one that must be fought out and won within the Muslim world." According to Daniel Pipes, it is now important to find alternative leaders and ideas that can take up the fight against militant Islam. "In the confrontations with fascism and communism, we were victorious because we managed to marginalize the enemy's ideology, making it look repulsive in the eyes of the majority. In 1991, the Soviet leaders no longer believed in their system. We are also obliged to convince the Islamists of the fact that they are wrong. We have to find alternative leaders in the Islamic world, in the same way that Konrad Adenauer emerged in Germany and Boris Yeltsin in Russia. There are two steps: on the one hand, we must overthrow the ideology by force of arms and by means of education, media, and information; and on the other hand, we must support anti-Islamist Muslims, who wish to keep their faith, but do not wish to live under Islamic law - in much the same way that we supported anti-Communists and anti-Nazis in the Soviet Union and Germany respectively. In the end, it is a battle between two conceptions of the Muslims' place in the world."

Not the true nature of Islam
Daniel Pipes recognizes that the current situation does not exactly give rise to optimism, but he is nevertheless convinced that the Muslim world will, sooner or later, define itself in a positive way in relation to the modern world. "The current situation does not originate in the true nature of Islam. In principle, Judaism is also a law-shaped religion, just like Islam, but it has managed to coexist with modern life. Islam's current situation is the result of a historical development. If you and I were having this conversation in the 1930s, we would have pointed at Germany's and Japan's problems with modern life, but those were temporary. We may also have focused on the Turk leader Kemal Atat?rk's attempt to build an alternative secular model for the Islamic world. Unfortunately, at the moment this idea is not considered very attractive in the Middle East. The ideas of the Islamists sound much more timely and attractive," Pipes explains.

A third attempt
Pipes subsequently delivers a cram course in the history of the Islamic world. "During the first 600 years of the history of Islam, being a Muslim was like playing on a winning team. It was an advanced society that got along well, materially as well as spiritually. It was a rich, powerful and healthy world. During the next 600 years, the Islamic world shut itself in and lost all connection to what happened elsewhere, not least in Europe. When Muslims in the 19th century discovered the wealth and power of the West, they asked themselves, perplexed and shocked: What went wrong, and how do we fix it? During the first 120-130 years, i.e., until the 1930s, they tried to imitate the liberal West, most of all France and Great Britain. During the next 60 years, on the contrary, they tried to imitate the non-liberal West, i.e. fascist and communist movements. Today, for the third time, they try to respond to the challenge of the West, and this time they have turned to early, non-liberal Islam. This also shall have its time and fail, and then they will try something different again. I believe that the next attempt will resemble the first one - the imitation of the liberal West ? more closely than the other two", says Pipes with moderate optimism.

Europe baffles
But this should not give us reason to lean back and wait for things to happen by themselves, Pipes thinks. He is amazed that Europe is not more alarmed about the challenge that Islam poses, considering plummeting birth rates and a weakened perception of its own history and culture. "This is one of the biggest stories of our time. The reactions in Europe are bafflingly relaxed. There is much denial at work. It is paradoxical that Muslims, coming from countries that are weaker in economic and political terms, within rich and strong Europe show more cultural ambition than the Europeans themselves. That baffles me as an American. Europe has been the driving force of history throughout the past 500 years, but now it looks as though that era has come to a close. Here in the U.S., the situation is far less dramatic." According to Daniel Pipes, Muslims do not account for more than about one percent of the (U.S.) population, 3 to 4 million people, and their social status differs from that in Europe. "There are groups calling for Islam in schools and intimidating politicians and Muslims who insist on their right to freedom of speech. Militant Islam has an extensive non-violent agenda. Muslims in the U.S. consist of two groups, immigrants and Americans converted to Islam. Muslim immigrants have a higher social and economic status than they have in Europe. There are doctors, engineers and others with a professional education, making serious money."

