Issue No. 603
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12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 Heritage |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
One Sunny Day
The September attacks put the Arab world under a harsh spotlight. And the glare was too much for our sensitive eyes, writes Abdel-Moneim Said*
The Arabs have a way of reacting to events that seems to set them apart from the rest of humanity. Our reaction to world events has this tinge of theoretical exactness, of legal suaveness that makes anything with less than clockwork precision unworthy of our serious attention. This, sadly, is only a cover-up for an innate refusal to face the facts.
This amazing capability for denial, this runway escapism, has never come under harsher light than during the aftermath of 11 September. The Arabs summed up the whole dilemma into two questions: How do you define terror? And, what evidence is there that Mohamed Atta and his fellow suspects blew up the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon? The first question, the terror angle, I had covered in an earlier article on this very page.
The legal and theoretical thoroughness of that question was formulated admirably, and in keeping with highest standards for exactness. We only act on the basis of strict rules and according to well-defined codes of conduct. Don't we? Unless the codes are defined, to our own standards of thoroughness, we don't know what the fuss is all about. Define terror, please, we told the world. And do it right. Or else, there is perhaps no such a thing as terror after all.
The second question, the one involving evidence for the 11 September attacks, brought a similar response. It cannot be us. The operation was too sophisticated for our poor and backward kinfolk to stage, some argued. Otherwise, similar attacks would have already been mounted against Israel and other European and American sites, went the argument.
Others found an ethical alibi. The Arabs, we all know, are too morally upright to conduct such a horrific act, such a willful slaughter of the innocent of all races, ethnicities, and creeds. We are, at once, too technically inferior and morally superior for such acts.
So, who's done it? Our commentators discovered a whole cast of usual suspects: Mossad, White supremacists, Russian extremists trying to revive Soviet glory, Serbs seeking revenge, and, of course, American insurgents about to overthrow their own government. The odd thing is that those who came up with this fantastic range of suspects failed to provide the faintest shred of evidence for their claims, with one exception. Some 3,000 Jews failed to show up for work at the World Trade Center on the fateful day, having, of course, been alerted by the Mossad. No one came up with names. No one produced a list of the companies these Jewish employees work for. No one recorded testimonies by their work colleagues. No one explained how a secret known to at least 3,000 people could remain a secret at all? And, no one explained why 134 Israelis died in the attacks?
The American claims, meanwhile, were pretty solid. First, no one contests the fact that 19 Arab suspects were aboard the four hijacked planes. No one contests the fact that a number of those suspects attended flying courses prior to the attacks. No one contests the fact that the suspects held extremist views that support attacks on the United States. No one contests the fact that Al-Qa'eda, an outfit made up of Islamist extremist groups, has declared its intention to attack and destroy the United States and its allies, to punish them for their Crusading and Zionist designs. No one contests the fact that two of the suspects had been implicated in the attacks against US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam and against the USS Cole. No one contests the fact that the tapes broadcast on Al-Jazzirah television made references to a group involved the attacks. Osama Bin Laden practically confessed to responsibility for the attacks in his warning to Westerners not to travel by planes or reside in high-rises.
No one contests fact that the suspects maintained contact before the operation. No one contests the fact that US and non-US security services had advance warning of an imminent terror operation but failed to act seriously or timely enough. No one contests the fact that Al-Qa'eda is responsible for the USS Cole attack and the twin bombings of US embassies in Africa. And, no one contests the fact that an earlier bombing of the Worl Trade Center took place in 1993 and that the men implicated were linked with groups that later formed the Al-Qa'eda network.
Yet, all this was incidental to the Arab mind. None of the above evidence against the 19 suspects was good enough. But 3,000 Jews failing to report to work the day of the attack, for the Mossad alerted them; that was credible. The Mossad, all of a sudden, turning into an enemy of the United States, the country that gives Israel everything, from money to sophisticated weaponry, to support in the United Nations; that was credible.
Otherwise, we would have to look closely into our own problems. And who wants to do that? When the glare is too strong, just reach out for those dark shades.
* The writer is the director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
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