Poverty doesn’t cause Arab terrorism

 The main cause of terrorism is ideology. That’s hard for Americans to comprehend because it’s so different from our own experience.

My column on jns.org.

Is poverty the root cause of Palestinian Arab terrorism?

That’s what U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken seems to think. At a press conference during his recent visit to the Middle East, Blinken argued that the forthcoming U.S. aid package to Gaza will defeat the terrorists.

“Reconstruction and relief for the people of Gaza” will “undermine Hamas,” he claimed. “I say that because Hamas thrives, unfortunately, on despair, misery, desperation, on a lack of opportunity.” If the United States provides “genuine prospect for opportunity, progress and material improvement in people’s lives,” then “Hamas’s foothold in Gaza will slip. We know that, and I think Hamas knows that.”

We know that? How, exactly? Usually, the way we know things is from past experience. We know something happened in the past, so we conclude that if we duplicate those conditions, that thing will happen again. If the billions of dollars in aid that the United States sent to the Palestinian Arabs in the past had led to a decrease in terrorism and the undermining of Hamas then, yes, it would be reasonable to conclude that we should do more of that. But in reality, the exact opposite happened.

With the signing of the Oslo Accords, America began sending $500 million annually to the Palestinian Arabs, including to Gaza, then ruled by the Palestinian Authority. That’s a total of $10 billion-plus from 1994 to 2006.

If anything would have “undermined” Hamas, that largesse should have done it. Yet somehow, all the “opportunity, progress and material improvement” that money brought didn’t convince the people of Gaza to reject terrorism. On the contrary, in the Palestinian parliamentary elections of 2006, the voters democratically gave Hamas a majority of the seats.

In June 2007, Hamas became the ruling regime in Gaza. Every few years since then, Hamas has attacked Israel, the Israelis have bombed Gaza, and the United States and the international community have rushed in with hundreds of millions of dollars in “humanitarian aid.” Yet that aid has never undermined Hamas. Fourteen years later, Hamas is still in power.

Certainly, it’s true that in the United States, poverty contributes to crime. The mistake that Blinken is making is to assume that the Mideast is similar to the American Midwest and that terrorism is just another form of crime. Neither of those assumptions is valid.

Viennese terrorist Kujtim Fejzulai

The main cause of terrorism is ideology, not poverty. That’s hard for some Americans to comprehend because it’s so different from our own experience. Most Americans are not ideological. American culture doesn’t accept political violence. The American government does not promote the use of violence. The religions that most Americans embrace do not espouse violence.

Contrast that with the Middle East, where Muslim fundamentalism actively encourages violence, and governing regimes such as the Palestinian Authority actively promote terrorism and glorify terrorists as heroes and martyrs. The Palestinian Arab public is inculcated daily through the regime-controlled media, with pro-violence messages. Children in P.A. schools absorb those messages daily in their classrooms. Summer camps in Gaza teach children to crawl under barbed wire with weapons, albeit fake ones, in their hands.

The stereotype that Palestinian terrorists are all single, unemployed young men who are lashing out because of their poverty is nonsense. Studies of suicide bombers, for example, have found that many were well-educated, employed, and family men and even women.

Remember the 415 Hamas terrorists whom then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin deported to Lebanon in 1992, in response to a wave of terrorist attacks against Israelis. The Chicago Tribune reported at the time that “many” of the deported terrorists were “businessmen, academics, lawyers [and] doctors.”

Likewise, the co-founder and longtime leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, was a practicing pediatrician. By day, he treated Palestinian children; by night, he organized the murder of Israeli children. Rantisi, of course, is just one example of a successful, educated Palestinian Arab professional who chose to become a mass murderer.

There are countless others.

This applies to other Mideast terrorist groups as well. In 2016, the World Bank undertook a study of 4,000 foreigners who joined ISIS. Here were the report’s key findings:

• “These individuals are far from being uneducated or illiterate … 69 percent of recruits report at least a secondary education … a large fraction have gone on to study at university. Only 15 percent left school before high school and less than 2 percent are illiterate.”

