‘A placatory gesture will never divert the bad guys’

ANY suggestion, as was made in a recent Irish Examiner editorial, that international support for Israel’s existence and right to defend itself “feeds extremism” and, in particular, the extremism that led to the 9/11 attacks is based on a false premise.

As are suggestions that US support for Israel, now being expressed in President Obama’s stance at the UN that the only route to Palestinian statehood is through negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, will merely bolster Middle East terror organisations.

Eight years before 9/11, the first Al Qaida attack on the World Trade Center took place. It was treated as a mere police matter, not as a declaration of war. A peace process had just got under way in Oslo between Israel and the Palestinians, and the US would soon be saving Muslims from slaughter in Bosnia and Kosovo. None of this stopped Al Qaida from trying again.