Speech
by Haim Harari
on War on Terror
HAIM
HARARI, a theoretical physicist, is the Chair, Davidson Institute
of Science Education, and Former President, from 1988 to 2001, of
the Weizmann Institute of Science. During his years as President of the Institute,
the Institute entered numerous new scientific fields and projects,
built 47 new buildings, raised one Billion Dollars in philanthropic
money, hired more than half of its current tenured Professors and
became one of the highest royalty-earning academic organizations
in the world.
Throughout
all his adult life, Harari has made major
contributions to three different fields: Particle Physics Research
on the international scene, Science Education in the Israeli school
system and Science Administration and Policy Making.
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
would have joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine
would have 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.
Do I say all of this with the satisfaction
of someone discussing the failings of his enemies? On the contrary,
I firmly believe that the world would have been a much better place
and my own neighborhood would have been much more pleasant and peaceful,
if things were different.
I should also say 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. 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". I have no better name for the present situation. A few
more years may pass before everybody acknowledges
that it is a World War, but we are already well into it.
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,
naïve 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 will 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.
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 demonstration". 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.
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. 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 everybody outside the Moslem world,
for the miseries of the region.
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.
Of the three circles described above,
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. 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.?
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 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?
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 naïve 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 Hizbullah 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 Qaida and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbullah,
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.
