WASHINGTON — A direct line runs between the wishy-washy responses to Palestinian terrorism during the past 35 years, particularly by Western Europe, and Sept. 11, writes Alan Dershowitz in “Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge,” a provocative, well-written book, destined to become a major source for understanding this modern plague.
“In all, the international community responded to terrorism between 1968 and 2001 by consistently rewarding and legitimizing it, rather than punishing and condemning it,” the Harvard University law professor writes.
“Seen in this light, it is no wonder we had to suffer the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001…By continuing to reward Palestinian terrorism even after Sept. 11, they have continued to make future terrorist attacks more likely.”
Dershowitz believes that the real problem with terrorism is that it succeeds, the terrorists know it works, and that success encourages them to continue with their evil designs.
He demonstrates the fruits of terrorism with a 21-page, two-column comparison of “Palestinian terrorist acts” next to “Benefits to Palestinian cause.”
For example, he lists 11 Palestinian terrorist acts that began in July 1968 with the hijacking of an El Al flight from Rome and culminated in the November 1969 hand grenade attack on an El Al office in Athens that was followed a month later by the U.N. General Assembly recognizing the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”
This vividly shows how the Palestinians pushed their cause from near visibility in 1968 to a state in the making in 30 years through a ruthless campaign of sabotage, hijackings, bombings and shootings. From their perspective, terrorism has really paid off.
To stop support of terrorism, the world must show that any cause served by that tool will be worse, not better off, the author explains.
Many analysts refer to the importance of dealing with “the root cause” of terrorism, but so doing, Dershowitz convincingly argues, has the perverse effect of increasing terrorism. Attempting to deal with those so-called root causes signals that “if you resort to terrorism, we will try harder to understand your grievances and respond to them than we would have if you employed less violent methods.”
In any case, Dershowitz discounts any root causes of terrorism. People always have had grievances, often justified, but most have never resorted to violence against civilians.
This doesn’t mean that the world should ignore people’s grievances, but timing is all important here.
An analogy, the writer notes, would be the relationship between poverty and crime. When there is a drug-related murder, we try to catch and punish the murderer. But recognizing that poverty and unemployment may contribute to street crime and that dealing with those problems is a positive good, we separately fight those social ills. We should deal the same way with political grievances.
Dershowitz has some concrete recommendations for fighting terrorism, including:
*Never allow terrorists to benefit from their actions and assure that serious attention is paid to people with grievances who eschew terrorism.
*Deter those who send the suicide bombers. Dershowitz favors punishing Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of whom support suicide bombings, with economic sanctions. He further recommends that the Israeli government — after publicly enunciating the policy — bulldoze houses in villages used by terrorists or confiscate land that might be part of a future Palestinian state as retaliation for suicide bombings.
*Incapacitate the apocalyptic terrorist. The only way to deal with religiously motivated zealots is to imprison them, intercept their supply lines and destroy their organizational, financial and communications systems.
*Get tough with nations that support terrorism.
He also suggests that the United States institute an effective “border control system” and consider a national ID card and systems of keeping track of visitors.
Whatever steps are taken, they should “improve our security without losing the feel or the reality of freedom.”
The main problem with “Why Terrorism Works” is that it will be read by the members of the infamous choir that is always being preached to. I’m sure that most readers, who closely follow events in Israel, already know that appeasing terrorists simply leads to more terrorism.
But maybe if we sent a copy of the book to the French foreign minister…