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Plea for Tolerance and Justice

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon has changed us all. America will never be the same. It is in this context that I write. Last week, in the press and in two forums, I pleaded with CSU, Chico and our local communities not to vent aggression, passion, and violence against innocent foreign students, Arab-Americans, and other American nationals who, because of their national origin, might vaguely look Arab.

The clear intent of the terrorists is to attack our democracy. They have attempted to destroy symbols of our economy, military, and government. Their goal was to humiliate us. If we resort to violence against our own citizens and our foreign guests, then they have succeeded.

Having said that, I must also say that I have been disturbed by the sentiments of some in our community who say we must not retaliate or react with violence. Some are saying that we must “turn the other cheek,” “love our enemy,” “ask why are they doing this and fix their concerns.” Just yesterday I overheard a person I know on campus say, “This is the Jews’ fault! We need to get them out of Palestine. It is because we are lined up with the Jews that this happened.”

I was dumbstruck. This person was uttering the basest of anti-Jewish hate. This person is also dead wrong. Osama bin Laden and the Islamic extremists he represents want the degradation of the USA to take place regardless of whether there is an Israel or a Palestine. We represent for him all that is evil in the world. Our democracy is onerous to his religious worldview; our egalitarian treatment of women abhorrent; our media decadent; our presence in the central homeland of Islam close to Mecca and Medina a horror. He wants nothing less than our conversion to Islam or our timely exit to another planet, as one of his biographers said on National Public Radio on September 15.

Granted, his ideas do not represent the majority of Moslems in the world and certainly not very many in the United States. Nevertheless, we have just seen the result of our ignorance of his perspectives and those who join him.

Six weeks ago I was in Jerusalem attending a conference. I was a block and a half away from the Sbarro Restaurant in Jerusalem when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 15 innocent people. I saw with my own eyes images that are seared into my being. I saw the body parts scattered among bits of clothing and debris. I saw rescue workers bringing out the body of a dead child no more than 3 or 4 years old. I sometimes cannot sleep at night because of the images in my head. I cried when I saw the rescue workers bring out three baby carriages and line them up on the street. Israel and its Jewish and Arab citizens (two or three of the people killed in the Sbarro incident were Arabs) have been suffering from terrorist acts for more than a year now while we, as holier-than-thou Americans, have criticized them for preemptive strikes and assassinations.

Clyde Haberman of the New York Times wrote last week, asking this: if our government had known about the terrorists’ intent beforehand and had an opportunity to stop it by assassinating the perpetrators before they could launch their attack, should we not have done so? I for one would have said a resounding Yes!

I do not blame all Palestinians for the actions of some fanatics. I would encourage my Israeli friends to negotiate with anyone prepared to negotiate. I will not support, however, negotiating Israel’s destruction. I do not blame all Moslems or Arabs for the horror of Tuesday, September 11, nor will I, however, advocate negotiating away America’s democracy and freedoms to those extremists who pray daily for our destruction. No, I want to retaliate, not because I am bloodthirsty, but because the bin Ladens of this world will not understand anything less than that. They declared war on us. We must respond in kind, or we will see nothing less than a continuation of September 11 over and over again.

We also must not attack our Arab-American and Moslem neighbors, nor should we abandon our best allies like Israel; to do either of these things will send out the message that terror wins. Remember, the bin Ladens of the world attack us not because we are rich and they are poor, not because we support Israel. They attack us because we represent democracy, religious diversity, gender equality, and political pluralism.

Sam Edelman, Department of Communication, Arts, and Sciences,
and Coordinator of Modern Jewish and Israel Studies Minor