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There is No Alternative
David Horovitz

Here in Israel, we can only gasp in uncomprehending horror at the scale, but we can empathize with the shock and the terrible sense of impotence, the grief and the anger.

For a year in Israel, we have tried to maintain a semblance of normality amid the abnormal awareness that, at any moment, in any place, our lives or those of our loved ones could be cut murderously short by adversaries who have, somehow, somewhere, lost their respect for the divine gift of human life. Now America has been assaulted by these same enemies, by people who shame their very Creator. Now Americans must live in that same blighted reality - with the shattering of the casual but fundamental trust that underpinned their daily life.

We mourn for the innocent lives lost; we shudder at the scope of this viciousness; and we fear for the future. We used to believe that though our enemies might attempt to kill us, they at least cherished their own capacity to draw breath. Now, even that assumption no longer applies. Thirty suicide bombers in the last year have taught us that in Israel. September 11 has taught America the same.

This time it was we who were phoning you, desperate to establish that sisters and mothers and cousins were safe. This time it was your stories we heard, about the brother who woke late for an appointment at the World Trade Center, and was miraculously spared, and the brother-in-law who phoned to say that he was safe, but wasn't. We wish that you had been spared the terrible shared experience.

As my sister-in-law watched the smoke rise over Manhattan from the roof of her apartment block, a neighbor snarled bitterly that "Ariel Sharon started all this." As a friend's mother, a Holocaust survivor, walked in Riverdale, a passerby spat out that "It's all the Jews' fault." Only the wilfully self-delusional or the deeply anti-Semitic can lurch to arguments like those, just as only fools can endorse the assertion that were America to sever itself from all Middle East involvement it would be spared the terrorists' murderous attentions. No dispute over territory can be invoked to justify acts such as these; indeed, it is morally repugnant even to suggest such justification. This is a war against Western civilization and decency and respect for the right to life, orchestrated by people who must be thwarted before they destroy us all.

There is an understandable desire to hit back urgently, hard, anywhere - to do something. We have to be smarter than that. We have to identify the right targets, but ensure that the innocent are not harmed. We have to confront the orchestrators of terrorism, and those who arm them, inspire them and give them refuge - including those on Israel's very doorstep. We have to put aside the narrow economic interests that, in even the most purportedly enlightened countries, have hitherto dictated sales of weapons to the likes of Iran, Iraq and Syria. We have to sever diplomatic links, trade ties, travel connections with countries that unashamedly acclaim the killing of innocent civilians. And if the decent, humane world acts in concert, it will prevail, for these regimes depend on us to flourish, and will wither if isolated.

The alternative? There is no alternative. The small-scale killings, which have now escalated into wide-scale murder, will become vast, inconceivable destruction, as soon as the terrorists can graduate from fuel-filled airliners to non-conventional weaponry. And then there will be no one left to protect and defend our way of life. There will be no one left to mourn the dead.

Anote on this edition of The Report: Most of the first half of the magazine is devoted to coverage relating to the September 11 attacks. Our regular features resume on page 24. The magazine went to press early, so that our staff would not be working on Rosh Hashanah. Amid the tragedies of this High Holy Days season, we wish all our readers a safer, more peaceful year ahead.