Failed research
Daniel Pipes has fallen out with a large part of the academic world. He is critical of much of the research undertaken in Middle East Studies and thinks it has neglected or ignored important movements, while in other areas it has too quickly ascribed a modernizing or democratizing effect to the fundamentalists. It has, he thinks, often politicized with a (liability to) penchant for a left-wing twist. "Left-wingers are dissatisfied with the societies formed in the West, while conservatives are content. The discontent and feelings of guilt among left-wingers often make them go too far in their accommodation of opponents. They seek understanding and compromise, whereas conservatives are more inclined to take on a confrontation. People in Middle East studies have not perceived the hostile and violent elements in radical Islam. They have ignored Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, widespread anti-Semitism, slavery in Sudan, cultural repression of Berbers in North Africa, and they have attempted to convey the impression that the word jihad means something entirely different than military efforts to extend Islam's territory. Some even believe that jihad is about becoming a better person. As if Palestinian Islamic Jihad uses the word in the sense of becoming better men."

 

[RAYMOND]

Radical Islam vs. Academic Freedom: One Example
by Edward Alexander
FrontPageMagazine.com
April 29, 2002

In late march, about two hours after I had sent the announcement of Daniel Pipes' forthcoming (April 10) lecture at University of Washington on "The War on Terrorism and Militant Islam" to its academic sponsors for distribution on their "lists," I was besieged by e-mail messages from self-identified Muslims. These exhorted me to cancel the lecture or--failing that--to do penance for having organized it or to allow designated Muslims to "answer" it. The most heated of these fiery blasts of indignation and intimidation came from one Jeff Siddiqui, representing a group called American Muslims of Puget Sound. He wondered whether I knew Pipes' "area of specialty," and--without waiting for an answer--proceeded to delineate it: "he is a rabid Muslim/Arab hater" who "has...suggested getting rid of Muslims in America" and who, "if he goes any further he will be in the same company as Hitler when he told Mussolini the the [sic] Jews were like 'TB baccillii [sic]' and must be eradicated."

Although Mr. Siddiqui declared he was "not at all suggesting censorship," he urged me to "withdraw your sponsorship or at the very least, publish a letter expressing regret over this sponsorship. You can also invite a member of the Muslim Community to speak for about ten minutes after Pipes has had his day bashing us."

Other letter-writers soon affirmed their support for "Mr. Jeff" or told me that they were "discouraged and ashamed [by] the departmental support this lecture has received" because "Daniel Pipes works for the Israeli Lobby." One letter denouncing Pipes as a "hate-monger" scandalously "given this type of venue" by the university came from the Associate Director of an organization called Hate Free Zone Campaign of Washington, whose HATE FREE ZONE signs festoon the campus, apparently conveying the message that if only the people who worked in the World Trade Center had placed such signs in their windows they would be alive today.

In response to Siddiqui's specific requests (copies of which he had sent to all the academic sponsors of Pipes' lecture as well as to the student paper), and after consultation with both the (non-student) advisors to the Associated Students of the University of Washington and the campus police, who instructed me to forward to them every letter of this sort that I received, I wrote the following: "I hope you won't be shocked to learn that I can't comply with your request that I cancel Mr. Pipes' lecture or that I express public contrition for arranging it or that I allow you or one of your acolytes to preside as grand inquisitor and judge of his remarks. Apparently you are not aware of the age-old conventions regarding public lectures (and free speech) in this part of the country. There is no requirement that a lecture touching on radical Islam must be 'answered' by an Islamic radical, any more than a lecturer on fundamentalist Christianity must submit to a harangue at the end of his talk by a Christian fundamentalist....After the lecture, Mr. Pipes will respond to concise questions from audience members, who have the right to ask them not as members of a group but as individuals. (There will be no speeches from the floor, and in the unlikely event that persons in attendance cannot curb their eloquence, they will be ejected and subject to prosecution.)"

