There is a wide gulf between telling the facts and taking advantage of a terrorist attack. Soon after last month’s terrorist outrage in the United States, the general tone of the Arab media and intellectuals was that the tragedy was an overreaction to unfair American support for Israel’s repression in the occupied territories or, in other words, it was an act of revenge. This theory of reaction or revenge has very obviously not been endorsed by the claims of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization which is being linked to the attacks.
In the huge number of publications circulated by the Qaeda over the past seven years never have I seen any reference to a political demand related to the occupied territories. Of course, though the publications contained general attacks on Zionism and the Jews, the Qaeda never made specific demands such as withdrawal from Arab lands or the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Neither did it make demands as other terrorist organizations always do. It did not claim that its men hijacked planes, destroyed two huge commercial towers and killed some 6,500 people for the sake of Palestinians. It is also noteworthy that the organization did not make any particular demand after the attacks in Aden, Nairobi or Dar es Salaam. Its only demand is that the United States should get out of the region because it is the symbol of unbelief. It is common knowledge that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the US has the least presence. The organization’s target, seemingly, also includes Arab governments which it describes as irreligious as well.
Therefore, the majority of Arab intellectuals, who considered the scenes of destruction and devastation with thousands of people buried there traumatic, are going contrary to facts and injuring the Palestinian cause by explaining the attacks as a reaction against US support for Israel. The intellectuals are also not doing justice to the organization which is allegedly responsible for the acts. The linking of the Palestinian cause with the outrage in the US is as ridiculous as claiming that the last terror attack in Upper Egypt was against Israel. Or like saying that innocent human beings are being killed like sheep in slaughterhouses to promote the Palestinian cause. These are just senseless statements which will turn world opinion against the wronged Palestinians. Arab lands and countries have, for a long time, witnessed terrorist killings far in excess of what the people of America or any other nation have seen. The Arab experience with terror has been far worse and of longer duration than the recent barbaric outrages in New York and Washington.
I blame the Arab intellectuals more than anyone else because they have been searching for excuses for the terrorist attacks. They put forward justifications, complete with religious rulings plus political and moral lectures in an attempt to make the acts acceptable to common people who normally are ready to think and act as the media direct. The Muslim world, undoubtedly, has been the victim of both intellectual and physical terrorism more than the Americans have. We Arabs and Muslims must declare that we are against terrorism, whoever its victims may be. How can a religious or national cause kill a peasant girl in a rural school or pull down a huge New York building upon its occupants?
