| Despair Feeds Hatred, Extremism
USA Today
September 20, 2001
An hour after the Sept. 11 attacks, I was sitting catatonic
at my computer screen, trying to get some news, when
my neighbor poked his head in my office.
"Ever wonder," he asked, "why we're
so hated? Fifty years ago we were so beloved. What happened?"
His question penetrates the simple façade built
in recent days by the mass media: of America in a battle
of Good vs. Evil; of the attacks portrayed only as the
work of hate-filled religious zealots.
The men in the four doomed airliners were filled with
hatred and a twisted interpretation of Islam. But this
explanation alone is not sufficient. It does not account
for the flammable mix of rage and despair that has been
building up in the Middle East since the Gulf War's
end.
Seven years ago, in Hebron in the West Bank, I attended
a funeral for a Hamas follower, shot by Israeli soldiers
after he lunged at them with acid. In the funeral tent,
mourners handed out candy to celebrate the martyr's
ascent to heaven. Afterward, in the street, young boys
stopped their laughing and roughhousing long enough
to tell me that they, too, hoped to grow up and die
in such an honorable way.
My question then was like my neighbor's on Sept. 11:
"Why?"
As a journalist working regularly in the West Bank
and Gaza, I repeatedly witnessed the humiliation and
anger of a population living under decades of occupation:
Israeli bulldozers knocking over families' ancient stone
homes and uprooting their olive groves; military checkpoints,
sometimes eight or 10 within 15 miles, turning 20-minute
commutes into 3-hour odysseys; the sealing off of Jerusalem
and the third-holiest shrine in Islam to Muslims across
the West Bank; the confiscation of Jerusalem identification
cards, and hence citizenship, from Palestinian students
who'd been abroad for too long; the thirst of villagers
facing severe water shortages while Israeli settlers
across the fence grew green lawns and lounged by swimming
pools; U.S. M-16s used to shoot at stone-throwing boys.
Again and again, Palestinians asked me: Why does the
American superpower support this? Do ordinary Americans
know about this? Do they care?
It was no surprise when West Bank streets later filled
with men burning American flags and waving posters of
Saddam Hussein, given our country's lead role in sanctions
against Iraq. Children there were dying from dehydration
and disease—a half-million excess deaths, according
to a 1999 UNICEF study, or 5,000 a month. This is almost
the projected death toll of the World Trade Center blasts.
Again, the questions: Do Americans know about this
suffering? Do they care?
At work in the Arab streets is the rage of the weak and
ignored. Young men,
out of work and nearly
out of hope, look
for someone to blame.
In such an atmosphere
of despair, absent
any perception of
justice or equal treatment,
extremism grows. In
its most perverse
form, it helps turn
commercial airliners
into flaming missiles,
causing unfathomable
suffering.
It can be comforting to blame it all on the insane
religious fervor of The Other. Much harder is to understand
that our own failure to witness and address the suffering
of others—the children of Iraq, for example—has
helped create fertile recruiting ground for groups seeking
vengeance with the blood of innocents.
Now the network theme music pounds out the drumbeat
of war. Talk shows speak of "dusting off the nukes"
and wiping out entire countries. Last week, the deputy
secretary of defense spoke of a "sustained campaign"
aimed at "ending states who sponsor terrorism."
(U.S. officials later said he misspoke.)
But if the attacks on the United States lie just as
much in rage and a sense of injustice as they do in
religious fervor, will bombing a country senseless make
us safer? Or will it help perpetuate more rage, more
hatred, more despair—and, quite possibly, more
terror in the United States? |
|
Selected Works
Articles
First-Person Narratives
in Radio
Quintessential
Gloucester
Shoot to Maim
Vanishing Forests,
Endangered People
When
is a Handful of Beans Not Just a Handful of Beans?
Despair Feeds Hatred,
Extremism
Baseball's Chasm Between
Heroes
Audio Clips
 Oil
in Equador's Amazon
Equador's
Resource Battle I
Equador's
Resource Battle II |
