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.