November 15, 2005
Jordanians Are Shocked -- Shocked! -- That a
Wedding Would be Blown Up
By Dennis
Prager
Jordanians are shocked that Islamic terrorists would blow up
families, including families celebrating a wedding. They are so
shocked that for the first time in history, Muslims have taken
to publicly demonstrating against Islamic terror.
And why are they shocked? Because the terrorists blew up Jordanians.
As long as Islamic terrorists blew up men, women and children
who are Jewish, Christian, Hindu, American, Australian and black
Sudanese, the Arab and larger Muslim worlds were not particularly
disturbed. In fact, Palestinians, who comprise the majority of
Jordan's population, celebrated when Jews were blown up at Passover
seders and at weddings. And they took to the streets and cheered
in the Palestinian fashion, handing out candy, when Americans
were incinerated in office buildings.
For some reason, Palestinians, most other Arabs and many Muslims
around the world thought that the credulity-straining evil of
targeting the most innocent for death, paralysis, blindness and
brain damage would be confined to non-Arabs and non-Muslims. In
fact, the idea that this Palestinian-made cancer would target
Arab Muslims is so inconceivable to most Arabs that many now believe
the terror attack in Amman was orchestrated by Jews (the Israeli
Mossad).
Of course, Arab Muslim men, women and children are blown up almost
weekly in Iraq, but, hey, that's OK because the monsters doing
it hate America and seek Israel's annihilation. And in the Arab
world -- and in much of the Muslim and leftist worlds -- hatred
of America and Israel gets you a moral pass. In the Arab/Muslim
worlds (with individual exceptions, of course), as among the world's
leftists, an act is almost incapable of being judged evil if it
is committed by those who hate America (especially the America
of George W. Bush) or Israel.
In a previous column, I proposed that supporters of the war in
Iraq ask opponents of the war just one question: Without in any
way compromising your opposition to the war, would you at least
acknowledge that the people we are fighting in Iraq are evil?
Virtually every one of the many letters I received from readers
opposed to the war was incapable of answering in the positive.
By fighting America and George W. Bush, the "insurgents" are essentially
inoculated against moral judgment.
Likewise it has been nearly impossible for the Arab, Muslim and
leftist worlds to morally condemn the blowing up of Israelis.
"Palestinians have no Apache helicopters -- what do you expect
them to do?"
"They are simply resisting occupation."
"The Israelis are also terrorists."
These arguments of the Left, the Arab world and countless other
Muslims have given the Islamic terrorists the moral green light
to continue their atrocities.
Until, that is, they inflicted one of these atrocities on Arabs
in the land of the Palestinians. So, at least for the time being,
the sight of charred and dismembered Arab families at a wedding
has trumped the anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's killers.
Now there is widespread condemnation of Zarqawi's terror in Jordan.
There is even a fear that the name of Islam will suffer. Unfortunately,
however, it is only because Zarqawi was foolish enough to massacre
Jordanian civilians, and not confine his massacres to Iraqis and
non-Arabs. What has aroused Arab voices against Zarqawi has nothing
to do with the immorality of blowing up people celebrating at
a wedding -- it has to do with the immorality of blowing up Muslims
celebrating at a wedding.
Nevertheless, it is possible that a moral awakening of sorts may
be taking place in parts of the Arab world. The London Telegraph
reports that "Munder Moomeni, a 38-year-old former soldier who
lives next to Zarqawi's house, 13 Ramzi Street, described his
former neighbour as 'a bastard.' 'By killing Jordanians here in
Jordan, civilian Jordanians going to a wedding, they did something
that not even a Jew would do,' he said."
That a neighbor and former supporter of Zarqawi publicly acknowledged
that Jews would not engage in such terror may be a first step
toward the moral awakening that the Arab world needs even more
than oil revenues.
It may even come to realize the greatest truth regarding terror
and evil: People who blow up Israeli weddings and cut Americans'
throats are very bad people. And if you don't fight them, they
will eventually blow you up, too.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
