The Real Root Cause Of Terrorism

21 Nov, 2002 by John Hawkins

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The Real Root Cause Of Terrorism: People don’t support terrorism because of poverty, hopelessness, lack of education, or the other supposed “root causes” that anti-war activists love to cite. To the contrary, people support terrorism because they believe it will help them achieve their goals. If you want proof of that, look to the “disputed territories” where Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi has just commented on a suicide bomber blowing up a bus full of school children….

“Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi was quoted today as justifying the bus bombing in Jerusalem because such attacks pressure Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians.

Mitzna promised on Tuesday, during the Labor primary, that if he is elected prime minister in the January 28 elections, he would move Israeli settlers and soldiers out of Gaza as part of a new peace deal with the Palestinians.”

Do you know how you stop terrorism? You convince the Palestinians that not only does terrorism not work, it’s counterproductive. As long as they’re committing terrorist acts, not only do you not negotiate, you crack down harder after every attack. You kill every terrorist you can get your hands on, deport their families, put the entire area under military rule, respond to every physical attack with overwhelming force, and threaten transfer. The only way the Israelis can ever end the attacks against them is to either kill all the Palestinians (which I don’t view as morally acceptable), transfer the Palestinians (which would greatly upset most of the world), or convince the Palestinians that anything has got to be better than terrorism. If the Israelis going to pull off the third option, then they need to crank up the intensity level a little bit higher because the Palestinians obviously still believe that they can get what they want via terrorism.