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

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_15_05_DP.html