Hardworking James Morris directs my attention to the latest Osama statement in which OBL describes the centrality of the Palestinian cause to the 9/11 attack:
Bin Laden began his message by telling listeners that the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict has always been the primary cause for
friction between the West and the Muslim world – a struggle which he
said was getting more difficult due to European policies biased in
Israel’s favor.
"The Palestinian cause has been the main factor that, since my early
childhood, fueled my desire, and that of the 19 freemen (Sept. 11
bombers), to stand by the oppressed, and punish the oppressive Jews and
their allies," the al Qaeda chief said.
"We shall continue the fight, Allah willing, against the Israelis and
their allies, in order to pursue justice for the oppressed, and we
shall not give up one inch of Palestine, as long as there is still a
single true Muslim alive."
Maybe some of this is retrospective on OBL’s part, he is trying to get in on the Nakba wave, but again it must be asked Why our press cannot deal with this simple confession? Why must the Why they hate us? question always be answered with psychological hooey: that those boys had no opportunity in Arab dictatorships and had seminal backup from being on the losing end of the polygamy hierarchy so they took it out on western freedom. Max Rodenbeck in NYRB was honest about the Palestinian issue, reading OBL’s works. Francis Fukuyama was halfway direct. But the 9/11 Commission was dishonest about it, and I have the impression that Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower was deceptive, or self-deceptive, about this too, and even Peter Bergen in his biography of the loony tower.
The answer to Why the press can’t say why they hate us goes to ideology. If the Palestinian grievance is acknowledged or valorized, rather than dismissed out of hand, well that opens the door on the Nakba, on the dispossession, on the many landgrabs of the Jewish state and inevitably casts doubt on the inherent goodness of Zionism and the justice of the occupation, theirs and ours. It opens the door on deeply disruptive ideas, the construction of Jewish identity and of the U.S. establishment. So there goes the neighborhood. Better to torch Iraq. Will Obama reckon with Osama? Kill him, then deal with his ideas. We did that with Timothy McVeigh.
