[Paleopsych] A View from the Eye of the Storm

[K.E.]

A View from the Eye of the Storm



Professor 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, it 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, he 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 antisemite, 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 
Hizbulla 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 Uzbekhistan 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 Hizbulla, 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.


  ~~ Bless the founders of the Net~~
They've allowed me to become a woman of my time instead of ahead of it.
Timing & Luck in the rhythm of life is more important than anything else.
Just a curious grrl . . .
  ~~~ KSE~~~

"The illiterate of the year 2000 will not be the individual who cannot read
and write, but the one who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn."
  ~~~Alvin Toffler~~~

"Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send."
John B. Postel, RFC 791 quoted by Bob Braden
UCLA Computer Science Dept. "Jon Postel Remembered"  October 30, 1998
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