My last sentence brought a new batch of letters, especially from those who now fancied themselves victims of discrimination or even prospective martyrs for their cause. One Khadija Anderson, for example, wrote that "I am assuming from the hostile nature of your response [to Siddiqui] that I will be targeted for exclusion (expulsion?) as although I appear obviously of caucasion [sic] descent, I wear a traditional Muslim headscarf."

Faced with my stony intransigence, Siddiqui then sought out the support of local print and radio journalists, whom he plied with quotations licentiously wrenched out of context to "prove" that Pipes wakes up every morning thinking of new ways to defame Muslims. The publicity, especially in the Seattle Times, had the (presumably) unintended effect of giving huge publicity to the event--the hall accommodated 440 people, and hundreds more could not get in--but also alerting the local authorities (as well as the Department of Justice, which was frequently in touch with me) to the possibility of disruption and violence.

But although the university police took very seriously the danger of disruption and of violation of the lecturer's first amendment rights, the university administration had very different priorities. When I asked the Vice-President for university relations, Norman Arkans, for his impressions of the situation on the day of the lecture and also whether he would represent the president of the university at this potentially stormy event, he wrote back as follows: "I have followed things, and it looks to me as if preparations are about as good as they can be. I expect there will be demonstrations, both inside and outside Kane [Hall], and people need to feel comfortable with noise and attempts at noisy disruptions. If it stays at the noise level, it's tolerable and can be managed. Obviously, we don't want to have to carry someone out. That gets pretty ugly." It was left uncertain as to whether this need to "feel comfortable" with verbal violence that prevents a lecturer from speaking would also apply to hecklers of abortion rights advocates or of gay marriage. What was certain was that the university administration was--whether knowingly or not--at odds with its own police force, which instructed me to warn the audience for Pipes' lecture loudly and clearly that "anyone who disrupts the lecture will be escorted from the auditorium." And the warning worked: Pipes delivered his lecture (to tremendous popular acclaim) without disruption (unless one counts the exit during the question period of one or two Thespians shouting "Arafat is my hero").

Having failed in their efforts to shut down Pipes' lecture, efforts made even as they kept insisting that they were devout adherents of the principle of free speech, the Muslim radicals tried to conciliate public sympathy by other means.

One Ahmed Amr, an editor of Nilemedia.com, said he was planning to sue the [Henry M.] Jackson School of International Studies for bringing Pipes to the university. "They shouldn't have let him speak. He's the Farrakhan of the Jewish Taliban." The president of the UW Muslim Association, Humza Chaudhry, managed--with considerable effort--to get himself ejected from the building's lobby when he (alone) refused to follow instructions that the police issued to the overflow crowd to leave the lobby. This gave him the opportunity to allege that he was the victim of "racial profiling," indeed that he had been "harassed by law enforcement all my adult life because of the way I look." He also revealed--as evidence of the toll that police brutality was taking on his life--that he had just dropped his chemistry class in order "to analyze the policies of the UWPD."

At the outset of his lecture, Pipes took note of the various attempts made by Radical Muslims in the Seattle area to prevent him from speaking and thanked his sponsors for persevering in their sponsorship. Militant Islam, he observed, "is not only my subject but it is also my context. The debate over this lecture is a textbook example of militant Islamic methods: an attempt to close down discussion of issues; intimidation; scurrilous attacks; fabrication." Thus was Pipes, with characteristic elegance of mind, able to to use the very campaign against his lecture as a perfect existential realization of one of its central ideas: namely, that Radical Islam is not merely a dangerous phenomenon but it is here, in our midst.

 

[RAYMOND]

Islam's battle with a hostile world
by John Lloyd
Financial Times
January 10, 2003

US confidence that it can win the war on terror, effect a regime change in Iraq and bring democracy to the Islamic world stems, in part, from having done something like that before. If communism could be toppled in the Soviet bloc then, many Americans think, the Middle East can be just as radically reshaped.

