This is great.  Thanks for sending it.  It is much appreciated.
----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Scovell <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 3:14 PM
Subject: VIEW OF THE ARAB WORLD BY AN ARAB


> I cannot recall if I emailed this to the list or not.
>
> VIEW OF THE ARAB WORLD BY AN ARAB
> The Arab who wrote this is: Haim Harari, Chair,
> Davidson Institute of Science Education.
> Past President, Weizmann Institute of Science
> "A View from the Eye of the Storm"
> Talk delivered by Haim Harari at a meeting of the
> International Advisory Board of a large multi-national
> corporation,
> April, 2004:
> "As you know, I usually provide the scientific and technological
> "entertainment" in our meetings, but, on this occasion, our
> Chairman
> suggested that I present my own personal view on events in the
> part of
> the world from which I come.
> I have never been and I will never be a Government
> official and I have no privileged information. My
> perspective is entirely based on what I see, on what I
> read and on the fact that my family has lived in this
> region for almost 200 years. You may regard my views
> as those of the proverbial taxi driver, which you are
> supposed to question, when you visit a country.
> I could have shared with you some fascinating facts
> and some personal thoughts about the Israeli-Arab
> conflict. However, I will touch upon it only in
> passing. I prefer to devote most of my remarks to the
> broader picture of the region and its place in world
> events. I refer to the entire area between Pakistan
> and Morocco, which is predominantly Arab,
> predominantly Moslem, but includes many non-Arab and
> also significant non-Moslem minorities.
> Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate
> neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related
> to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the
> world media, is not the central issue, and has never
> been the central issue in the upheaval in the region.
> Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict,
> but it is not where the main show is.
> The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing
> to do with Israel.
> The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where
> the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black
> Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel.
> The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of
> hundreds of civilian in one village or another by
> other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel.
> Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi
> Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel.
> Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's
> because of Israel.
> Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his
> own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because
> of Israel.
> The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war
> there had nothing to do with Israel.
> The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing
> to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.
> The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem
> region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of
> the word, and would have been so even if Israel had
> joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine
> had existed for 100 years.
> The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from
> Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population
> of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as
> large as the EU before its expansion.
> They have a land area larger than either the US or all
> of Europe.
> These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural
> resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of
> Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP
> of California alone.
> Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor
> are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their
> money not by succeeding in business, but by being
> corrupt rulers.
> The social status of women is far below what it was in
> the Western World
> 150 years ago.
> Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in
> spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was elected
> Chair of the UN Human Rights commission.
> According to a report prepared by a committee of Arab
> intellectuals and
> published under the auspices of the U.N., the number of books
> translated
> by the entire Arab world is much smaller than what little Greece
> alone
> translates.
> The total number of scientific publications of 300
> million Arabs is less than that of 6 million Israelis.
> Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing
> the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline.
> And all of this is happening in a region, which only
> 30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part
> of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed,
> at some point in history, one of the most advanced
> cultures in the world.
> It is fair to say that this creates an unprecedented
> breeding ground for cruel dictators, terror networks, fanaticism,
>
> incitement, suicide murders and general decline. It is also a fact
> that
> almost everybody in the region blames this situation on the United
>
> States, on Israel, on Western Civilization, on Judaism and
> Christianity,
> on anyone and anything, except themselves.
> A word about the millions of decent, honest, good
> people who are either devout Moslems or are not very
> religious but grew up in Moslem families: They are
> double victims of an outside world, which now develops
> Islamophobia and
> of their own environment, which breaks their heart by being
> totally
> dysfunctional.
> The problem is that the vast silent majority of these
> Moslems are not part of the terror and of the
> incitement, but they also do not stand up against it.
> They become accomplices, by omission, and this applies
> to political leaders, intellectuals, business people
> and many others. Many of them can certainly tell right
> from wrong, but are afraid to express their views.
> The events of the last few years have amplified four
> issues, which have always existed, but have never been
> as rampant as in the present upheaval in the region.
> A few more years may pass before everybody
> acknowledges that it is a World War, but we are
> already well into it.
> These are the four main pillars of the current World
> Conflict, or perhaps we should already refer to it as
> "the undeclared World War III":
> 1. The first element is the suicide murder.
