mars 25, 2004

Ţegar terror stal kosningunum

Thomas Friedman skrifar í NYT í dag, No Vote for Al Qaeda:
[M]y analogy: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to the war on terrorism what the Spanish Civil War was to World War II. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is where airline hijacking, suicide bombing and assassinations with helicopter-mounted guided missiles were all perfected and made ready for export.

But it's not only types of violence that were perfected there. It was also there where Palestinian terrorists regularly attempted to hijack democratic elections on the eve of the vote. Liberal Labor Party candidates in Israel, throughout the 1980's and 1990's, always had to hold their breath that there would not be a big terrorist attack on the eve of an election. Because if there was, swing voters would usually move to the right and the Likud candidate would benefit. The Palestinian terrorists always "voted" Likud, not Labor. They wanted hard-liners at the helm in Israel because they would build more settlements and further radicalize and destabilize the situation.

In 1996, shortly after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres was leading Bibi Netanyahu by 20 points in opinion polls. Then Islamic terrorists unleashed bus bombings, killing 59 Israelis. Mr. Peres saw his lead wiped out, and then lost the election by a tiny margin. Suicide bombing totally undermined Labor's Ehud Barak and helped elect Ariel Sharon in 2001. So terrorists have been voting in Israel's elections for a long time.

What the Madrid bombings, just before the Spanish elections, represent is the Islamist terrorists' first attempt to hijack a democratic election in Western Europe.
©2004 The New York Times Company
Agust skrifađi 25.03.04 18:02

Flokkun: Miđ-Austurlönd , Stjórnmál