Monday 14 April 2008

Breeding Terrorism

Which country is doing the most to foster terrorism in the Middle East?

Not Iran, not Syria but Israel. This story from the BBC is an example of how the world's most beleaguered nation seems determined to take ordinary, unradicalised kids and turn them into next year's suicide bombers or Hamas activists.

For every child this happens to Israel is also ensuring that their friends are also being driven away from their moderate backgrounds into the arms of the more radical groups. Israel must also recognise that pretending that these things do not happen and asking the world to believe them rather than the ICRC and Amnesty International as well as their home grown Human Rights groups, is just not the way the world works.

As for the apologists of Israel's policies saying 'It's none of your business', I say it definitely is. Aside from the moral and legal arguments these policies directly impact on the rest of the world who would otherwise be Israel's friends and defenders; these policies turn the impressionable adolescents in our local mosques into angry young men who are easy prey for radical preachers and those who would like to send them abroad for 'advanced religious training'.

We moderate Muslims and others in the West must apply political pressure on our leaders to stand up against these systematic abuses of Human Rights otherwise the whole world will reap the whirlwind that Israel is sowing.

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