> Suicide murders are not a new invention but they have
> been made popular, if I may use this __expression,
> only lately. Even after September 11, it seems that
> most of the Western World does not yet understand this
> weapon. It is a very potent psychological weapon. Its
> real direct impact is relatively minor. The total
> number of casualties from hundreds of suicide murders
> within Israel in the last three years is much smaller
> than those due to car accidents. September 11 was quantitatively
> much
> less lethal than many earthquakes More people die from AIDS in one
> day
> in Africa than all the Russians who died in the hands of
> Chechnya-based
> Moslem suicide murderers since that conflict started. Saddam
> killed
> every month more people than all those who died from suicide
> murders
> since the Coalition occupation of Iraq.
> So what is all the fuss about suicide killings? It
> creates headlines. It is spectacular. It is
> frightening. It is a very cruel death with bodies
> dismembered and horrible severe lifelong injuries to
> many of the wounded. It is always shown on television
> in great detail. One such murder, with the help of
> hysterical media coverage, can destroy the tourism
> industry of a country for quite a while, as it did in
> Bali and in Turkey.
> But the real fear comes from the undisputed fact that
> no defense and no preventive measures can succeed
> against a determined suicide murderer. This has not
> yet penetrated the thinking of the Western World. The
> U.S. and Europe are constantly improving their defense
> against the last murder, not the next one. We may
> arrange for the best airport security in the world.
> But if you want to murder by suicide, you do not have
> to board a plane in order to explode yourself and kill
> many people. Who could stop a suicide murder in the
> midst of the crowded line waiting to be checked by the
> airport metal detector? How about the lines to the
> check-in counters in a busy travel period? Put a metal
> detector in front of every train station in Spain and
> the terrorists will get the buses. Protect the buses
> and they will explode in movie theaters, concert
> halls, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools and
> hospitals. Put guards in front of every concert hall
> and there will always be a line of people to be
> checked by the guards and this line will be the
> target, not to speak of killing the guards themselves.
> You can somewhat reduce your vulnerability by
> preventive and defensive measures and by strict border
> controls but not eliminate it and definitely not win
> the war in a defensive way. And it is a war!
> What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded
>
> murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true
>
> fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown
> himself up.
> No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown
> himself.
> No relative of anyone influential has done it.
> Wouldn't you expect some of the religious leaders to
> do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing it,
> if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor?
> Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to
> Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, naEFve
> children, retarded people and young incited hotheads.
> They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the
> next world, and pay their families handsomely after
> the supreme act is performed and enough innocent
> people are dead.
> Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty
> and despair.
> The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It
> never happens there. There are numerous desperate
> people in the world, in different cultures, countries
> and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone
> with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation.
> There was certainly more despair in Saddam's Iraq then
> in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one exploded himself. A
> suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of
> cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with
> no regard to human life, including the life of their
> fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to their
> own affluent well-being and their hunger for power.
> The only way to fight this new "popular" weapon is
> identical to the only way in which you fight organized
> crime or pirates on the high seas: the offensive way.
> Like in the case of organized crime, it is crucial
> that the forces on the offensive be united and it is
> crucial to reach the top of the crime pyramid. You
> cannot eliminate organized crime by arresting the
> little drug dealer in the street corner. You must go
> after the head of the "Family".
> If part of the public supports it, others tolerate it,
> many are afraid of it and some try to explain it away
> by poverty or by a miserable childhood, organized
> crime will thrive and so will terrorism.
> The United States understands this now, after
> September 11. Russia is beginning to understand it.
> Turkey understands it well. I am very much afraid that
> most of Europe still does not understand it.
> Unfortunately, it seems that Europe will understand it
> only after suicide murders arrive in Europe in a big
> way. In my humble opinion, this will definitely
> happen. The Spanish trains and the Istanbul bombings
> are only the beginning. The unity of the Civilized
> World in fighting this horror is absolutely
> indispensable. Until Europe wakes up, this unity will
> not be achieved.
> 2. The second ingredient is words, more precisely
> lies.
> Words can be lethal. They kill people. It is often
> said that politicians, diplomats and perhaps also
> lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as
> part of their professional life. But the norms of
> politics and diplomacy are childish, in comparison
> with the level of incitement and total absolute
> deliberate fabrications, which have reached new
> heights in the region we are talking about. An
> incredible number of people in the Arab world believe
> that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation
> or,
> even better, a Jewish plot.
