The Blinders Were On Prior to 9/11

Awakened by a boom ... boom ... boom, I quickly looked at my watch. It was 5:30 in the morning. Rushing to the door of my thatched enclosure, I saw nothing. I had no idea what had happened until I dressed and walked to our kibbutz breakfast at eight o'clock. Over a Mediterranean breakfast of boiled eggs, cheese, and juice, I learned the news. A cadre of Islamic terrorists had come ashore across from Camp Achiev, where I was spending the night with other students. They had been spotted by Israeli naval forces.

The booms I had heard were the sounds of Israeli gunboats zeroing in on the hostile intruders. The only populated area in the region was the very camp in which I was spending the night. The targeted victims were self-evident. Within an hour or so, news cameras were on scene reporting the incident. The speed with which they arrived amazed the whole community at Camp Achiev. It was my first close call with Middle East terrorism.

It's one thing to read about such events or to watch the repeated images on television. But when I realized the terrorists were coming for me and my companions, everything changed. After the explosion a deflated dinghy was pulled ashore, loaded with all kinds of explosives, AK47s and grenades. It was a direct confrontation with reality and with my own mortality.

An appalling irony immediately struck me. I was in Israel in 1980 to study its geography with primary interest in Biblical history. Suddenly I was confronted not with identification of Biblical sites but with contemporary geopolitical issues. In that moment over breakfast, I felt like a naïve victim of something much larger than myself. Being a student of ancient history did not make me immune to current history.

Years later I led a small group of adults on a tour of Israel. I had planned a day of walking around the old city of Jerusalem, complete with lectures at the famous Biblical gates. While driving from our hotel to the old city, we turned toward the New Gate passing the Notre Dame Hospice. Suddenly an angry crowd of black-hatted Hasidic Jews confronted us with stones in hand. As I waited for the light to change I noticed the car in front of our VW bus had Palestinian license plates. Immediately, the Hasidic Jews hurled stones at that car. I looked over at my guide, a former student, friend, and reservist in the Israeli army. I blurted out, "What do I do now?" Without acknowledging my request or even looking at me, he lowered his head and started praying! As I looked to him desperately for direction, he merely prayed for God's protection. I had to confess later that I was looking for some military tactic to get us out of there, not prayer! But his prayer must have worked. As the Hasidic crowd pounded the car in front of us with stones, not one rock hit our bus. As we drove around the corner, we breathed a sigh of relief, realizing we had been spared, while also wondering about the fate of the Palestinians in the car. At that moment I again realized the ever-present realities of being in the Middle East. Terrorism not only comes from the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) Muslims, but also from Israeli Jews ... religious, orthodox, yarmulke-wearing Jews.

But a particular group of Christians needs to be included in the list of terrorists as well.

While I was serving as National Guard Chaplain my commander asked me to evaluate the conscience of one of our unit members. Racist literature had been found at various locations on our base, and it had been attributed to this individual. As Chaplain, I was tasked to evaluate the sincerity of this individual and his religious beliefs. When I spoke with him, his beliefs were very apparent. He felt America had been taken over by political correctness that had excluded and devalued the rights of white Anglo-Saxon males. He believed the US Constitution duly authorized state National Guard units (militia) for the protection of a state's citizens. As such they were the only hope for the restoration of distinctively white Anglo-Saxon values. The discovered literature expressed themes of white supremacy, the dominance of Christian Identity and the necessity of arming for a coming conflict with federal government authorities. In short, the beliefs he advocated were just as violent as the Muslim and Jewish acts I had encountered in the Middle East. The only difference lay in the "Christian" justifications he claimed from the Bible. In short, I became fascinated by the commonalities in attitudes and actions I observed in these diverse religious groups.

While my fellow guardsman was relieved of his commitment to the National Guard based upon his racist views, I realized there was not much difference between his Christian Identity beliefs and the views of the PLO in Lebanon or some of the orthodox Jewish settlers in Israel. Striking commonalities existed between the views of rightwing religious Jews in Israel and the Islamic and Christian groups who justify violence in the name of God.

Years later, I was equally shocked to learn that a Japanese religious cult conducted the first use of a weapon of mass destruction. As I watched the news coverage and read the literature detailing the release of lethal sarin gas in a Tokyo subway, I had to drastically change my view about Eastern religions. The information that surfaced was that the group, Aum Shinrikyo, was anything but a passive group that only practiced meditation. In fact, they were apocalyptic, genocidal, and messianic. Aum surprised even the most sophisticated intelligence networks by their clandestine underground operations. The impact of their significance was made pale only by the horror of the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing which happened a few weeks later.

This raises a fundamental question. What do a decorated Gulf War veteran, a Jewish rabbi, a Saudi billionaire's son, and a blind Japanese acupuncturist have in common? To the average observer they are as diverse as oil and water. Upon deeper investigation they have a surprising common attribute. They are all terrorists! Not only are they terrorists, they are terrorists of a particular, very unique kind ... true believing religious terrorists, individuals whose faith in God apparently directs them to justify violence in God's name. The violence to which they are committed flows from the passion of their religious convictions and respective faith histories. As such they are unique and far more difficult to understand than the traditional political terrorist. In the opinion of this...