These Americans believe, moreover, that their country ended Soviet totalitarianism not by compromising their values but by asserting them. Their intransigence both avoided war and caused the collapse of dictatorship.

Now the ideas and assumptions behind anti-communism are being revived to fight another ideology. Just as many believe communism was the biggest threat to western democracy in the last half of the 20th century, so many see radical Islam as the gravest threat today.

The concept of an existential struggle between good and evil has been revived, in many cases by people who were near the front line of the anti-communist battle of the cold war.

Radek Sikorski is one of those people. A political refugee from Poland, he became a fervent anti-communist journalist covering the 1980s wars in Afghanistan and Angola. In the 1990s he was appointed deputy minister of defence, then of foreign affairs, in Poland's Solidarity governments. Today, he is head of the New Atlantic Initiative, a conservative thinktank that is influential on current policy in Washington. He is an enthusiast for the war on Iraq, seeing it as the necessary prelude to the restoration of democracy in at least parts of the Muslim world. This, he believes, is essential to the long-term victory over al-Qaeda and terrorism.

In a recent interview Sikorski said: "The view is gaining ground here that the world of the radical Muslims, their vision of a way of life, is as much a threat to the west as was Soviet communism. Islamo-fascism, or Islamo-communism, is a threat most of all to the people who live under it: we [the US] can lift that oppression."

Sitting a floor or two away from Sikorski is William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, a political journal of the right, and one of the loudest hawks in Washington. Within days of the World Trade Center attack, Kristol organised an open letter to President Bush calling for support to Saddam Hussein's opposition, and war against Iraq. Since then he has campaigned ceaselessly, criticising what he sees as UN and European stalling and obfuscation on the issue. Last summer, he told me: "Americans see clearly which are democratic states and which are tyrannies in the world today, as they did when the Soviet Union was the main enemy."

Kristol, too, has an anti-communist history. His father Irving, a former Trotskyist who swung to the right, had been an editor of Encounter, a monthly magazine covertly funded for a time by the CIA in an effort to rally intellectuals and artists against communism. Kristol himself had worked as an aide to Democratic senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the politician who defined militant anti-communism for the post-McCarthy generation.

Kristol and Sikorski are influential in Washington but the similarities between past and present campaigns are best personified by a father and son, Richard and Daniel Pipes. Both men fit firmly into the neo-conservative camp, now gaining its best hearing since Ronald Reagan's term of office in the 1980s. In part built by former Marxists of the 1960s such as Irving Kristol, neo-conservatism gains some of its force from Judaeo-Christian morality and stands out for its willingness to pick a fight with all parts of the political spectrum, left and right.

Richard and Daniel Pipes were scholars who specialised as students in the areas that ultimately came to be perceived as those most threatening to their country: Richard on the Soviet Union, Daniel on the Middle East. With roots in academia, they became political activists central to the arguments that define US ideology.

Neither set out to be. Richard, a Polish Jewish refugee who emigrated to the US before 1939, learned Russian in the US Air Force. At Harvard, after the war, he wanted to study art history, but was told he should root his studies in a state ? and chose Russia, thinking: at least I know the language. Daniel's choice was less what-the-hell ? but his speciality was the medieval Middle East, not one with an obvious bearing on then-current controversies. Yet both were seized, early on in their careers, with fixed and powerful ideas that took on a huge public importance.

Richard Pipes, at home in a spacious wood-frame house within walking distance of Harvard, where he has taught for much of his life, has lived to see himself honoured and deferred to by those who once hated his ideas. "Gorbachev came to Harvard a few weeks ago," he says, "and I sat at his table at dinner. Someone asked a question about the end of the Soviet Union [and] he said ? ?you better put that question to Professor Pipes'".

His books have been translated into Russian ? including the short history, Communism, published in 2001. He lectures to politicians, journalists and other scholars in Russia, and is now given a close hearing there, at least by the liberal intelligentsia. More than any other Sovietologist, Richard influenced the course of the cold war by changing the way the Soviet Union was seen ? authoring and popularising the notion of Soviet communism as an inherently authoritarian system and one with profound roots in pre-Bolshevik autocracy.