> You all remember the Iraqi Minister of Information,
> Mr. Mouhamad Said al-Sahaf and his press conferences
> when the US forces were already inside Baghdad.
> Disinformation at time of war is an accepted tactic.
> But to stand, day after day, and to make such
> preposterous statements, known to everybody to be
> lies, without even being ridiculed in your own milieu,
> can only happen in this region. Mr. Sahaf eventually
> became a popular icon as a court jester, but this did
> not stop some allegedly respectable newspapers from
> giving him equal time. It also does not prevent the
> Western press from giving credence, every day, even
> now, to similar liars.
> After all, if you want to be an anti-Semite, there are
> subtle ways of doing it. You do not have to claim that
> the holocaust never happened, and that the Jewish
> temple in Jerusalem never existed. But millions of
> Moslems are told by their leaders that this is the
> case. When these same leaders make other statements,
> the Western media report them as if they could be
> true.
> It is a daily occurrence that the same people, who
> finance, arm and dispatch suicide murderers, condemn
> the act in English in front of western TV cameras,
> talking to a world audience, which even partly
> believes them. It is a daily routine to hear the same
> leader making opposite statements in Arabic to his
> people and in English to the rest of the world.
> Incitement by Arab TV, accompanied by horror pictures
> of mutilated bodies, has become a powerful weapon of
> those who lie, distort and want to destroy everything.
> Little children are raised on deep hatred and on
> admiration of so-called martyrs, and the Western World
> does not notice it because its own TV sets are mostly
> tuned to soap operas and game shows. I recommend to
> you, even though most of you do not understand Arabic,
> to watch Al Jazeera, from time to time. You will not
> believe your own eyes.
> But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A
> demonstration in Berlin, carrying banners supporting
> Saddam's regime and featuring three-year old babies
> dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the press
> and by political leaders as a "peace monstration". You
> may support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to
> fans of Saddam, Arafat or Bin Laden as peace activists
> is a bit too much. A woman walks into an Israeli
> restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with
> old people and children eating their lunch in the
> adjacent tables and pays the bill. She then blows
> herself up, killing 20 people, including many
> children, with heads and arms rolling around in the
> restaurant. She is called "martyr" by several Arab
> leaders and "activist" by the European press.
> Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved
> family and the money flows.
> There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is
> called "the military wing", the one who pays him,
> equips him and sends him is now called "the political
> wing" and the head of the operation is called the
> "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples
> of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not
> only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These
> words are much more dangerous than many people
> realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities.
> It was
> Joseph Goebels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough,
> people
> will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.
> 3. The third aspect is money.
> Huge amounts of money, which could have solved many
> social problems in this dysfunctional part of the
> world, are channeled into three concentric spheres
> supporting death and murder.
> In the inner circle are the terrorists themselves. The
> money funds their travel, explosives, hideouts and
> permanent search for soft vulnerable targets. The
> inner circles are primarily financed by terrorist
> states like Iran and Syria, until recently also by
> Iraq and Libya and earlier also by some of the
> Communist regimes. These states, as well as the
> Palestinian Authority, are the safe havens of the
> wholesale murder vendors.
> They are surrounded by a second wider circle of direct supporters,
>
> planners, commanders, preachers, all of whom make a living,
> usually a
> very comfortable living, by serving as terror infrastructure.
> Finally, we find the third circle of so-called
> religious, educational and welfare organizations,
> which actually do some good, feed the hungry and
> provide some schooling, but brainwash a new generation
> with hatred, lies and ignorance. This circle operates
> mostly through mosques, madrasas and other religious
> establishments but
> also through inciting electronic and printed media. It is this
> circle
> that makes sure that women remain inferior, that democracy is
> unthinkable and that exposure to the outside world is minimal. It
> is
> also that circle that leads the way in blaming every-body outside
> the
> Moslem world, for the miseries of the region. The outer circle is
>
> largely financed by Saudi Arabia, but also by donations from
> certain
> Moslem communities in the United States and Europe and, to a
> smaller
> extent, by donations of European Governments to various NGO's and
> by
> certain United Nations organizations, whose goals may be noble,
> but they
> are infested and exploited by agents of the outer circle. The
> Saudi
> regime, of course, will be the next victim of major terror, when
> the
> inner circle will explode into the outer circle. The Saudis are
> beginning to understand it, but they fight the inner circles,
> while
> still financing the infrastructure at the outer circle.
