After the Saturday People, They'll Come After the Sunday People

There's a popular meme among Israel's opponents in the US that says that if only the United States did not support Israel, it would not need to worry about Islamic terror. The Investigative Project on Terrorism blows that meme out of the water.

While Israeli action, or the country's mere existence, may indeed serve as a source of motivation for some terrorists, it is not the primary cause. For proof, look no further than a 1998 fatwa issued by the World Islamic Front, widely considered to be synonymous with Al Qaeda, calling on Muslims "to kill Americans and their allies-civilians and military." The primary justifications for the edict?

• "First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.
• Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million…despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
• Third, if the Americans' aim behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula."

A plain-text reading of the fatwa suggests that America's support for Israel constitutes one half of one of the three main justifications of terrorism. The fatwa places far more emphasis on justifying terrorism against Americans who are "the crusaders" and are "occupying" and "plundering" Muslim lands such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Even when Osama bin Laden talks about Palestine, analysts believe it is at least partially a cynical play at popular support. He started speaking more exclusively about Palestine in 2008, prompting Nigel Inkster, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, to note the shift came as Al Qaeda in Iraq was defeated.

In addition, many Muslims turned against it after Al Qaeda attacks killed so many fellow Muslims.

"Al Qaeda could now be preparing its followers for a strategic failure in Iraq," Inkster told the BBC. "It therefore needs a rallying cry and Palestine is a no-brainer."

A Slate magazine article reached a similar conclusion four years earlier:

"Bin Laden continues to emphasize the plight of the Palestinians, as he has since the second intifada broke out in 2000, because he knows that is a bigger winner for him with ordinary Muslims than the corruption of the Saudi monarchy, his old hobbyhorse."

I would add another proof that Islamic terror would continue even if - God forbid - Israel were to cease to exist: Europe. Europe has for the most part not supported Israel for thirty years. Would anyone seriously argue that Islamic terror is not a threat to Europe?

Israel Matzav