Terrorism works

There has been much talk about terrorism's "root causes" following last week's London bombings, but I have yet to hear anyone mention the most important cause of all: the fact that terrorism has thus far proven extremely effective -thereby encouraging the terrorists to continue.

If you accept the West's formulation of the terrorists' goals, that may sound counterintuitive. The Israeli "occupation," for instance, could have ended in 2000, when Israel offered to uproot most settlements and establish a Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, in some 97 percent of the territories. But since the Palestinians responded by launching a terrorist war, not only is there still no Palestinian state, but Israel has reconquered areas it vacated in 1995. Thus the terror would seem to have been counterproductive.

The same is true of the 9/11 attacks. At the time, al-Qaida's main stated grievance against America was its troops' presence in Saudi Arabia. But not only did American troops not leave Saudi Arabia after 9/11, they invaded two other Muslim countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. Again, a seeming defeat for the terrorists.

Yet if you examine the terrorists' real goals, rather than the West's starry-eyed interpretation of them, it turns out that terrorism has scored tremendous achievements over the past five years.

In Israel's case, for instance, Hamas, which pioneered suicide bombings inside Israel, has never concealed the fact that its goal is Israel's eradication. And many Palestinians share this goal: Opinion polls repeatedly found that while 40-50 percent of Palestinians viewed the intifada's goal as expelling Israel from the territories, the other 40-50% (exact proportions varied) viewed the goal as "liberating all of historic Palestine," including pre-1967 Israel.

Rephrasing the question produced even larger majorities: In a Pew Research poll published in June 2003, 80% of Palestinians said their "rights and needs" cannot be met as long as Israel exists.

Toward this goal, terrorism has produced substantial progress -because a necessary precursor to eradicating Israel is destroying its international legitimacy, which is precisely what has been occurring over the last five years. For the first time since Israel's founding, the question of whether Israel has a right to exist has become an open and acceptable topic of debate in the West. And even when not discussed explicitly, the idea of Israel's illegitimacy is gaining ground implicitly -as in the Christian divestment campaign, or the famous December 2003 poll in which 59 percent of Europeans deemed Israel the greatest threat to world peace.

Clearly, eradicating a major threat to world peace would be less objectionable than eradicating a harmless nation.

And this change in the West's view of Israel has occurred not despite, but because of the terrorist attacks against it: Israel is viewed not as the victim, but as the cause of the violence. Hence Israel, not the terrorists, is the major threat to world peace; hence Christian churches are divesting from Israel rather than from the Palestinian Authority, which has consistently refused to act against terrorists.

In fact, as polls, media reports and diplomatic pronouncements reveal, Israel is viewed as the cause twice over. First, it provoked the terrorists via "the occupation": That the violence erupted in response to Israel's offer to end the occupation appears to have been completely forgotten. Then, it provoked the terrorists again by responding to their attacks with military action that succeeding in drastically reducing Israel's body count.

THE SAME paradigm holds for al-Qaida's attacks on America. While initially America was viewed as the victim, that view quickly shifted. Even in the West, opinion polls in recent years have consistently ranked America second only to Israel on the list of most hated countries and greatest threats to world peace. Just last month, a Pew poll found that most Europeans -even in Britain, America's closest ally -view repressive China more favorably than America. Moreover, while Europe once largely accepted America's global leadership, it now overwhelmingly rejects it.

Again, this shift has occurred not despite but because of the terrorist attacks: America is widely accused of provoking terrorism by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. As with the intifada, the fact that 9/11 preceded these invasions appears to have been completely forgotten. And this shift constitutes major progress toward al-Qaida's ultimate goal of global Muslim dominance -because for this purpose, a divided West, immersed in blaming itself (or parts of itself) rather than focusing on the real enemy, and with its leading power discredited and delegitimized, is essential.

Now, this same process is occurring with the London attacks: A growing number of media pundits and politicians, both in Britain and abroad, have already shifted the blame from the terrorists to Britain's "provocative" presence in Iraq. Even Tony Blair has proclaimed that Arab-Muslim grievances must be addressed.

While these intangibles are their greatest success, the terrorists have also reaped some tangible achievements. One, obviously, was the upset victory for Spain's socialists and the subsequent withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq produced by the 2004 Madrid bombings. Another is Israel's withdrawal from Gaza without getting anything in exchange, which 72 percent of Palestinians rightly deem a victory for terror.

But no such concession will ever end terrorism, because new grievances can always be found. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 offers a prime example: Hizbullah, instead of ending attacks on Israel, invented a new bit of "occupied Lebanese territory," the Shaba farms, to justify their continuation. And true to form, despite Hizbullah's refusal to honor the UN-certified international border, the EU still has not declared it a terrorist organization - while media reports routinely term Shaba "disputed territory," forgetting the UN's determination that the area is not Lebanese.

Individual terrorists may be irrational, but terrorist organizers and leaders generally are not: They launch attacks out of a cold-blooded calculation that such attacks serve their goals.

And terrorism will continue to serve their goals for precisely so long as the world, despite its lip-service condemnations, responds by blaming the victims and seeking to address the terrorists' "grievances."