Israel Matzav

'It's not the occupation, stupid!'

Sometimes, what looks like the most obvious cause for a phenomenon really isn't it.

Caroline Glick notes an increase in the willingness of 'Palestinians' to take suicidal risks to get their points across.

Since 2000, there has been escalating cooperation between Israeli leftist organizations with foreign pro-jihad groups like ISM and Palestinian terror and political warfare outfits. This new cooperation first gained prominence as the Israeli group Anarchists Against the Wall began participating in the weekly Palestinian/ ISM riots against IDF units at Bi'ilin and Na'alin in 2003.

Prowissor notes that throughout Judea and Samaria, especially around olive harvest season, Rabbis for Human Rights and likeminded radical groups bus Arab protesters into areas where they do not live to stir up and participate in protests.

"Their modus operandi is always the same," Prowissor explains. "They stage violent attacks in front of their own cameras with the aim of provoking local Israelis to defend themselves. For instance, they stone Jewish cars and if a Jewish driver gets out and tries to fend off his attackers, they film him and accuse him of attacking them for no reason."

The weekly protests at Bi'ilin and Na'alin involve Palestinian, Western and Israeli rioters attacking IDF forces and Border Police units with stones and Molotov cocktails. Five months ago, the protesters began using the same tactics against Israeli civilians at Neveh Tzuf in the Binyamin region. A few weeks ago they added the Carmei Tzur community in Gush Etzion to their list of targets.

As for Jerusalem, the riots in Sheikh Jarrah every Friday have been going on for several months. They spread to Ir David on Friday.

But what motivates people to take risks like that? Laura Rozen notes a study by University of Chicago political scientist Roger Pape, which is being eagerly adopted by pro-'Palestinian' groups, which claims that the number one motivator for suicide terrorism is - you guessed it - 'military occupation.'

Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprised of some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times - the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241 U.S. Marines.

"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.

Pape said there has been a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south and east of the country in 2006. While there were a total of twelve suicide attacks from 2001 to 2005 in Afghanistan when the U.S. had a relatively limited troop presence of a few thousand troops mostly in Kabul, since 2006 there have been over 450 suicide attacks in Afghanistan -- and they are growing more lethal, Pape said.

Deaths due to suicide attacks in Afghanistan have gone up by a third in the year since President Obama added another 30,000 U.S. troops. "It is not making it any better," Pape said.

Pape believes his findings have important implications even for countries where the U.S. does not have a significant direct military presence, but is perceived by the population to be indirectly occupying.

Of course, by limiting himself to the post-1980 period, Pape allows himself to ignore the fact that there was no suicide terrorism in post-World War II Germany or Japan. It also lets him ignore the fact that the Japanese sent kamikaze pilots on suicide missions during World War II when they were not under occupation.

You would think that his methodology would at least not allow him to ignore the fact that nearly all the suicide terrorism since 1980 was carried out by Muslims (there was also IRA and Basque terrorism since that date, but suicide terrorism is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the Muslim world - the only place where it was significantly practiced by non-Muslims was Sri Lanka). But alas, he ignores the role of Islam in fomenting suicide terrorism, claiming that "contrary to popular and dangerously mistaken belief, only a tiny minority of these attacks are motivated solely by religion. Instead, the root cause is foreign military occupation, which triggers secular and religious people alike to carry out suicide attacks" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel, Chechnya, and Sri Lanka.

If only the West would stop 'occupying' 'Muslim lands' and flee, Muslims would no longer feel the need to carry out acts of suicide terrorism. What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:25 AM