The Front Line in the War on Terror
WITTMANN, MARSHALL
The Front Line in the War on Terror It's Israel now, not Afghanistan. BY MARSHALL WITTMANN THE FRONT LINES in the war against terror are no longer in the mountains of Afghanistan, but rather in...
...The assault on Israeli civilians is now the cutting edge of the axis of evil...
...More important, the Palestinian organizations, including Arafat's own groups, escalated their campaign of blood and terror against Israeli civilians...
...Other Arafat-controlled organizations are still in the clear...
...The expressions of joy in the "Palestinian street" over the attacks on New York and the Pentagon were an early signal that the Palestinians were likely to aid bin Laden's terrorist war...
...Of course, we should not be surprised by the alliance of the anti-Israel Islamists...
...BY MARSHALL WITTMANN THE FRONT LINES in the war against terror are no longer in the mountains of Afghanistan, but rather in the streets of Israel...
...war against the Taliban, the American response to the Israeli defense has often tended in the direction of flaccid moral equivalence decrying the "cycle of violence...
...The Bush administration has wanted to see the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as a diversion from its central objective of eliminating the Taliban and eventually removing Saddam...
...Hamas and Hezbollah were not initially placed on the list of terrorist organizations for financial crackdowns, and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades were only recently named...
...Authority and its instruments...
...Thus, the New York Times recently cited American and Israeli officials' fears of an alliance linking Iran, Arafat, and al Qaeda: "Israeli officials say they are alarmed by Mr...
...Even the hard-line vice president of the United States failed to condemn the Saudi-published anti-Semitic hate that is breeding suicide bombers when he was presented with that opportunity recently on Meet the Press...
...Absent in the American response to Palestinian terror has been the determined resolve that the United States has shown in Afghanistan...
...Arafat's alliance with Iran because they say it gives the Palestinians a powerful and well-armed patron in the increasingly violent conflict with Israel...
...Why not move the fight to the venue where the West is divided and lacks clarity...
...Terror has achieved its aim—its placement on the same moral plane as the civilized response to terror...
...In return, have the Saudis condemned Palestinian terror...
...And while American and, to a lesser extent, Western public opinion remains outraged about the September 11 atrocities, the world is increasingly jaded and inured to the carnage in Israel...
...But increasingly, there appears to be a real nexus—call it an axis— between al Qaeda and its sister terrorist networks, the key Israel-hating and terrorist-sponsoring regimes of the Middle East, and Arafat's Palestinian Marshall Wittmann is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute...
...Why not move the fight to a venue where the West is divided...
...In the last couple of weeks, it has seemed for the first time since September 11 that Osama bin Laden and his allies in the Muslim world are not on the run, but on a run...
...But what if our enemies have shifted the front The goal of radical Islamists has always been to rid the Muslim world of Western influence...
...Slowly but surely, a central objective of bin Laden and al Qaeda is being achieved...
...American officials echoed that concern and said they were also worried by intelligence reports that say Tehran is harboring al Qaeda members, including one leader who recently tried to mount an attack against Israel from his sanctuary in Iran...
...Have they stopped inciting terror through their media, to say nothing of their massive funding of extremist organizations throughout the Islamic world...
...The West has agreed to negotiate with terror...
...To assuage Muslim opinion, the president even endorsed a Palestinian state...
...Early on, bin Laden signaled that his enemies were the "Crusaders and the Jews...
...Bin Laden and his fellow travelers in Hamas and Fatah, as well as in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, recognize the deep historical ambiguity in the West over the Jews...
...After all, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were more focused on removing American influence from the Islamic world than promoting the Palestinian cause...
...While we are scoring victories in the Afghan theater, we are losing on the Middle Eastern front in the war against terror...
...The goal of the radical Islamists has always been to rid the Muslim world of Western influence...
...If the foreign policy sophisticates in Washington did not understand the link between the Palestinian cause and al Qaeda, the Arab masses were not confused...
...The captured arms shipment of the Karine A confirmed the link between the Palestinian Authority and Iran...
...Since America was attacked in September, both friends and adversaries of Israel have attempted to deny the link between America's war on terror and the dispute in the Middle East...
...A loss of moral clarity in the Middle East would undo all the good that has been done by our military victories in Afghanistan and the president's impressive speeches at home...
...Yet the Bush administration has resisted calling attention to this Middle East antiIsrael terror axis, fearing to alienate the so-called moderate Arabs...
...against the United States and the West to the streets of Israel...
...While America hurled missiles against the Taliban, the Bush administration urged Israelis to enter the peace process with their own terrorists...
...By focusing terror on Israel, they seek of course to weaken Israel, but also to confuse what had seemed to be an unambiguous war on terror...
...The strategy has been to lower the temperature in Israel and thereby create the circumstances for a coalition for regime change in Iraq...
...One frequently hears commentators lament the violence on "both sides," as if there were no moral distinction between targeting civilians and inadvertently killing innocents while pursuing terrorists...
...America has embraced a so-called Saudi peace plan that would result in a truncated, indefensible Israel...
...While the Bush administration has displayed moral clarity in the U.S...
Vol. 7 • April 2002 • No. 29
