Il Giornale, August 23, 2009

It's time for terror institutionalization: it might happen more and more often to Western politicians that they will be shaking the hands of people on Interpol's "wanted" list, or at least to some leaders who have been publicly praising - and probably also financing - certain notorious multiple-killers of women, children, tourists.

The Iranian regime is sending a very precise messag, in spite of all the diplomatic norms, by appointing Ahmad Vahidi as Iran's Minister of Defense. Vahidi is on Interpol's "wanted" list because he is a former commander of the "Quds Force" of the Revolutionary Guards, the unit in charge of Iran's overseas operations that on 1994 carried out the bomb attack on the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured some 200: people still remember the huge destruction and devistation caused by the bomb, the hell of death and pain; the same images then replied in so many cities: Jerusalem, New York, Mombasa, Madrid, London, Mumbai...

With Vahidi's appointment, Ahmadinejad is signaling that killing innocent people is moral and good, and that terrorist attacks are rewarded when they take place in big cities far away from the Middle East. The Iranian regime's choice has a lot to do with its evident involvement in international terrorism; a reminder that sounds like a promise.

Terror still remains a matter of praise: it has passed now from the iconographic representation of the suicide bombers with the rifle inside the houses and mosques to being considered a normal chapter of a cursus honorum, a CV element. And, at the same time, we gape, or even worst, we dialogue with this new culture of death, adopting a policy of appeasement.

Meantime, Libyans took to the streets to welcome home Abdel Basset al-Magrahi, who was just released from British jail where he was held for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, where 270 persons were killed. Libyan leader Moammar Ghaddafi received him yesterday and welcomed him with a huge embrace; then he thanked everyone, Gordon Brown, the Scottish Prime Minister, Queen Elizabeth, Prince Andrew, for their "brave decision". Libya, i.e. its leader, has accepted the formal responsibility of the Lockerbie attack. But many keep on following a Syrian-Iranian track, claiming that at the time of the tragedy, no one was interested in accusing Syria of being involved because of the coalition against Saddam Hussein for the First Gulf War. These are only uncertain theories, suppositions. In any case, Syria remains another country that has always demonstrated a very close relationship with Hezbollah and Hamas, through Iranian sponsorship. But, no matter what, the vain American and French policy of the outstretched hand tries all the time to rehabilitate and promote it.

The mechanism works like this: I praise my terrorist, you will do more and more to redeem me and eventually you will yield to my conditions. On July 2008, Hezbollah praised beyond all measure the swap of the corpses of the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers with one of the fiercest terrorists you can imagine, Samir Kuntar, who in '79, during the Nahariya terrorist attack, killed a 4-year-old child by smashing her skull against the rocks with the butt of his rifle. But Nasrallah has welcome him back as a hero, turned him into a model, a good example to be emulated. In spite of this, Europe, and in particular the United Kingdom which has started secret contacts with Hezbollah, now prefers to treat it as a popular party - which it is exactly what Hizbullah claims -, trying for the umpteenth time to seek an impossible compromise.

Another fundamental chapter concerns Fatah, the so-called moderate part of the Palestinian leadership, chaired by Abu Mazen, which in the last days held its congress in Bethlehem: President Obama considers Fatah as the main interlocutor of his outstretched hand policy. But the Fatah convention shouted for the joy when famous negotiator (moderate, obviously) Ahmed Qurei, alias Abu Ala, presented as an hero the terrorist Khaled Abu Usba, the man that in 1978 attacked two buses on the coast road south of Haifa and killed 35 passengers, Israelis and tourists. Is this crowd of important delegates an interlocutor for peace? Is this the reason why ithe Europeans are obsessed with releasing Marwan Barghouti, a jailed criminal serving 5 life sentences, and whose large popularity is due to his role as commander during the Second Intifada?

John Brennan, President Obama's adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism, said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that "even if we condemn and we oppose the illegal tactic of terror, we must recognize and relate to the legitimate rights of the common people that terrorists claim to represent". What is sure is that Megrahi, Vahidi, Kuntar, and Abu Usba all symbolize the hatred against the West. And even if we understand it very well, this will not help us when Vahidi, as Minister of Defence, will manage the Iranian atomic bomb.