No it’s not Britney Spear showing her belly button, it’s not America's wealth, it’s not our way of life, it’s not democracy and it’s not American influence corrupting Islamic society.

In fact, American culture is a big hit with the man on the street in Cairo, Tehran, Islamabad, Dubai and other places. Educated people in the Muslim world respect and admire American values of freedom of speech and want to have similar kind of democratic values back home as well.

The biggest threat to America is not the uneducated, poor Muslims who hate Uncle Sam. The biggest threat to American security comes from educated, Western looking Muslims. They have the intelligence to plan operations, dodge our intelligence agencies, know how to use the latest technology to their advantage, have the means to earn a decent living but still feel compelled to give their live in the cause.

A lot of nations in the past have been in a state of denial about their wrong doings, because of an easy win in Afghanistan we have stopped asking the question that was raised on Sept. 11, ‘why do they hate us ?’.

Yes, we will find Al-Qaeda and destroy it, but what will we do about people like Wafa Idris? A 28-year-old, educated, good looking, Palestinian paramedic who blew herself in Jerusalem.

I think we have to and should accept that a large part of the ocean of hatred is due to our Middle East policy.

Yes, there will always be people who will hate the US but if we have a better Middle East policy they will find the support in the environment fade, we should also change it because it is the right thing to do.

We called Iran a member of the ‘the axis of evil’ for providing a shipload of weapons to the Palestinians, yet we have provided $120 billion in aid over the year to Israel. We still provide $2 billion in military aid to a nation that has killed thousands of civilians, that occupies land in direct conflict with UN resolutions, that humiliates the subjects of the occupied territory, strips them in front to hundreds of people, cut their olive trees, assassinates leaders and civilians, detains thousands without charges, bulldozes civilian houses, blows up radio station and the office of statistics (buildings for which the EU plans to demand reparation).

It’s led by a person, Ariel Sharon who is currently being investigated for war crimes, whom an Israeli court barred from being the defense minister ever again for his role in a civilian massacre (and so he became the prime minister! Am I the only one that finds this ironical?).

I am no fan of Yasser Arafat either and the human tragedy on the Israeli side is immense as well, but it just amazes me to see an extremely one-sided policy of the American government favoring Israel.

It’s this extremely biased policy that convinces the educated Muslims that the blood of Palestinian is not as important as that of an Israeli, that might is right, that United States, which considers people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as heroes for fighting an unjust occupation, gives billions of dollars in aid to maintain an unjust occupation of Palestine.

It vetoes all resolutions to have international monitors in Israel (the latest UN resolution was supported by 130 nations that US vetoed). Seventy-eight percent of what was the historic Palestine is already called Israel, the negotiations are on for the remaining 22 percent. In Ehud Barak’s time the settlements grew by 64 percent, every human rights organization in the world from Amnesty down to the ones in Israel have severely criticized Israeli policies that have made life hell for Palestinians.

Imagine for a moment that if a nation occupies Texas, bulldozes houses in Texas, destroys the means of earning a living, humiliates the people and their families severely, makes life hell for them and shows their religious links to justify this occupation, would you expect the people in Texas to fight back against the occupation?

How would you feel about another nation that supports the occupying nation for 35 years! Provides it F-16s to bombard your home, hospitals and infrastructure, provides international legitimacy, provides monetary help, does basically all it can to continue supporting the occupation?

Why do we, the United States do all this? The most important reason is a very politically active pro-Israeli lobby which has been recognized as one of the most influential in Washington. Apparently campaign finance reform may not only help save us from debacles like Enron but may have a great impact on our Middle East policy.

Secondly there is a myth embedded in our psyche that condemning the barbaric policies of the state of Israel means that you are anti-Semitic. It means that you are a racist who hates Jews. This notion is of course absolutely wrong. There are many Jews that do not agree with the policies of Israeli government, they include everyone from Jewish intellectuals to Jewish journalists to Jewish Army officers.

These policies are condemned more by Israeli media and people then they are by mainstream American media. Recently soldiers and officers refused to participate in bulldozing civilian homes, calling it an immoral act that does not increase security.

Newspaper on the left and center constantly criticize these barbaric acts. As American we need to assure ourselves that’s it’s okay to condemn the wrong policies of state of Israel without feeling guilty and being called anti-Semitic.

In the 1980s we encouraged Islamic extremists to fight off the Russians in Afghanistan. We spent $3 billion in arms and ammunitions, we also spent $50 million through University of Nebraska educating Afghanis, who learned maths by learning how to count dead Russian soldiers and klashnikovs.

Our national security adviser went to Afghanistan and told the Afghanis that the godless enemy has occupied their land, mosques and that it’s their religious duty to wage a jihad against an occupying force that’s keeping a non-representative proxy government in place. About 1.2 million Afghanis died in the jihad, we left after our objectives were met.

We should stop being afraid of Islamists taking over as a result of an election. In Pakistan they won 4 percent of the vote and in Iran the population was fast becoming pro-American (that is of course before we said the ‘axis’ thing, the impact of which still remains to be seen).

We armed Saddam to the teeth to fight with Iran and he came back later to haunt us and still does, now we have sanctions in place that have contributed to starvation of over a million Iraqi civilians including 500,000 children, according to international non-Iraqi organizations.

These civilian deaths for which a number of world organization have blamed us partially at least have been justified to meet our political objective of removing Saddam Hussein from power.

We continue to contain Saddam, but do it in a way to minimize the impact on the civilian population. If history is a guide, America is great at achieving the short term objectives but has missed the mark a lot of times in terms of our long term national interest.

Sooner or later our policy of supporting a brutal army occupation of Palestine would bite us hard.

What we really need to do right now is to ask ourselves about how many American lives are we willing to sacrifice on the barbaric policies of Sharon? It’s not a matter of existence of Israel, it’s a matter of our supporting the brutal behavior of Israel.

Are you willing to sacrifice your son and daughter to support inhuman policies because the politicians get big campaign contributions?

If not, then maybe it’s time that we start writing to our senators and congressman asking them to work for the larger national interest and the principles of right and wrong.

It’s high time that we start a grass root movement to change our biased and incorrect policy or else at least we stop asking the question, "why do they hate us ?"