Sacred Rage (Page 4)

Stern writes: "When such a person makes a cost-benefit analysis about the value of his life versus the value of his death, he attaches greater value to death--both for his country and for himself. This suggests that something is terribly wrong--either with him, his training, or with his situation." As an Israeli who was educated with the slogan "it is good to die for our country" and the eulogizing of Samson- and Masada-style suicidal "heroism," I cannot agree more with Stern's observation. Japanese kamikaze pilots are another celebrated example of the ways in which some cultures blur the boundaries between soldiers and martyrs more than others.

The third motive for terrorism and massacres, according to Stern, is the struggle for demographic supremacy by one ethnic or religious group over the other within a certain territory. In Indonesia, she observes, Suharto's efforts to resettle Muslims from densely populated regions in sparsely populated Christian areas destabilized the delicate ethnoreligious balance and provoked large-scale massacres of Muslims by Christians, followed by massacres of Christians by Muslims. The Indonesian case has an overt connection to the original Afghan jihad against the Soviets. Some Indonesian veterans of the Afghan war formed a militia, Laskar Jihad, to fight a Christian militia.

Beyond the mutual atrocities, what is interesting in this case, and in those of Kashmir, Pakistan and Egypt, is the direct impact of the Afghan war on the spread of worldwide Islamic militancy and terror groups, including Al Qaeda. The long fight in Afghanistan attracted sympathizers from all over the globe (much like the Spanish Civil War) to defend the country of believers against the kuffar, or infidels. There they received training, mainly from the CIA, learned to use a wide variety of arms and explosives, acquired combat experience and achieved a sense of power, pride and comradeship as a result of the final victory. After the Soviet defeat, they exported the Afghan-style Islamist revolution to every possible corner of the world in which Islamic communities exist. The veterans of this war may be found in Pakistan and India, northern and equatorial Africa, Lebanon, Palestine, Chechnya, Bosnia, the United States and, quite possibly, Iraq, where an unknown number of foreign Arabs have joined Iraqis fighting the occupation.

The last motive for terrorism mentioned by Stern is the one that she mistakenly classifies as "history." Here, she refers mainly to the Jewish messianic groups that planned to destroy the Muslim Holy Sanctuary in Jerusalem, which was supposedly built on the site of the Jewish Temples. There was also a realpolitik aspect of the plan--stopping Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai following the Camp David peace accords with Egypt--but the larger goal was messianic in nature. By blowing up the third-holiest Islamic religious site, they hoped to cause such an uproar in the Islamic world that the whole process of reconciliation would come to an immediate end. They believed that the destruction of the mosque would ultimately precipitate an apocalyptic war that would hasten the coming of the Messiah, the reconstruction of the Third Temple and the reign of the Lord on the earth. The plan was not carried out because, according to their testimony, they failed to find a great rabbinical authority to bless it. Next time, one fears, they may have more luck and find such a blessing. Of course, the motive for this assault had nothing to do with history; it was rooted in a fanatical interpretation of biblical "history" and other texts from Jewish scripture. In this the religious right in Israel has much in common with the radical Islamists who are their most bitter adversaries.

Contemporary Islamists, after all, look back to their own Golden Age, when they developed a great civilization of philosophers, scientists, merchants, medics, poets and military geniuses who almost succeeded in conquering all of Europe. They compare this with their current situation. The corrupt, despotic Arab regimes that were unable to solve social and economic problems did have enough power to destroy all civil democratic opposition, but could not overcome fundamentalist Islamic groups. Most of these regimes have received the steady support of the United States. America, as a representative of the victorious West and as a prime backer of the Arab regimes and of Israeli policy, is regarded, both by Arab elites and ordinary people as being responsible for their misery. Davis, Stern and Victor all agree that if we are to stop the flow of young Arab recruits to groups like Al Qaeda, moral, ideological and economic pressures will be more effective than military campaigns. The majority of Muslims, even those who reject Western values and regard the current era as a regression to the pre-Islamic age of barbarism (jahaliya), are not supporters of a worldwide holy war, and they can become allies in an effective fight against terror. Davis warns, however, against too close an association with oppressive Arab regimes, even if they do fight the militant Islamists in their own countries. Supporting such governments--along with the invasion and occupation of Iraq and uncritical backing of Israeli expansion in the occupied territories--merely increases enmity toward the West.

In their classic study Terror and Taboo: The Follies, Fables and Faces of Terrorism (1996), Joseba Zulaika and Bill Douglass write that "regarding terrorism, the brandishing of stark facts goes hand in hand with great leaps into discursive fantasy." Terrorism is a genuine malady of our time, but it has evolved into a discursive fantasy, used and abused by the rulers of some states, under the cover of "fighting terrorism," for achieving completely different and contradictory aims. Neither the American war in Iraq nor Ariel Sharon's war against the Palestinian Authority and people is likely to eradicate terrorism. On the contrary: The result of "antiterrorism" is invariably to heighten the desperation of weak and wretched groups and to multiply their incentives to strike back with terror.

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