Eliminating Osama bin Laden or the Taliban will not end the threat of terrorism, according to the local deputy director of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby.
“We could capture bin Laden and wake up tomorrow to find out that Hamas had wiped out the Sears Tower,” said Zack Bodner, at a San Francisco panel discussion last week on the recent terrorist attacks. Before Sept. 11, he added, Hezbollah was the No. 1 ranked group on the State Department’s terrorist list.
Yossi Amrani, the local consul general of Israel, agreed, emphasizing that the war against terrorism needed to extend beyond Afghanistan to areas ranging from Turkey to Indonesia. Bin Laden, he said, has “exported his values” to countless countries, and his ultimate vision is a world rid of “infidels” — with Israel and Jews around the world at the top of the list.
Billed as a “Jewish Community Town Hall Meeting,” the event at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El was one of six such Bay Area forums. It drew about 350 people. Designed to provide a historical framework for the recent terrorist attacks, the forum raised as many questions as it answered. However, it did yield some surprising theories and conclusions — among them that the Taliban was established with the blessing of Pakistan and that not all of the suicide hijackers knew they were going to die.
One of the main themes of the evening was that Israel was the major U.S. ally in the troubled region and should not be ignored or scapegoated.
Alluding to U.S. pressure on Israel to limit its military incursions into the territories, Amrani said: “No country should have preconditions set for their support in the war against terrorism. There should also be no attempt to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorism. Some may call the people in Chechnya ‘freedom fighters’ but the Russians call them ‘terrorists.'”
Said Bodner: “One of the basic messages that this community has to send to our elected officials is that there is absolutely no linkage from the Sept. 11 events to U.S. policy in Israel and the Middle East.
“Israel should not be made the scapegoat, and should also not be seen as the mistress you can’t take out in public,” he added, noting that Israel has been working very closely with the United States, “behind the scenes,” to assist in protecting agriculture and water supplies from biological attacks.
Alexander Their, a former officer in charge of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan, pointed out that more than 21 ethnic groups vie for power in Afghanistan, which muddles the situation considerably.
He also commented that the majority of Afghani people are not fundamentalist by nature, and that the rabid anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias in other Middle Eastern countries is absent in Afghanistan.
“Telling people I was Jewish was never a problem,” said Their. “Prior to the rise of the Taliban, there was much tolerance for other religious beliefs.”
The Taliban’s ascent to power could not have occurred without the consent of Pakistan, he added, explaining that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said that her government saw the Taliban as an ideal trade corridor to circumvent India, a hostile neighbor to the east.
On the domestic front, Robert Rubin, legal director of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, expressed his concern that civil rights should not be curtailed in the wake of the attacks. Noting that in “times of crisis,” immigrants often bear the brunt of public unrest, Rubin said the anti-terrorism bill signed by President Bush last week is alarming in its scope. It would allow suspect immigrants to be detained for a seven days, and, in rare cases, up to six months.
“Did we interrogate all tall, white males after we found out who perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombings?” Rubin asked. “And what would’ve happened if we had?”
Perhaps the person best able to answer Rubin’s rhetorical query, Larry Mefford of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, couldn’t provide an answer.
Mefford said the Sept. 11 attacks were carried out “with a level of sophistication and commitment we’ve never seen before in the United States. These individuals [the hijackers] were not on our radar screen, and the majority of them came over on tourist visas.”
Mefford said the federal government was preparing for the likelihood of further attacks.
Also attending the event at Emanu-El were Jewish Community Relations Council president David Steirman and assistant director Abby Michelson Porth. Forums have taken place at Congregations Beth Am in Los Altos Hills and Beth Ami in Santa Rosa as well as the Marin Jewish Community Center. Sponsors include JCRC, the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and area synagogues.