Pape

Pape takes some interesting facts and uses them to support a completely wrong-headed conclusion.

He shows that the suicide bombers of Hezbollah are not usually personally fundamentalists but in fact come from a broad spectrum of society, representing a range of religious and political convictions. He infers from this that they are motivated by the incursions on their territory by Israel and that trying to wipe them out militarily will only increase their ability to recruit.

It is true they believe that their land has been violated by the presence of foreigners, but the key question is what are borders of the land that they consider to be violated. The violation is not the borders of Lebanon but the borders of the Dar al Islam. It is not the borders of Isreal but its existence that constitutes the incursion. Why else would Israel's evacuation of Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank have lead to increasing its attacks instead of reducing them?


What is the point of saying the whole problem will go away if you withdraw from what your enemies consider "occupied territory?" The current conflict came after Israel withdrew from the occupied territory.Hezbollah's's response was to stock up on missiles. And doesn't the effectiveness of his advice depend crucially on how the other side defines the territory that is occupied?

If the evidence from the suicide bombers themselves about their motivation is so crucial when it concerns whether they are religiously motivated, why don't we listen to them when they tell us what the territories they consider to be occupied are? Isn't it the case that they refer to Israel itself to be occupied territory?

What is the point of saying the whole problem will go away if you withdraw from what your enemies consider "occupied territory?" The current conflict came after Israel withdrew from the occupied territory.Hezbollah's's response was to stock up on missiles. And doesn't the effectiveness of his advice depend crucially on how the other side defines the territory that is occupied?

If the evidence from the suicide bombers themselves about their motivation is so crucial when it concerns whether they are religiously motivated, why don't we listen to them when they tell us what the territories they consider to be occupied are? Isn't it the case that they refer to Israel itself to be occupied territory?

Pape makes much of the finding that the divisions between socialists and religiously motivated terrorists are brought together by hatred for Jews and Christians. He uses the ecumenicsim of the Islamic Fascist movement to support his argument that there is some secular demand, some reasonable amount of territory that could be given up to appease this movement. But the same finding could also support a clash of civilizations view of the conflict. After all, Fascism in Germany brought together a broad spectrum of German society as well. The Islamists' motivation is not some definable piece of territory that could be given back settling the whole thing. They want to regain the power and glory of Islamic civilization. The honor of that civilization was martial in nature and they will only be satisfied by being able to dominate and expand against the outsiders the way they once were able to.

The observation that the recruits for Hezbollah are from a broad range of ideological and sectarian leanings could mean that they are all motivated by some satiable territorial demand. But it is also consistent with the clash of civilizations interpretation of the conflict.

"Given Syria’s total control of its border with Lebanon, stemming the flow of weapons is a job for diplomacy, not force." What? Doesn't that mean that the force is merely being directed to the wrong place? The fact that Syria has effect control over whether Hezbollah gets weapons or not merely means that changing Syria's behavior is one wato achieveee Israel's goals. Changing Syria's behavior could be brought about by military means or diplomacy.

He says that his data shows that the only thing that ends suicide bombings is withdraw by the occupier. But suicide attacks from Lebanon were not the problem for the Israelis, were they? Just because he did a study of suicide bombers doesn't mean that every problem is suicide bombers.

And there is this lazy assumption that because a movement is "popular" it is invincible. Destroying Nassar's army apparently increased support for him and hatred of Israel. We now hear reports that Hezbollah is getting more popular as "the only force that can defend the country," leaving out that the only reason anyone as any interest in attacking the country is Hezbollah. We can't fight the enemy because that will make the enemy more popular.

But we have wasted 50 years basing our policy on the notion that there is some deal to be made if only we are nice enough to the other side. Lets try winning. Winning decisively. Winning so clearly that even the Arafantasistts can convince themselves otherwise.

It is odd that realism, which supposedly offers us a universal theory of international relations seems to shirk from applying its nostrums to the other side. Why doesn't a realist say to the Arabs that they are being irrational? That every state would have to respond is you attack its soldiers across an international border and start lobbing missiles at their population centers. That such actions will only increase the hatred on the other side. That the Israelis only ever attack in response to violations of their territory? As always in the case of Isreal, we have an ideology offering universal rules that are only enforced against one side--the Jews.