Daniel Pipes, in the Philadelphia offices of his Middle East Forum, the think tank and vehicle for his ideas, has his father's quiet voice and his conviction that the world he studies is separated from the west by a vast civic gulf. "Of the three great monotheisms, it is the Muslim world which has not evolved and become modern. I don't think that Islam is hopeless, but I think that Muslims don't know where they fit in the modern world."

Daniel acknowledges that he is no longer a scholar; Richard claims that he rarely ceased to be. But both managed to break out of the rarefied world of academia, becoming key voices in Republican-dominated Washington.

In 1969 Richard gave a talk in Washington for the American Historical Association, arguing against the prevailing view that there was a "convergence" between western democracies and the Soviet Union ? in living standards, in social stratification, and even in democratic choice.

In the audience was Dorothy Fosdick, an aide to Senator "Scoop" Jackson. Jackson persuaded Richard both to testify at the senate hearings on the first arms limitation treaty and to become his consultant.

Interestingly, a young aide to Jackson at the time was Richard Perle ? still, he says, a Democrat, but now a close adviser to Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon and one of the leaders of the factions in favour of taking both war, and democracy, to Iraq. Perle represents an important line of continuity ? carrying his and Pipes' rejection of communism on moral grounds through to the current campaign. Perle is also among the strongest advocates for reshaping the entire Islamic world by underpinning democratic forces within it.

In the mid-1970s, as an acknowledged expert on the "Soviet mentality," Richard Pipes chaired Team B ? a group of policy intellectuals who shadowed a CIA committee Team A, appointed by the then head of the CIA, George Bush. The teams were grappling with the nature of the Soviet Union.

"The government was getting worried about the Soviet nuclear build-up. We came to the conclusion that the Soviet Union would go for a nuclear first strike during a war; not before it, but once hostilities had started," says Richard.

This view, which he helped to popularise in the political class and beyond, aimed to push the US administration into action. "Containment wasn't adequate. Hostility to the west was rooted in the system; we had to put what pressure we could on the Soviets," he says.

Richard's reputation was such that he was appointed from 1981 to 1987 as head of the Soviet desk in the National Security Council. "Reagan tended to think that the Soviet leaders must be like us - that they had the good of the people at heart. I told him they certainly don't have the good of the people at heart. In a directive we put a clause: ?the system is such that it leads to aggression'. That led on to the Evil Empire speech."

Among those concurring that the Soviet Union was evil was a scholar who served as a Soviet specialist in George Bush Senior's administration - Condoleezza Rice. Rice is now the second President Bush's national security adviser. She believes the bringing of Russia into the democratic fold is one of the triumphs of the past two decades.

Rice also retains her sense that the leader of the free world, the US, should act pre-emptively to keep the world freer and safer. "History," she said in a BBC interview last August, "is littered with cases of inaction that led to very grave consequences for the world. We just have to look back and ask how many dictators who end up being a tremendous global threat, and killing thousands, and indeed millions of people, should have been stopped in their tracks."

Rice is clearly in the mould that the elder Pipes helped to form: but the younger Pipes is often impatient with the administration in which she serves. "The US government tends to make a sharp distinction between a good Islamism and a bad Islamism. But this is often just an indication of its cowardice. When you look at the FBI's most wanted list you see they are nearly all Arab terrorists. We must wake up to the danger. At present we are only half-awake. We are undergoing what I would call ?education by murder'. Look at what's happened in Australia since the Bali bomb. We are not attuned to understand evil," says Daniel.

Like his son, Richard is frustrated by colleagues unwilling to accept what he sees as hard moral realities. "Intellectuals in the west tend to feel guilty. There is this sense that ?we have as many sins on our conscience as you [Communists, Islamists] do'."

