Analysis—Israel’s 9/11 Is Related To Ours

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On Oct. 7, 50 years and a day after the start of the Yom Kippur War, Israel was once again caught by surprise as Hamas launched a massive, multi-mode terrorist attack on Israel, launching over 3,000 rockets, invading Israel’s territory by land and sea, killing more than 600 military, civilian and police, and kidnapping as many as 150 hostages.

Those 600 casualties in a population of 9.4 million meant the death toll was proportionally six times more massive than 9/11, to which it was immediately compared, which is valid on a number of levels, particularly the level of utter surprise. But perhaps most importantly, the two 9/11s are related in two ways that tell us this second 9/11 did not have to happen at all. That’s because the first 9/11 could have led to a peaceful Middle East, including an end to the 70+ year Israel/Palestine conflict.

In the aftermath of 9/11 — and clearly because of it, at least in part — in March 2002, as the George Bush administration was planning to invade Iraq, the Arab League unanimously approved a Saudi-crafted initiative promising to explicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist, in exchange for a return of the occupied territories — an agreement that would have brought about a lasting peace.

Secretary of State Colin Powell immediately thought it should be pursued. And why not? The Israel/Palestine conflict was the driving force of Middle East unrest that Osama Bin Laden had capitalized on. Resolving it would have dramatically undercut his efforts to start a terrorist religious war. But Bush simply ignored this dual chance for Mideast peace and victory over Al Qaeda — it interfered with his predetermined Iraq War plan, itself based on nothing but manufactured false intelligence and false claims that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda.

There was a second connection between the two 9/11s. Immediately after 9/11, Gallup International polled people across the world, asking whether the U.S. should respond by extraditing the terrorists on trial or launch a military attack. Almost everywhere massive majorities — 2 or 3-to-1 or more — favored putting terrorists on trial. There were just three exceptions: The U.S., with a narrow majority of 54% favoring war, along with Israel (77%) and India (72%). It should be noted that both Israel and India then had 50+ year histories of fighting wars against Muslims they saw as terrorists, without ever achieving peace or security. Their outlier support for a military response to 9/11 should have been a red warning light that it was not the direction to take.

Had we not chosen war in response to 9/11, there’s a very good chance that choice could have helped open a path to resolving the Israeli/Palestine conflict. The Arab world would never have been more supportive of us, and our example of restraint would have been a powerful argument for Israel to follow our example to restrain vengeance and seek justice for all. In short, Israel’s 9/11 could have been prevented in the immediate aftermath of ours, more than 20 years before it occurred.

There’s another connection that bears looking at. Comparing the two 9/11s as shocking intelligence failures is inaccurate: the U.S. had plenty of warnings about 9/11, which the Bush administration ignored. But there is an accurate comparison: that of leadership distraction. Israel’s military/security leadership had warned that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s intense focus on the occupied territories was leaving Israel vulnerable to attack. Rather than taking them seriously, Netanyahu responded by accusing them of aligning politically “with the left.”

Furthermore, 9/11 was in part a result of hardline neocon policy, starting with the First Iraq War in 1991. And similarly, Israel’s 9/11 was a result of Netanyahu’s hardline policy — rejecting the Palestinian Authority as a potential peace partner and strengthening Hamas through decades of brutal hostility. Reflecting this, Israeli independent journalist Noga Tarnopololsky explained on MSNBC the following day:

He himself is facing the same accusation of failure that the military is because of the political concept that Netanyahu instilled in Israel, whereby Israel could live with this Islamist militia next door and more than that, even, that Israel preferred dealing with Hamas to the Palestinian Authority, that Netanyahu’s really demonized, that concept has crashed badly.

The corporate media will be full of false, misleading, or merely superficial comparisons as events unfold in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. But the underlying truth is that peace has always been possible, and those who would lead us have repeatedly chosen war instead.

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