[(Continued from p.4)]
public opinion or are shaped by it, but also by people who have intellectual pretensions, such as writers and politicians who set the tone of discourse in these societies. Thus the chair of the Arab Writers' Association wrote in the Literary Weekly (Damascus): "When the Twin Towers collapsed...I felt as if I were extricated from the bottom of a tomb, as if I were hovering over the arrogant mythological symbol of American imperialism, which has covered up the crimes it has committed...My lungs filled with pure air, and I breathed deeper than ever before...Even when I thought about the innocent who were buried under the rubble...I was sorry that my humanity had been soiled by Zionist America and world Zionism....American policy causes hatred in support of racist occupiers, whose entire history is shameful, bloody, destructive, scandalous and full of plots against others....Something has collapsed in America, and this is the beginning of America's collapse as the sole superpower...This collapse will be followed by the building of a new base for the victory of the oppressed and miserable people...."In the face of these explosions of inhumanity, the isolation and illegitimacy of the rulers grow ever more acute, insofar as they do not represent their public opinion, yet are unable to contain it in the long run. One of their devices to walk the tight rope between popular resentment and their inability to respond to the American challenge to join the world war against terrorism, and their need to do the latter, is their attempt to draw differences between various kinds of terrorism. Theirs is "national liberation" while moves of self-defense by the U.S., Israel or any country that does not toe their line is "state terrorism" or simply "true terrorism." Even those who recognize America's legitimate anger are afraid lest it retaliate in "illegitimate terms," thus hurting its own and others' interests. All this rhetoric can be construed as the third stage in Arab and Islamic reactions to the horror of September 11th.
The first stage was of joy and a bursting sense of revenge at the sight of what seemed defeated and hapless America. Then, as the voices of retribution rose among the American administration and public, and the evidence unfolded of Arab and Islamic involvement in the disaster, denial set in: Suddenly the Arabs knew nothing and heard nothing, and all insinuations about their possible connection were categorized as "bias" against them. Finally, when the culprits were identified and concrete plans started to crystallize regarding the targets for retaliation, differences between various kinds of terrorism were found, according to who performed them, not the mode of their execution. In this fashion, the grotesque situation arose where some of the cham- pions of terrorism began to condemn it (not its perpetrators), meaning the terrorism of others, and so they thought that they could gain the status of "coalition members," and see themselves removed from the terrorist list of the State Department.
Because of that sequence of events, the Arabs and Muslims have been pressing for UN involvement, where they have an automatic command of one third of the votes, to redefine terrorism. They do not hide their view that if their position is adopted, they would be able to indict Israel for her "crimes" which amount to terrorism in their eyes, while their brand of terrorism against her would gain international legitimacy, since in their view it is the Arabs who have "always fought against terrorism." The attempt to divert world attention from the arrested Arab and Muslim suspects in America, and from the direct indictment of Afghanistan and Bin Laden, put many Arab and Muslim leaders on the "Israeli track," claiming that since the Zionists stood to gain the most from "blackening the faces of Muslims across the world," they were the primary suspects as perpetrators of the horror.
The Arabs do not hide their view that if their position is adopted, they would be able to indict Israel for her "crimes," while their brand of terrorism against her would gain international legitimacy.
President Bush was right in not only declaring a world war against terrorism, but also in coining a whole new vocabulary for dealing with it: its initiators were "wanted," like in the Old West; they were to be "smoked out of their hiding holes"; they were to be targeted, searched after and destroyed; their protectors who harbored them were to be punished, collateral damage and casualties notwithstanding; the war against them was to be sustained, protracted, determined, and all-encompassing until they were caught, defeated, eliminated or brought to justice and their bases destroyed, their finances dried up, their front organizations disbanded and their supporters punished or otherwise coaxed to abandon them.
But that kind of policy cannot succeed unless it is global not only in its goals, ways and means, but also in its definitions, norms, standards and modalities. It is impossible to win, for example, if other acts of terrorism that do not concern America directly are dubbed "local" (ETA in Spain, Corsica against the French, the IRA against Britain or the Hamas, the PLO, Hezbollah or the Fatah Tanzim against Israel), and therefore unworthy of the global fight against terrorism. It is also impossible to win if some acts of terror are accorded "understanding" and various "justifications." Terrorism is a violent activity against civilians, for whatever reasons; therefore while one can "understand" the struggle of the IRA or the ETA against the security forces of Britain and Spain whom
[(Continued on p.6)]
February 2002 - 5 - Outpost