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There is at least one silver lining in the ghastly carnage in Mombasa, Kenya. The homicidal swine who turned the Paradise Hotel into an inferno blew away the illusion that Israel’s war on terrorism can be separated from America’s.
This is a myth treasured by many in the U.S. government, especially at the State Department, who believe that America is right to use overwhelming force against its enemies, but that Israel should show “restraint” no matter the provocation. While America roots out the source of our terrorist problems in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is sternly admonished by Washington that he must not touch a hair of Yasser Arafat’s head, even though Arafat is at least as much responsible for terrorism as Mullah Omar once was.
This attitude reached new heights of absurdity after the targeted killing of six al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen by a CIA-operated Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher took pains to argue that there was absolutely no comparison between this action and Israel’s targeted killings of terrorists, which the U.S. government continues to condemn.
But what if the people attacking America are also the people attacking Israel? If it turns out that al Qaeda was responsible for the Kenya attack, as now appears likely, then this conclusion will be inescapable, but long before last week’s bombing the evidence already strongly pointed in that direction.
One only has to think back to September 11, 2001. The suicidal attacks on America caused great grief in Israel—and undisguised joy in the Palestinian territories. Though Arafat took pains to quash coverage of pro-al Qaeda demonstrations, the Palestinian reaction was hardly an aberration. Remember that in the 1991 Gulf War the Palestinians also openly rooted for America’s enemy, Saddam Hussein.
It’s more than a matter of rooting interest, however; there are also much closer connections between anti-American terrorists and anti-Israeli terrorists. At the broadest level, both groups represent an extremist Islamist ideology that revels in suicidal attacks and seeks to inflict maximum civilian casualties. The airplane hijackers of 9/11 were similar in spirit to those who tried to blow an Israeli airliner out of the sky over Kenya with SA-7 missiles. Not all Palestinian terrorists, much less all Palestinians, are Islamists, but fanatical groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad are at the forefront of the current Al Aksa Intifida.
Within extremist Islamic circles, hatred of America (“the Great Satan”) and Israel (“the Little Satan”) go hand in hand. There are interesting debates among the Islamists over which is their greatest enemy. Some argue for America, on the grounds that Israel is merely an outpost of the “Crusader” empire centered in the United States. Others suggest that the “Zionist entity” is the greater threat, on the grounds that a Zionist conspiracy secretly controls the U.S. government. But there is no denying that the two are closely linked in the Islamists’ minds because both countries stand for everything they detest: religious freedom, women’s rights, democracy, pluralism.
Thus Hezbollah (Party of God), the Iranian-sponsored Lebanese terrorist group, has carried out major operations against both Israel and America. Hezbollah is believed to be behind the blowing up of the U.S. embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the kidnapping and killing of numerous Americans in the 1980s, and the bombing of the U.S. Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996. At the same time, Hezbollah has waged a relentless war against Israel from its bases in Southern Lebanon, a war that has not slowed down even after its ostensible provocation (Israel’s occupation of part of Lebanon) ended in 2000.
Many observers wrongly focus on the divisions between terrorist groups. Some, such as Hezbollah, are Shiites. Others, like al Qaeda, are led by Sunnis. Still others, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, have secular leaders. But even rivals cooperate in their common campaign against Israel and the West, much as disparate terrorist groups of the 1970s and 1980s (the Baader Meinhof Gang, Red Army Faction, Irish Republican Army, etc.) worked together under the tutelage of Communist intelligence services.
The modern Islamist movement began with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1950s-60s, but has since spread throughout the Middle East and beyond, from the Palestinian territories to Pakistan. All these groups see themselves as fellow jihadis (holy warriors) for the Dar al Islam (house of Islam) against the Dar al Harb (house of war—or all non-Islamic societies).
If we are ever to defeat them, we must see them as they see themselves. If we do, we’ll realize that the Israeli conflict is not a “distraction” from the war on terrorism—it is the war on terrorism.
Max Boot is the Olin senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.”