The scorn Daniel holds for his fellow intellectuals is still more hard-edged. Coming from a generation who went to university in the radical 1960s and 1970s, he views his peers with despair. "We have a sense that what we have here in the west is unworthy. There is a lot of guilt and self-loathing. It leads to a constant relativism. Many scholars of the Middle East see radical Islam as modernising - even democratic. I would see these societies as terribly repressive."

Daniel's Middle East Forum does a "campus watch" service, pointing out what it sees as the absurdities of some strands of academic thought and the genuflections made to extremism and anti-semitism in the name of political correctness.

"The left is basically unhappy with what we in the west have created. The right is happy with it. The left, because of its unhappiness and guilt, tends to compromise and understand the opponent: the right tends to confront," he says.

Daniel's attacks on the US academy have stirred deep opposition. He has been barred from speaking at some colleges - ironically, because of what is seen as his McCarthyism and his opposition to free speech. This constant combativeness, sometimes amounting to what seems to be a desire for a fight, has meant - says one commentator of the right who knows and admires him - that he will remain on the outside of the administration, and that his influence will be that of the pulpit, not the antechambers of power.

Radek Sikorski says of Daniel that "he has picked up the generational torch in [an] extraordinary way from his father". But neither of the Pipes likes to be drawn on the other. Daniel initially objected to my drawing a parallel, seeing the attempt to do so as "too cute", and admitting only that: "I always admired him: perhaps I get a certain dogmatic sense of stubborness from him."

Richard says of his son that "he works tremendously hard to move peoples' opinions: it's not easy, you know". In fact, both men work tremendously hard: the younger one harder, in part because of age, in part because his self-defined mission - to offer an alternative to the easy optimisms and compromises of his governing class - is far from complete.

Richard's mission is complete with the collapse of a tyrannical regime and the acceptance by its last leader - Mikhail Gorbachev - of many of the tenets of liberal democratic thought Communists had once sought to extirpate.

Daniel sees no such acceptance in Islam, nor any likelihood of it in the near future. "The people who are against the repression are kept down, and are silent. Not many people are prepared to stand up and speak out. So the US government must be prepared to protect them. After the war, we found in Konrad Adenauer a good German: we had destroyed the Nazis and were able to sustain him in power. We need to sponsor the same kind of people in the Islamic world. We must live with the Muslim world but we need to have a new set of leaders within it. We need moderate Muslims. We did that with the Germans after the Nazis and with the Russians and others after communism."

As Richard had seemed audacious and extreme in the 1970s and 80s, so his son is seen now: the more so the more he takes on what had been and still are protected vital interests. "We have to recognise one very large fact: the corruption at the heart of the Saudi Arabian regime. The US must wake up to the fact that they, the Saudis, buy our leaders."

Pipes recommended I read Two Faces of Islam, published last year by the journalist Stephen Schwartz: it is a sustained and detailed attack on Wahhabism, the form of Islam espoused by the Saudi ruling family. Schwartz, who also runs an activist rightwing thinktank in Washington - The Foundation for the Protection of Democracy - told me that "academics, journalists and the political elite in the US have all accommodated themselves to the Saudis, and have discouraged a closer look at them. Yet, they are the number one funders of terrorism". Daniel agrees with this.

Says Daniel: "My signature argument is that we must now focus not just on those who perpetrate terrorist acts, but those who fund and sponsor them. Radical Islam has the potential to attack. It sees itself as an alternative world system. It sees itself in a cosmic battle against the west."

In a nod to his father's expertise, he adds: "It sees itself just as the Nazis and the Communists did - in a battle with a hostile world. I don't believe they will win. But if we don't go back to the fundamental verities of freedom, they will get stronger."

 

[RAYMOND]

The Middle East Forum (http://www.meforum.org), a think tank, works to define and promote American interests in the Middle East. Founded in 1990, the Forum became an independent organization in 1994.