• “Foreign recruits from the Middle East, North Africa and South and East Asia are significantly more educated than what is typical in their region.”

• “The vast majority … of [ISIS] recruits from Africa, South and East Asia and the Middle East … declared having an occupation before joining the organization.”

The authors of the study wrote that, as a result, their conclusion “is consistent with a number of other studies that come to a similar conclusion: poverty is not a driver of radicalization into violent extremism.”

Blinken is wrong. The Biden administration’s plan to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza will not undermine Hamas. It won’t promote moderation. It won’t increase the chances for peace. It will just be throwing good money after bad.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terrorism.”

A Review of A Father's Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror written by Stephen M. Flatow

In new memoir, father seeks justice from terrorists who killed his daughter

jpost.com/Magazine/Fighting-back-576170

By Gil TroyJanuary 1, 2019

In April 1995, a Palestinian terrorist murdered Alisa Flatow, a 20-year-old American.

Beyond further illustrating Palestinians’ obsession with killing Jews and not building Palestine, this crime showed that six months before Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, Palestinian terrorists were already sabotaging the Oslo Peace Process.

This tragedy also mobilized Stephen Flatow against the terror infrastructure that murdered his daughter. Flatow’s determination created a new tool against terrorism – lawfare; drained billions from the networks bankrolling terrorism; and pushed back creatively against Iran, the world’s great terror-paymaster.

His battle was one “I’d win, but one which could never compensate me for what I had lost,” Flatow writes in his new book, A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror.

That subtle, tear-stained sentence captures the nightmare haunting his life – and both sides of his remarkable memoir. It’s a compelling legal-political thriller, and a searing tribute to a missing daughter.

The first dimension is a real-life Hollywood thriller. A regular guy – a real-estate lawyer from New Jersey – seeking justice, punishes evil, confronts hypocrisy and inspires millions. Flatow wanted to sue the Iranians for financing Alisa’s murderer. He assumed the discovery process would embarrass them, exposing the mullahocracy’s evils. But – surprise! The court quickly awarded his family $250 million.

Then the real drama began.

As Flatow explained to me recently in Jerusalem, the American government “was caught flat-footed by the judgment, too.” Then-president Bill Clinton feared this decision might unleash many Lone American Rangers against foreign governments – making a mess of American foreign policy. Less explicable was Clinton’s softness toward Iran – which Barack Obama mimicked. That’s “what still frustrates me the most,” Flatow says. “I could never quite understand what his goal was.”

Thanks to Flatow’s superhuman persistence – lobbying, cajoling, button-holing, speechifying, op-eding – the Flatows eventually received about one-tenth of the award. Today, the money funds good causes, especially the kind of year-in-Israel programs Alisa was enjoying when she was killed.

Unfortunately, they were double-crossed.

Flatow refused to take “one cent” from the American taxpayer. The Clintonites implied the funds came from $400 million in seized Iranian assets. Only in 2016, when the Obama administration inexplicably paid Iran the $400 million – plus $1.3 billion in interest – did Flatow realize he’d been snookered.

What makes the book most memorable is the emotional journey Flatow shares with the reader as the international intrigue is playing out.

Alisa was a vivacious kid who, like all kids, wasn’t perfect, and wondered why things went wrong when they did. Once, when she broke her foot, Flatow explained to Alisa: “Things happen. We just don’t understand why. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

FLATOW WRITES movingly about his excruciating last-minute flight to Israel, with his daughter on life-support, to authorize ending her life – and sharing her organs with others. It will be a challenge for readers – seeing how he’s shepherded with love along the way – to get through the book without getting misty-eyed.

At the funeral, after calmly recounting the Israeli and American love that enveloped them, Flatow said: “What breaks my heart the most is this. There’s one family mourning the loss of a child. And there’s a family dancing with glee that their son killed himself – and my daughter.”

Later, he recalls being cross-examined by his lawyer, Tom Fay, who asked: “Mr. Flatow, you were the father of Alisa Flatow?”
Flatow responded: “No.”

Fay “looked lost.” Flatow explained: “I’m still her father.”

