A long, hard look at terror, and how to cope

It's a handbook for coping with disaster; brief, terse, authoritative and timely. In "What You Need to Know About: Terror," Micah Halpern states that the attack of 9/11 awoke most Americans to the real nature of their enemy. Writing as both an American and an Israeli, he says, "It is precisely because terrorists were so very successful on that fateful, horrific day that they will now fail."

The book is written in the form of 75 pointed questions and answers, followed by succinct analyses. To question 13: "What is the best response to terror?" he answers: "Search and destroy," adding, "Terrorism is the greatest threat facing Western civilization today."

"Do terrorists hate the United States because [it is] a friend of Israel?" He retorts: "No. This is false. Terrorists hate America and they hate Israel." He adds that it's anathema to the Arabs for a minority group like the Jews to attain independence right in their midst.

Halpern is an acknowledged expert in the field, as a columnist and TV commentator, a rabbi and theologian. Born in Maryland, he has lived in Israel since 1987, and teaches at universities in New York and Jerusalem.

He traces the root of terrorists' hatred of the West to the eighth century C.E., when Christendom halted and reversed the tide of Islamic conquests. That hatred gained momentum in the 18th and 19th centuries, as the once-superior Islamic culture was overtaken and surpassed by the European Enlightenment. The Arabs were galled by European colonialism and, after World War I, by the splitting up of their land into artificial states, whose rulers they regard as puppets.

Halpern sees the rise of militant Islamism as a movement to regain past glory by destroying Western society and its "infidel" citizens, to create a rigidly controlled Islamic state.

His book illuminates the international web of terrorism and the sources from which it draws money, weapons and support, such as the Wahhabi schools in Saudi Arabia (of which Osama bin Laden is a product); despotic or weak and corrupt governments; "narco-terror" and tax-exempt "charities" and "foundations" in the West.

His comments on the Taliban serve both to de-romanticize Muslim terrorists and to illustrate how the United States has blundered in dealing with them. They were armed and trained by the United States and the CIA in the 1970s and 1980s, to drive Soviet forces out of Afghanistan. "At the time," he writes, "the Taliban were called freedom fighters ... friends of America, and defenders of democracy... while in reality they were thugs and terrorists who hated the West and everything it stood for ..."

Regarding Saddam Hussein's role in terror, the author believes — though acknowledging lack of proof — that he played a role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and possibly the attack of 2001.

He warns of the need to recognize and avoid the semantic traps set by the terrorists and their apologists. One of these is "Arabspeak" — saying one thing in English and another in Arabic.

His strategy against terrorism is primarily nonviolent, coupling education with law enforcement, military and judicial measures, and coordination of anti-terrorist efforts among agencies such as the FBI and the CIA, and among nations.

For more controversial actions, such as Israel's killing a suicide-bomber before he can blow himself up in a crowd, or "targeting" terrorist leaders, he sums up the pros and cons. Israel is engaged in an armed conflict and can't afford to spare those who attack its people, he points out. In the United States, he argues, the Constitution empowers the president and Congress to suspend certain fundamental procedures at certain times to certain people — in this case, the terrorists.

His book is simple in its language and riveting in its urgency. While it's bound to be controversial, I would recommend it to anyone who is willing to learn more about the terrorist menace and the means to defeat it.

It concludes by listing sources of help, especially in case of an attack. It also contains a list of terrorist organizations, the crimes they've committed and the popularity they enjoy, which I find sickening.




"What You Need to Know About: Terror," by Micah Halpern (163 pages,

The Toby Press, $9.95).