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MSNBC 6 November 2001 Netanyahu speaks out on terrorism Virginia Hatch, Portsmouth Herald Contributing Writer Nov. 6 - Terrorism may be new to Americans, but it is a way of life with the Israelis. In that way, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is uniquely qualified to offer a perspective on what the United States is experiencing. Netanyahu was invited to speak to New Hampshire residents by U.S. Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., this past week. The speech was called "War on Terrorism and Homeland Security." Smith, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he invited Netanyahu because he is a "world-renowned expert on terrorism whose vast knowledge will be very helpful to the people of New Hampshire, as we engage in this long campaign against terrorism." Homeland security and the war on terrorism are areas "new to us in America, but the prime minister has lived it. His expertise is invaluable, and I am honored that he has offered to share his knowledge with the people of New Hampshire this Friday," said Smith. More than 600 people showed up at the Dana Center at St. Anselm College to hear Netanyahu speak. People were advised to arrive an hour early to allow for security checks, which included inspection of tape recorders by opening the battery storage area and pressing the play button. Cameras were inspected and the owner was asked to take a photo of the table. Bags were opened and the contents examined. People were swept with metal detectors. The premises had already been swept by the Goffstown police, campus security and bomb-sniffing dogs. "If I had said before Sept. 10 that what we face is a threat to our civilization, I would have been accused of reckless hyperbole," said Netanyahu at the beginning of the speech. "I don't think that is the case anymore because, I think, each of us understands that each of us is a target, that our cities are vulnerable, that our societies are attacked, and, indeed, that our values are assaulted with an unmatched fanaticism that simply seeps through this world nearby. I think that anyone but the most obtuse understands that today, and even the obtuse may begin to understand." Netanyahu, 51, said three things must first be asked and then answered if the war on terrorism is to be won: "The first is, who's doing it? The second is, why are they doing it? The third is, what do we do about it? What do we do to defeat them?" The former Israeli prime minister then answered his own queries. "The first thing to understand is that there is no international terrorism, none whatsoever, without the support of sovereign states. It is simply impossible to sustain an effective terrorist attack for months or years without the support of the terror regimes that stand behind them," he said. "They do not work from a cafe in Milan and a burger joint in New Jersey. It just doesn't work that way. The terrorist leadership must have a headquarters, must have a place where they can hatch their plots, arm their killers and be protected so they're not on the run all the time." Netanyahu said there were very few of these "sovereign states" in the world today. In his view, this small group included Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Arafat's dictatorship "and one or two other middle-eastern states such as Sudan. That's it." He pointed out that Osama bin Laden, the former Saudi multimillionaire, had been given safe harbor by a few of the above-named countries. The next question Netanyahu asked was, why are the terrorists doing it? "Although the various constituencies of this terror network have their own pet enemies and sometimes even have internal rivals — the Taliban and the Iranians fighting — each one wants to be the king of the Islamic area," said Netanyahu. "Though they're fighting and though they have their own separate agendas, at the heart of this terror network is a military Islam that seeks, that is guided, that is fueled by the very powerful anti-western mentality and behavior." Netanyahu began to say, "They hate the west because, for the militant Islams," but he stopped himself. "I should make a distinction between them and the many, many hundreds of millions of Muslims who are not affected by this business. But a small percentage is, and that's a very large number over the hundreds of millions, over a billion people," he said. "They represent the tradition that pervades certain corners of the Arab and Muslim world for many, many centuries. Essentially, what they resent is the last thousand years of Islam. They want to reverse it." Therefore, said Netanyahu, "When you hear that the militant Islamists hate the west because of Israel, they actually have it the other way around. They hate Israel because of the west. They hate Israel because it represents an island of western values, of liberties, in a sea of what otherwise would be a completely unified Muslim-Arab sea. They hate any western presence there, for hundreds of years." But at the same time, Netanyahu said, these terrorist networks have "cells of militant believers in the west creating a new brand of what I call domestic international terrorism. They live in America to wage jihad against her buttressed by the organizations that are housed in the home states. I said that this creates an entirely new threat because these groups could serve so that you would not need intercontinental ballistic missiles as delivery systems for Islamic nuclear payloads." Now the question is, Netanyahu said, what do we do? "The first thing to understand is exactly what President Bush said in his historic speech before Congress: 'to make no distinction between the terrorist organizations and the regimes that harbor them.' That's the starting point," said Netanyahu. "You can hit the terrorists again and again and again. It won't stop them." And Netanyahu warned: "You can only win internationally if you have moral fiber, because what the terrorists do, and the terrorist regimes behind them try to do, is to create a moral confusion. What terrorism does is to deliberately and systematically attack civilians to gain political ends. In this, terrorism is very different from the unintentional killing of civilians that very often accompanies legitimate acts. What terrorism does is obliterate the line drawn by humanity in the last 150 years in various conventions." He advocated providing "our governments the necessary moral backing to pursue this war against all the slings of criticism and opposition. Or, we can push the collective snooze button and go to sleep. If we do," he said. "We incur our common disaster." |