> Figuratively speaking, this outer circle is the
> guardian, which makes sure that the people look and
> listen inwards to the inner circle of terror and
> incitement, rather than to the world outside. Some
> parts of this same outer circle actually operate as a
> result of fear from, or blackmail by, the inner
> circles. The horrifying added factor is the high birth
> rate. Half of the population of the Arab world is
> under the age of 20, the most receptive age to
> incitement, guaranteeing two more generations of blind
> hatred.
> Some of the leaders of these various circles live very comfortably
> on
> their loot. You meet their children in the best private schools in
>
> Europe, not in the training camps of suicide murderers. The Jihad
>
> "soldiers" join packaged death tours to Iraq and other hotspots,
> while
> some of their leaders ski in Switzerland. Mrs. Arafat, who lives
> in
> Paris with her daughter, receives tens of thousands of dollars per
> month
> from the allegedly bankrupt Palestinian Authority, while a typical
> local
> ringleader of the Al-Aksa brigade, reporting to Arafat, receives
> only a
> cash payment of a couple of hundred dollars, for performing
> murders at
> the retail level.
> 4. The fourth element of the current world conflict is
> the total breaking of all laws.
> The civilized world believes in democracy, the rule of
> law, including international law, human rights, free
> speech and free press, among other liberties. There
> are naEFve old-fashioned habits such as respecting
> religious sites and symbols, not using ambulances and
> hospitals for acts of war, avoiding the mutilation of
> dead bodies and not using children as human shields or
> human bombs. Never in history, not even in the Nazi
> period, was there such total disregard of all of the
> above as we observe now. Every student of political
> science debates how you prevent an anti-democratic
> force from winning a democratic election and
> abolishing democracy. Other aspects of a civilized
> society must also have limitations. Can a policeman
> open fire on someone trying to kill him? Can a
> government listen to phone conversations of terrorists
> and drug dealers? Does free speech protects you when
> you shout "fire" in a crowded theater? Should there be
> death penalty, for deliberate multiple murders? These
> are the old-fashioned dilemmas. But now we have an
> entire new set.
> Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist
> ammunition storage? Do you return fire, if you are
> attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken
> over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do
> you search every ambulance after a few suicide
> murderers use ambulances to reach their targets? Do
> you strip every woman because one pretended to be
> pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do
> you shoot back at someone trying to kill you, standing
> deliberately
> behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters,
> hidden
> in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who
> deliberately
> moves from one location to another, always surrounded by children?
> All
> of these happen daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What
> do you
> do? Well, you do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be
> avoided.
> Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone
> would openly stay in a well-known address in Teheran,
> hosted by the Iranian Government and financed by it,
> executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in
> France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting
> responsibility
> for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of
> the
> same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of
> his
> acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions
> and
> treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to
> figure
> out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation.
> The problem is that the civilized world is still
> having illusions about the rule of law in a totally
> lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey
> by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to
> knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In
> the same way that no country has a law against
> cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an
> act is unthinkable, international law does not address
> killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and
> ambulances, while being protected by their Government
> or society. International law does not know how to
> handle someone who sends children to throw stones,
> stands behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot
> be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government. International
> law
> does not know how to deal with a leader of murderers who is
> royally and
> comfortably hosted by a country, which pretends to condemn his
> acts or
> just claims to be too weak to arrest him.
> The amazing thing is that all of these crooks demand
> protection under international law, and define all
> those who attack them as "war criminals," with some
> Western media repeating the allegations.
> The good news is that all of this is temporary,
> because the evolution of international law has always
> adapted itself to reality. The punishment for suicide
> murder should be death or arrest before the murder,
> not during and not after. After every world war, the
> rules of international law have changed, and the same
> will happen after the present one. But during the
> twilight zone, a lot of harm can be done.
> The picture I described here is not pretty. What can
> we do about it? In the short run, only fight and win.
> In the long run - only educate the next generation and
> open it to the world. The inner circles can and must
> be destroyed by force.