Fay teared up. The judge swiveled away, trying to hide his emotions. Flatow realized then that he just might win.

Today, Flatow tells Orthodox students: “You must learn how to stand up for yourself as a person and a Jew. History has taught us if we don’t stand up for ourselves no one else will. But we do it in a civil way.” He tells non-religious Jews: “Israel is our home. We can always look toward Israel for our strength and our inspiration.” Then he adds, “Please, understand that people there are under tremendous pressure and they deserve our support.”

Flatow has lived a full life, with a loving wife, four surviving children and 16 grandchildren. He has full days, often waking up at 5 a.m. But, he says, “Eventually, every night, you run out of steam. You never quite recover.” 

This Jewish hero, this American hero, this extraordinary human being, ends his love poem to his daughter, to Judaism, Israel, Zionism and humanity, with the wrenching words: “I can only hope that I will find my right place.”

We hope so, too, while imagining how many lives he – and Alisa by extension – saved by pursuing the terrorists and their enablers, putting them on the defensive for a change.

The writer is the author of the newly-released The Zionist Ideas, an update and expansion of Arthur Hertzberg’s classic anthology,The Zionist Idea, published by the Jewish Publication Society. A distinguished scholar of North American History at McGill University, he is the author of 10 books on American history, including The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s.  

Five years later, USF professor Sami Al-Arian's terrorism case in limbo

It's hard to believe but admitted terror sponsor Sami Al-Arian is still in the United States.  Rather than issue a decision in his trial for criminal contempt for refusing to cooperate in a terror investigation, the judge has, shall we say charitably, delayed her decision for FIVE years.  Crazy no?

In any event, terror supporter Al-Arian, while semi-restricted in his movements is still a free man unlike the people murdered in cold blood by Palestinian Islamic Jihad including my daughter, Alisa Flatow.

Five years later, USF professor Sami Al-Arian's terrorism case in limbo | Tampa Bay Times

Wanna be terror supporter goes jail

Another sponsor of terror is going to jail. 

Hor I. Akl was sentenced to more than six years in prison today after previously pleading guilty to criminal charges related to a scheme to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hizballah, a designated foreign terrorist organization, announced Steven M. Dettelbach, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio; and Stephen D. Anthony, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Cleveland Division.

As I wrote about 17 years ago, people who mean to do harm to others are right here in the United States. I was then referring to the case of Sami Al-Arian, a supporter of the violent terrorists of Palestinian Islamic Jihad which murdered Alisa and seven others in 1995.  But this most recent case clearly indicates that Al-Arian was just one man in a long line of terror's supporters and sponsors.

Way to go USA!

Read the full press release.

alisa flatow israel

Terror Victims Getting Short Shrift at the White House?

Debra Burlingame a former attorney and a director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, writes in today's Wall Street Journal On-line she and other victims feel "we'd been had" by the Obama administration as it dances around the issues surrounding justice for familes of 9/11 and the USS Cole attack. It seems the patience has worn out.

"Now, after more than eight years of waiting, Mr. Obama was stopping the trial of Abu Rahim al-Nashiri, the only individual to be held accountable for the bombing in a U.S. court. Patience finally gave out. The families were giving angry interviews, slamming the new president just days after he was sworn in."

She continues, "the Obama team quickly put together a meeting at the White House to get the situation under control. Individuals representing "a diversity of views" were invited to attend and express their concerns." The take on all this?

"We'd been had."

Delay, obfuscation, and out-right do-nothingness permeate the lives of terror victims families as they deal with the folks in Washington, D.C. Parents of kids murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists in the 1990s are still waiting for the US to bring to justice the killers of their kids.

Sami Al-Arian, poster boy for terror supporters the world over, was not brought to trial until 8 years after his books, records and computers were seized by Federal agents. The result, aged evidence that didn't translate well in the ears of the jurors. The trial resulted in an acquittal of the most serious charges and a plea by Al-Arian to supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

President Obama has not been clear on what his true intentions are on the release of Guantanamo detainees and how he will deal with captured terrorists in the future.

Read the full article Obama and the 9/11 Families