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Via Glenn Greenwald, the New York Times reports on the path taken by Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the asset Jordanian intelligence presented to the CIA in Afghanistan who ended up murdering seven U.S. & Blackwater intelligence operatives last week:
H[is brother] described Mr. Balawi as a “very good brother” and a “brilliant doctor,” saying that the family knew nothing of Mr. Balawi’s writings under a pseudonym on jihadi Web sites. He said, however, that his brother had been “changed” by last year’s three-week-long Israeli offensive in Gaza, which killed about 1,300 Palestinians.
Really, read Glenn’s whole post, because it makes the essential point. This sentence is a clue, not a conclusion. But there is, as Glenn writes, a hysterical tendency to divorce Israel’s behavior from our analytic framework for understanding Islamic extremism. My experience in the Shtetl has convinced me that my more conservative co-Shtetlers are afraid that admitting the connection — one that al-Qaeda uses frequently – will lead to the U.S. cutting Israel off. That’s absurd and reflects a lack of confidence in the U.S.’s ties with Israel. But pushing the point that we should leave Israel outside our understanding of al-Qaeda is also absurd, and if followed by the intelligence community, it would lead to a grievous and dangerous misunderstanding of al-Qaeda.
The answer for the U.S. is not to sever ties with Israel or turn hostile toward it. It’s to seek an end to the Israeli-Arab conflict and a stable Middle East. That will not stop Islamic extremism. Maybe I should say it again in capitol letters: A TWO-STATE SOLUTION WILL NOT STOP ISLAMIC EXTREMISM. Extremists are going to be extremists. They demagogue. They use pretexts. That’s what they do. You deal with that. The proper response is to reduce the circumstances under which their demagoguery resonates. And that’s why ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and midwifing a Palestinian state is so important. This is in our interests, it’s in Israel’s interests, it’s in the Palestinians interests, it’s in the Arab world’s interests, and it’s expressly against al-Qaeda’s interests. It’s in absolutely no way an “appeasement” of al-Qaeda unless you believe that Arabs and Muslims are naturally inclined to bandwagon with al-Qaeda. And that makes you a racist and safe to ignore.
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Of course, Glenn would be quick to add that the coninuation and expansion of America’s ongoing wars in that broad part of the world are equal or greater causes of our terrorism problem (such as it is).
This is exactly right and why this reasoning isn’t a cornerstone–as obvious as it is–of American policy is beyond me.
“The proper response is to reduce the circumstances under which their demagoguery resonates. And that’s why ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and midwifing a Palestinian state is so important. ”
And so what happens when the Israeli government not only refuses to participate in this process, but actively encourages more occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem? Do we just smile at the Israeli PM and say “pretty please?”