A defining moment in history

She pointed to our names on the door, and said she had looked for our names in the paper, hoping she wouldn't see them. She was so sorry. "Merci, madame," I kept repeating. "Merci beaucoup."

Debra Bruno is a freelance writer.

Donald Rumsfeld couldn't have had better timing. On the day before the most calamitous attack in US history, the Defense secretary told CNN how fortunate the world had been that, in 1981, Israel had bombed and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak.

He was talking ostensibly about preventative attacks that might spare the world a rogue nuclear assault. But he was also plainly referring to Israeli measures to counteract terrorism and the justification for preemptive strikes. In light of Sept. 11, there are few Americans who would now disagree with him.

Preemptive action would have saved the lives of thousands of Americans and could unquestionably save even more now. With this in mind, the regular condemnation of Israel by the State Department and the incessant media outcry against Israel's surgical elimination of terror cells now seem like murmurs from a distant past. They in fact belong to a different world - a world more engaged in moral relativism and one far less willing to draw the stark distinctions between good and evil that Israelis have been required to make for years.

But while the world has changed in ways still unknown, a regressive blind spot remains lodged in the world's consciousness. The French ambassador to Israel, Jacques Huntzinger, told Israeli reporters on Thursday that there could be no comparisons drawn between the acts of terror perpetrated in the United States and Palestinian terrorism in Israel. Such a view reveals how unwilling are many of the world's statesmen to make the association between acts of Islamic terror in Israel and those occurring elsewhere.

But as mounting evidence links the terror campaign against Israel with other Islamic terrorist campaigns in Sudan, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, that unwillingness will suffer decisive challenge. It will underscore the cold reality that the only difference between an Islamic fundamentalist who blows himself up in a Jerusalem restaurant and another who deliberately rams the World Trade Center is that one of them knows how to fly a plane.

Avi Davis is the senior editorial columnist for Jewsweek.com.

Washington

Rep. Barbara Lee was odd woman out in the House's 420-to-1 vote Friday to back the use of military force against terrorism. The California Democrat stressed her conviction that military action would not prevent more terrorism against the US.

In her stance, Ms. Lee is in good company, joining the late Sen. Wayne Morse, the sole vote against the fateful Tonkin Gulf Resolution of Aug. 7, 1964, used as legal underpinning for the war in Vietnam.

I have déjà vu. I was an Army officer in the early '60s when "counterterrorism" came into vogue. Woefully uneducated in Southeast Asian history, our leaders had concluded that North Vietnam was attacking "democratic" South Vietnam through terrorism. Most of us had no idea that the Vietnamese "terrorists" had thrown off invaders from China, France, and Japan, and that millions of Vietnamese were again ready to drive off others.

We are no better educated on the history of the Middle East. If we were, then we might understand why so many of its people are willing to commit terrorist acts against the US.

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