What do the Terrorists Really Think?

If you want to know what people think, one way to go about finding out would be to actually interview them. While this seems like a no-brainer, it is rare to find many articles on the Middle East where this is actually done.

Here is a review of a new book called Schmoozing with Terrorists by Aaron Klein that brings up some good points and raises some important questions. Some excerpts:

The Arab Palestinian leaders with whom Klein spoke are very candid about their dreams not only to wipe out Israel, but to establish a worldwide caliphate. Their plans for American society should awaken anyone who thinks the Arab terrorists are only Israel's problem. And it should also smack awake all the moral relativists who equate Israel's security measures with hegemonic brutality.

A deputy commander of Fatah's al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Nasser Abu Azziz, explained to Klein that when sharia law is imposed in Western countries, "these sick people [homosexuals] will be treated in a very tough way," explaining that the Islamic leadership will "prevent social and physical diseases like homosexuality." All the terrorists whom Klein interviewed agreed that homosexuality would not be tolerated in the US once Islam rules.

And homosexuality is not all they condemn. The failure of western women to conform to Islamic standards of dress will reap harsh responses including, if necessary, torture. Sheik Hamad, a Hamas cleric, said those women who refuse to cover themselves in conformity with Islamic values would be punished either by imprisonment, whipping or stoning.

The "Halal Hippies" and "Cafe Latte" crowd would do well to at least consider the possibility that these leaders are not being misunderstood but know exactly what they are saying and really mean what they are saying.

Our mass media - whether it be news or soap operas - are everywhere in the world and there are many in the Muslim world who are dismayed by what they see. To me this not only implies that they have a better sense of us than we have of them (albeit through the distortions of the media lens), but that they feel that their way of life is endangered and are motivated to defend it - even if that means taking the battle to the enemy. Add to that Muslim millenarian visions of the inevitably that the entire world will eventually accept their faith and you have a pretty scary cocktail.

Klein was told by Abu Ayman, the commander of Islamic Jihad in Jenin, that Muslims are strictly forbidden from becoming suicide bombers if they are motivated by anything -- including desperate poverty or revenge for Israeli wrongdoing to this individual -- other than love of Allah. When Klein pointed out to a young man in training to become a "martyr" CNN's claim that suicide bombing was motivated by poverty and despair, Abu Ahmed was visibly affronted and called it "Israeli propaganda."

The most bizarre and brazen interview Klein describes is with Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, the chief Palestinian Justice and one of the most important clerics in the Middle East. Tamimi lectured Klein that "there is no Jewish historic connection whatsoever to the Temple Mount or Jerusalem," and that the "Jews came to the [Temple area] in 1967 and not before."

Tamimi responded to Klein's recitation of archeological findings and historical connections: "These archeological things you cite are lies." Tamimi simply erases Judaism's connection to the Holy Land by ignoring irrefutable and concrete evidence of inconvenient facts.

This only goes to show that the notion that economic development will dampen ideological fervor is misplaced. I am all for economic development, but humans are not automatons who respond blindly to cost-benefit analysis. Economics is a social science and this false assumption about the root causes of Palestinian militancy is one of the reasons there has been no peace and also one of the reasons economic sanctions literally never work as an instrument of foreign policy. That is true no less in the case of Gaza than in the case of Iran.

The second point raised here also demonstrates that Facts have no bearing on ideological worldview. In fact, it is a great testament to the human mind that ideology trumps reality.

If these murder merchants happily speak at length about their desire to murder and torture those who don't fit their religious profiles, why are the rest of the hundreds of journalists who call Israel their beat unable to obtain the same information? Do they prefer to stick with the standard mendacious narrative, either because they believe it or because they are too afraid to approach the terrorist leadership? Neither answer says anything favorable about the press corps.

Second, why are all those on the political left, those who identify themselves as advocates for minorities, so convinced that Israel is the villain and the Arab Palestinians are the victim? Anyone who claims to favor women's rights, gay rights, ideological tolerance, freedom of the press, of speech, of association, of religion, in fact, nearly all of the icons of the political left, should logically support the Israeli narrative. Instead, most of those in this country who fit the profile of the left support the Arab Palestinian narrative. Yet Klein's interviewees freely articulate their categorical rejection of the ideas these groups hold dear. And when these people categorically reject an idea, we're not talking polite disagreement over cocktails: we're talking beheading in the town square, as Klein's interviewees state in plain English. Yet these groups -- QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terror) is my own personal favorite -- continue to support terrorists who would happily slaughter their western advocates if they attained the power they seek.

These are often the same people who supported Communism - even after they were confronted with Stalinist atrocities or the killing fields of Cambodia. It goes back to my point above regarding ideology trumping reality but also has to do with an obsessive insistence on supporting the underdog - regardless of whether they are right or wrong. That this is a natural consequence of post-modernist and relativist thinking goes without saying.