(Ha'aretz) Johannes Gerster - The terrorist attacks in Madrid shook up the Germans. Interior Minister Otto Schily has demanded that suspicious foreigners be expelled, without legal proceedings. Had I made this demand 15 years ago, as the political spokesman of the Christian Democratic faction in the Bundestag, I would have been denounced. How would the Germans respond had 10,000 citizens been killed in terrorist attacks in the course of three years? That number is the blood price paid by Israel, relative to the size of its population, in this period. I am angered and amazed by the voices in Germany, which although they are coming out against global terrorism, are placing most of the responsibility for what is happening on Israel. Aren't these arguments that stem from a double standard, and from political shortsightedness? Even if Israel did not exist, we would be confronting the existence of terror against Western democracies. The writer has been a representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Israel since 1997.
2004-04-01 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive