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Why Terrorism Works

(Salon.com) Alan Dershowitz - Palestinian terrorism has worked. You can't think about terrorism without thinking about Palestinian terrorism. Palestinians began international terrorism. It started with them in 1968. They used it as the first resort, not the last resort. They invented it, they perfected it, they benefited from it, and they taught the world how to use it and that it would be successful. Everybody knows of the plight of the Palestinian people. And yet when you put the Palestinian situation in comparison to, say, the Kurds, the Tibetans and the Armenians, those claims are certainly no greater. In fact, they're probably considerably lower; they've never been offered a state. The Palestinians were offered a state and they turned it down. Why has the pope met with Arafat seven times and never met with a Kurdish leader or an Armenian leader? It's a reflection of the success of Palestinian terrorism. If Palestinian terrorism against civilians is justified, so is al Qaeda terrorism against the World Trade Center. There is no difference. It's terrible when a young child is killed in a crossfire. But when that happened, everybody in Israel, and most Americans, were crying. When a kid is deliberately killed in Israel, Palestinians cheer. That's a big difference morally. You can't have a moral equivalence there, and I think that's what causes terrorism. The moral success of Palestinian terrorism is what led Osama bin Laden to calculate that he will get tremendous support around the world for Sept. 11.
2002-09-13 00:00:00
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