> The outer circle cannot be eliminated by force. Here
> we need financial starvation of the organizing elite,
> more power to women, more education, counter
> propaganda, boycott whenever feasible and access to
> Western media, internet and the international scene.
> Above all, we need a total absolute unity and
> determination of the civilized world against all three
> circles of evil
> Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role
> as a taxi driver and return to science. When you have
> a malignant tumor, you may remove the tumor itself
> surgically. You may also starve it by preventing new
> blood from reaching it from other parts of the body,
> thereby preventing new "supplies" from expanding the
> tumor. If you want to be sure, it is best to do both.
> But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise,
> you have to realize that you are in a war, and this
> may take Europe a few more years.
> In order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate
> the terrorist regimes, so that no Government in the
> world will serve as a safe haven for these people.
> I do not want to comment here on whether the
> American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the
> point of view of weapons of mass destruction or any
> other pre-war argument, but I can look at the post-war
> map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan, Iraq and
> Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain:
> Iran, Syria and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian
> colony. Perhaps Sudan should be added to the list. As
> a result of the conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq, both
> Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded by
> territories unfriendly to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan,
> by the
> Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem republics of the former Soviet
> Union.
> Syria is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. This is a
>
> significant strategic change and it applies strong pressure on the
>
> terrorist countries. It is not surprising that Iran is so active
> in
> trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I do not know if the
> American plan was actually to encircle both Iran and Syria, but
> that is
> the resulting situation.
> In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the
> world today is Iran and its regime. It definitely has
> ambitions to rule vast areas and to expand in all
> directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy
> over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven
> that it can execute elaborate terrorist acts without
> leaving too many traces, using Iranian Embassies. It
> is clearly trying to develop nuclear weapons. Its
> so-called moderates and conservatives play their own
> virtuoso version of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game
> Iran sponsors Syrian terrorism, it is certainly behind
> much of the action in Iraq, it is fully funding the
> Hezbollah and, through it, the Palestinian Hamas and
> Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at least in
> Europe and in South America and probably also in
> Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia and it truly leads a
> multi-national terror consortium, which includes, as
> minor players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite
> elements in Iraq. Nevertheless, most European
> countries still trade with Iran, try to appease it and
> refuse to read the clear signals.
> In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry
> the financial resources of the terror conglomerate. It
> is pointless to try to understand the subtle
> differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaeda and
> Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hezbollah, Sadr and
> other Iranian inspired enterprises. When it serves
> their business needs, all of them collaborate
> beautifully.
> It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial
> support of the outer circle, which is the fertile
> breeding ground of terror. It is important to monitor
> all donations from the Western World to Islamic
> organizations, to monitor the finances of
> international relief organizations and to react with
> forceful economic measures to any small sign of
> financial aid to any of the three circles of
> terrorism.
> It is also important to act decisively against the
> campaign of lies and fabrications and to monitor those
> Western media who collaborate with it out of naivety,
> financial interests or ignorance.
> Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever
> know whether the recent elections in Spain would have
> yielded a different result, if not for the train
> bombings a few days earlier. But it really does not
> matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe
> that they caused the result and that they won by
> driving Spain out of Iraq. The Spanish story will
> surely end up being extremely costly to other European countries,
>
> including France, who is now expelling inciting preachers and
> forbidding
> veils and including others who sent troops to Iraq. In the long
> run,
> Spain itself will pay even more.
> Is the solution a democratic Arab world?
> If by democracy we mean free elections but also free
> press, free speech, a functioning judicial system,
> civil liberties, equality to women, free international
> travel, exposure to international media and ideas,
> laws against racial incitement and against defamation,
> and avoidance of lawless behavior regarding hospitals,
> places of worship and children, then yes, democracy is
> the solution.
> If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that
> the most fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement
> and
> fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in
>
> Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again,
> if
> the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a
> certain
> transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary
> solution,
> paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way that an
>
> immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would not
> have
> worked in China.
> I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail.
> But the longer it takes us to understand the new
> landscape of this war, the more costly and painful the
> victory will be. Europe, more than any other region,
> is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars,
> following the horrors of World War II, may cost
> thousands of additional innocent lives, before the
> tide will turn."
> 
> End of article.