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Almighty God! Let the Ashes of the Children incinerated in Auschwitz, rivers of blood spilled in Babbi Yar or Majdanek, be a warning to mankind that violence is destructive, hatred is contagious, while man has an unlimited capacity for cruelty.
ELENA BONNER ON TERRORISM
On April 2, Donald Rumsfeld announced that Saddam Hussein had instituted a
$25,000 payment for suicide bombers. How should the civilized world regard
this gruesome form of terror and Saddam's peculiar subsidy for it? We are
familiar with murders committed by hired killers acting for the mafia.
These are horrible crimes, but the persons ordering the murders try to
remain anonymous in order to avoid arrest and trial. Saddam, on the other
hand, has advertised his support for the suicide bombers and the fact that
he ordered their actions, secure in the knowledge that he won't be
prosecuted for this. Moreover, people are not killed one at a time; the
idea is rather "the more, the merrier." The innocent victims are killed
only because of their race, religion or political opinions.
The suicide
bombers have introduced a new weapon - cheap and easily transported - into
the business of terrorism. And without a doubt, it will spread around the
world, not only to promote the political aims of various extremist groups,
but also as a way for tens and hundreds of mentally disturbed persons to
solve their problems. Anyone - tacitly sympathizing with the
suicide-terrorists - who thinks that this new weapon of murder-on-command
can be kept localized is mistaken. If there is no attempt to fight back
against them, very soon the suicide bombers' attacks will spread beyond
Jerusalem. Their bombs will explode on the Champs-Elysees, on Red Square,
on Broadway, on Picadilly, and on the streets of Peking, Cairo, Baghdad,
and Damascus, depending on who orders and pays for the explosion and what
are his goals. And the suicide squads may use weapons more dangerous and
destructive than bombs strapped to their waists ... Sudden death will
become an everyday occurence, and fear will be omnipresent.
The idea that
some states will be exempt from the plague is an illusion. You won't escape
being eaten by an alligator even if you feed your neighbors to him
one-by-one. Those who hailed the 1938 Munich agreement in hopes that it
would secure peace learned this much too late. They helped bring on World
War II. ... Either terrorism, nourished by anti-semitism, anti-Americanism,
and the ambitions of some politicians, will win, or our common human reason
will defeat it. No third way can be found!
Note: Written by Elena Bonner the widow of Andrei Sakharow and noted Soviet dissident in heer own right.
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