Why the Death of Israel Wouldn't Slow Anti-U.S. Terrorism

IPT News
12 July '10

A fairly dishonest discussion about the root causes of Islamist terrorism is being pushed with renewed vigor. It is based on the false claim that American support for Israel fuels the terrorism targeting us.

At best, this is academically dishonest, ignoring a laundry list of grievances that has been used to justify terrorism.

Yet, as Americans celebrated Independence Day, Thaddeus Russell took to the pages of the Daily Beast to argue just that. In an article titled, "Does Israel Make Us Safer?," Russell puts the issue bluntly:

"There was not a single act of Arab terrorism against Americans before 1968, when the U.S. became the chief supplier of military equipment and economic aid to Israel. In light of this fact, it's difficult to credibly sustain the argument that Arab terrorism is spawned by Islam's alleged promotion of violence and antipathy toward American culture or by a 'natural Arab anti-Semitism.'"

That's not exactly true, as others have pointed out. And it ignores the words terrorists themselves have used to explain their motivation.

A look at recent terror attempts finds American support for Israel nowhere in the picture. Instead, terrorists describe their belief that America is at war with Islam. They want to strike back, or to stop Americans from fighting Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, or to punish them for having done so.

That's what would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad said in his defiant guilty plea in federal court last month. "It's a war," he told the court. "I'm going to plead guilty a hundred times over because until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and stops the drone strikes ... we will be attacking the U.S. And I plead guilty to that."

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