Muslim Terrorism: Those who live by the bomb, die by the bomb

For longer than I wish to remember, Israel has repeatedly been the victim of Palestinian suicide bombers, while the world reacted with condescending condolence calls. The bombers knew that their final act wasn’t going to “defeat” Israel. The goal was to undermine the Israeli public’s sense of security, with the hope that over time, the Israeli people would just give up and move to other places where they felt safe. True to the Israeli national motto – Never Again - the Israelis weren’t gong to stand idly by and play the victim to Arab aggression. They built security walls, resumed targeted killings of known terrorists, perfected unmanned defensive technologies and developed surveillance technologies – while at the same time the whole world condemned them for basically defending themselves. Never, at any time, did ANY Arab governments condemn Palestinian suicide bombers. To the contrary, the Arab press consistently explained away these bombings as justified expressions of an oppressed Palestinian people.

Fast forward to today: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda linked leader of the Iraqi insurgents, has killed thousands of innocent civilian Arabs through suicide bombings and gruesome beheadings, as well as having claimed responsibility for the November 9th, 2005 bombings of 3 hotels in Amman Jordan that killed 56 Arabs (many of them Palestinian).

The Arab world always said that at the center of their anger is the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. If only Israel would pull back to the indefensible 1967 borders, or better yet just disappear, then peace and goodwill would descend on the Mideast and the world. Al-Zarqawi’s Iraqi atrocities have nothing to do with Israel. The bombings in Amman, Jordan have nothing to do with Israel.

Now, the Arab world is a victim of it’s own inventions. Various groups, like the secular ex-Saddam fascist Baath Party or extremist Islamists like al-Qaeda have led the way for any group in the Arab world with any kind of grievance – no matter how minor – to make their point by blowing up someone or something. Even the French, who championed the Palestinians cause as a way to pacify Arab anger, are learning that their complacency has a price.

The sickness that is afflicting the Muslim world is not about Israel, and it’s not about something the West has done to deserve their anger. What we are seeing are a people who have lived in relative ignorance for the past 200 years, while the rest of the world became “enlightened” and “civilized”. Missing that boat is hard to take, and the Muslim world is coping with it by trying to bring the West back in time to the medieval era, rather than acknowledging their need to play catch up. If they can’t blow us up, then evidently they are content to blow themselves up.

If that’s the case, then so be it.