July 10, 2005, - 10:33 am
Me in Today’s GUARDIAN OF LONDON
By Debbie Schlussel
I am in today’s Guardian of London, which quotes my about Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Stockholm Syndrome-esque movie, “Vengeance,” which humanizes the Islamic terrorists who murdered the Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972.
I disagree with the reporter, Paul Harris, on one thing. He writes, “Now director Steven Spielberg is taking on another Jewish issue, with a film on the aftermath of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.” No, Mr. Harris, this isn’t a “Jewish issue.” Terrorism is EVERYONE’s issue. Forget 7/7 already?
Tags: Debbie Schlussel, director, London, Munich, Paul Harris, reporter, Spielberg's upcoming Stockholm Syndrome, Steven Spielberg, the Munich Olympics, Vengeance
I read your ?Who cares why they hate us?? piece on the eve of the London bombings. It?s around a decade since anybody dies in our capital as the result of terrorist activity. Prior to that, it was an annual or bi-annual event and had been for more than 20 years. They stopped bombing our capital because our government resisted the temptation to trot out the usual ?They will not win. Good will triumph over evil? platitudes after the latest bombing and realised that they could give the people, whom the terrorists claimed to represent, what they were demanding. And they found that they could deliver it without a loss of face and that the terrorists even allowed them to claim all of the credit. And then people stopped dying in London immediately. Nobody thinks that Blair or Major were weak to do this. They weren?t shunned as unpatriotic disgraces. In fact it?s one of the few things that all are agreed that they got right.
Al-Qaeda and all of its splinter groups have declared war on Western life because it feels that Westerners do not value the life of a Muslim above their own pursuit of money and power. In most Muslim countries, democracy is either non-existent or it?s a sham. Western interest in these countries only extends as far as financial investment for financial gain. In almost all cases this has succeeded in creating an affluent elite while condemning the poor to seemingly infinite poverty. And in almost all cases, the governments of these countries are either sustained by western interest in the status quo, or isolated from world affairs by lack of resources or an unwillingness to dance to anybody else?s tune.
So, a people feel threatened and/or unprotected by their own government and feel no alternative but to take up arms to protect themselves. That they are rallied by what we call fanatics and terrorists is really a side issue. Their hatred of the people was the mother of Al-Qaeda, not the other way around. And, after all, they were told that they are either ?with us or against us?.
However, they have nothing whatsoever to gain from supporting a war on terror, which might just result in them being bombed out of their homes by the coalition of the willing. It would be idiotic to expect them to welcome our multi-nationals into their economies. They know that we only build factories there because the labour is cheap and the workers have no rights. And as for them feeling our pain on 11-S, 11-M or 7-J, to many of them these are regular occurrences in their own countries.
Who cares why they hate us? I do. I know a girl who is lying in hospital with serious burns from last weeks atrocities. I know that she protested against the invasion of Iraq because she knew it would a bad situation many times worse. She knows that she has been ignored, and many millions of Muslims know that they too are ignored. I also know that a modern terrorist army has never been defeated. And Tony Blair knew that when he began to wonder why the IRA hated us, and sat down to negotiate with them. That?s the Tony Blair, your n?1 ally.
ebbhead on July 11, 2005 at 7:26 am