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How Dare the World Shun Israel on Terrorism

(The Times-UK) Jose Maria Aznar - When we are about to mark the 40th anniversary of the terrorist attacks at the Olympic Village in Munich, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists, it is a real paradox to see Israel excluded from the first meeting of the Global Counter-terrorism Forum last month in Istanbul. Worse still, in July, the forum organized its first victims-of-terrorism meeting. Israel was excluded. When we see deadly terrorist attacks, such as the recent one in Bulgaria, targeting tourists simply because they were Israeli, the marginalization of Israel is totally unacceptable. As a terrorism victim myself, who was fortunate to survive a car-bomb attack, I cannot understand or justify the marginalization of other terrorist victims just for political reasons. If we extrapolate Israel's experience of slaughter to Britain, it would mean that in the past 12 years about 11,000 British citizens would have died and 60,000 would have been injured in terrorist attacks. In the case of the U.S., the figures would be 65,000 dead and 300,000 injured. Israel's ordeal is far from insignificant. Israel has much to contribute in this area and everyone else has a lot to learn if we really want to defeat the terrorists. Isolation not only renders Israel weaker against its enemies, but also makes all Westerners weaker. Israel is not the problem; it is part of the solution. We will become the problem if we continue to cold-shoulder Israel, the country most affected by terrorism and, possibly, the one that knows best how to defeat it. The writer was Prime Minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004 and is chairman of the Friends of Israel Initiative.
2012-07-25 00:00:00
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