Madam, – Lara Marlowe’s contention that Israel compels young Muslims to commit mass murder by suicide is outlandish (“US just doesn’t get it about motivation for suicide attacks”, Opinion, January 13th).
Islamic terrorism does not need recipes beginning with “add Israel and stir”. How does a dispute in the Middle East explain the “suicidal” atrocities committed in Bali, Beslan and Mumbai? – Yours, etc,
Madam, — Does Lara Marlowe truly believe the main reason for terrorist attacks on the US is its “failure to provide Muslims appalled by US policies with an alternative to suicide bombing”? Surely she knows such alternatives exist and are used by thousands on a daily basis: protests, marches, speeches, boycotts, and peaceful demonstrations of all kinds.
Muslims (and others) can and do use non-violent means to show they are appalled with US policies all the time. These means do not need to be “provided” by the US or any other government. Exercising them is not without risk, as the legacies of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King demonstrate, but oppressive regimes ignore them at their peril.
Those few who adopt violent means are far from the mainstream of Islam or of anti-American sentiment worldwide.
It is perfectly reasonable to ask why they have adopted such radical and criminal methods when so many, no less personally appalled, have not.
Even if the US could force the Israelis to end their occupation of the West Bank, any negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will, like all negotiated solutions, be an infuriating compromise to extremists on both sides. I do not know what effect such a solution would have on terrorist attacks against America. It should be pursued, nevertheless, in order to end the terrible suffering of those in the region and for sake of justice, not as a guarantor of security.
Yes, in the long run, a peaceful, just and stable Middle East is in the US’s (and the world’s) self-interest. That goal is most effectively pursued through non-violent means. In the meantime, the US government has an obligation to try to prevent those disgusted with its policies from killing its people. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I have waited over a decade for a mainstream journalist to spell out the root cause of global terrorism which so affects all our lives. Lara Marlowe has come close to doing just that.
America’s and Europe’s support for Israel, despite its flagrant disregard for international law, brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people and denial of their inalienable rights has stripped the western world of all credibility in the eyes of those on the receiving end of that policy.
Deprived of recourse to effective diplomatic, political or conventional military leverage, under the cosh of American and Israeli hard and soft power, a swathe of disenfranchised people see no means of bringing their plight to world attention other than by carrying out acts of retribution that attract global attention.
Hopefully Lara Marlowe’s contribution heralds the beginning of a more open and honest debate in which our political leaders speak without fear of the Zionist lobby that has corrupted American and European Middle East policy, with disastrous consequences for Palestinians, as well as a crippling security and insurance burden on us all. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Would any nation other than the US be subjected to such a gross generalisation as the one Lara Marlowe uses to describe our refusal to appreciate the motivation of suicide bombers: “. . . as if the collective American psyche was pre-programmed by rigid mental software not to comprehend”? Replace “American” with “Iranian”, “Palestinian” – or even “Israeli” – and one imagines a bit of editorial queasiness.
Regardless, what we (speaking now for the collective American psyche) wonder about is the possibility that such sentiments reflect a collective Irish, or even European, psyche.
Does everyone over here respect terrorists as long as they carry respectable educational and class credentials? Do you all think that a few square miles in Palestine, or even the annihilation of the state of Israel, would assuage the stated demands of al-Qaeda to include the whole world in a new caliphate? Should all Muslims be written about, as Ms Marlowe does, as if they too have a “collective psyche” and no option to decry the fanaticism amongst their co-religionists?
Allowing for diversity and complexity of opinions amongst Americans, Muslims, and even Muslim Americans, is not too much to ask. – Yours, etc,