Editorial

The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions
about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying
to play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or
to knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way
that no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister,
because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address
killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being
protected by their Government or society. International law does not
know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands
behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he
is sheltered by a Government. International law does not know how to
deal with a leader of murderers who is royally and comfortably hosted
by a country, which pretends to condemn his acts or just claims to be
too weak to arrest him. The amazing thing is that all of these crooks
demand protection under international law and define all those who
attack them as war criminals, with some Western media repeating the
allegations. The good news is that all of this is temporary, because
the evolution of international law has always adapted itself to
reality. The punishment for suicide murder should be death or arrest
before the murder, not during and not after. After every world war,
the rules of international law have changed and the same will happen
after the present one. But during the twilight zone, a lot of harm can
be done.

The picture I described here is not pretty. What can we do about it?

In the short run, only fight and win. In the long run ? only educate
the next generation and open it to the world. The inner circles can
and must be destroyed by force. The outer circle cannot be eliminated
by force.

Here we need financial starvation of the organizing elite, more power
to women, more education, counter propaganda, boycott whenever
feasible and access to Western media, internet and the international
scene. Above all, we need a total absolute unity and determination of
the civilized world against all three circles of evil.

Allow me, for a moment, to depart from my alleged role as a taxi
driver and return to science. When you have a malignant tumor, you may
remove the tumor itself surgically. You may also starve it by
preventing new blood from reaching it from other parts of the body,
thereby preventing new "supplies" from expanding the tumor. If you
want to be sure, it is best to do both.

But before you fight and win, by force or otherwise, you have to
realize that you are in a war, and this may take Europe a few more
years. In order to win, it is necessary to first eliminate the
terrorist regimes, so that no Government in the world will serve as a
safe haven for these people. I do not want to comment here on whether
the American-led attack on Iraq was justified from the point of view
of weapons of mass destruction or any other pre-war argument, but I
can look at the post-war map of Western Asia. Now that Afghanistan,
Iraq and Libya are out, two and a half terrorist states remain: Iran,
Syria and Lebanon, the latter being a Syrian colony. Perhaps Sudan
should be added to the list. As a result of the conquest of
Afghanistan and Iraq, both Iran and Syria are now totally surrounded
by territories unfriendly to them. Iran is encircled by Afghanistan,
by the Gulf States, Iraq and the Moslem republics of the former
Soviet Union. Syria is surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel.
This is a significant strategic change and it applies strong pressure
on the terrorist countries. It is not surprising that Iran is so
active in trying to incite a Shiite uprising in Iraq. I do not know if
the American plan was actually to encircle both Iran and Syria, but
that is the resulting situation.

In my humble opinion, the number one danger to the world today is Iran
and its regime. It definitely has ambitions to rule vast areas and to
expand in all directions. It has an ideology, which claims supremacy
over Western culture. It is ruthless. It has proven that it can
execute elaborate terrorist acts without leaving too many traces,
using Iranian Embassies. It is clearly trying to develop Nuclear
Weapons. Its so-called moderates and conservatives play their own
virtuoso version of the "good-cop versus bad-cop" game. Iran sponsors
Syrian terrorism, it is certainly behind much of the action in Iraq,
it is fully funding the Hizbulla and, through it, the Palestinian
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it performed acts of terror at least in
Europe and in South America and probably also in Uzbekhistan and Saudi
Arabia and it truly leads a multi-national terror consortium, which
includes, as minor players, Syria, Lebanon and certain Shiite elements
in Iraq. Nevertheless, most European countries still trade with Iran,
try to appease it and refuse to read the clear signals.

In order to win the war it is also necessary to dry the financial
resources of the terror conglomerate. It is pointless to try to
understand the subtle differences between the Sunni terror of Al Qaida
and Hamas and the Shiite terror of Hizbulla, Sadr and other Iranian
inspired enterprises. When it serves their business needs, all of them
collaborate beautifully.

It is crucial to stop Saudi and other financial support of the outer
circle, which is the fertile breeding ground of terror. It is
important to monitor all donations from the Western World to Islamic
organizations, to monitor the finances of international relief
organizations and to react with forceful economic measures to any
small sign of financial aid to any of the three circles of terrorism.
It is also important to act decisively against the campaign of lies
and fabrications and to monitor those Western media who collaborate
with it out of naivety, financial interests or ignorance.

Above all, never surrender to terror. No one will ever know whether
the recent elections in Spain would have yielded a different result,
if not for the train bombings a few days earlier. But it really does
not matter. What matters is that the terrorists believe that they
caused the result and that they won by driving Spain out of Iraq. The
Spanish story will surely end up being extremely costly to other
European countries, including France, who is now expelling inciting
preachers and forbidding veils and including others who sent troops to
Iraq. In the long run, Spain itself will pay even more.

Is the solution a democratic Arab world? If by democracy we mean free
elections but also free press, free speech, a functioning judicial
system, civil liberties, equality to women, free international travel,
exposure to international media and ideas, laws against racial
incitement and against defamation, and avoidance of lawless behavior
regarding hospitals, places of worship and children, then yes,
democracy is the solution.
If democracy is just free elections, it is likely that the most
fanatic regime will be elected, the one whose incitement and
fabrications are the most inflammatory. We have seen it already in
Algeria and, to a certain extent, in Turkey. It will happen again, if
the ground is not prepared very carefully. On the other hand, a
certain transition democracy, as in Jordan, may be a better temporary
solution, paving the way for the real thing, perhaps in the same way
that an immediate sudden democracy did not work in Russia and would
not have worked in China.

I have no doubt that the civilized world will prevail. But the longer
it takes us to understand the new landscape of this war, the more
costly and painful the victory will be. Europe, more than any other
region, is the key. Its understandable recoil from wars, following the
horrors of World War II, may cost thousands of additional innocent
lives, before the tide will turn.

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