The massive car bombings of the Neve Shalom (Oasis of Peace) and Beit Shalom (House of Peace) synagogues in Istanbul on Nov. 15 killed at least 23, injured more than 300, devastated several city blocks — and marked another dark turn in a war, if not between civilizations, then between value systems.
Who would want to murder Turkish Jews at prayer while also killing and maiming scores of passersby, the majority of them Muslims? What messages did exploding pick-up trucks deliver in the peaceful neighborhoods of Sisli and Beyoglu?
In an e-mail to the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, Al Qaida claimed it perpetrated the attacks after it “kept Jewish intelligence agents under surveillance and determined that five of them were in two synagogues.”
It would be a grave mistake to accept this statement at face value, to explain away terror, as have many newspapers, as a “militant” tactic in a struggle against Israeli government policy or Turkish-Israel relations.
In fact the attacks carried two underlying messages, which underscored the reality that, more than a conflict over policies, a clash in core values is now raging.
One message, aimed at Jews everywhere, said: “No matter who you are, whatever your political bent, whatever your nationality, you are targets for murder because you are Jewish.”
The other message, aimed at all members of civil society, said: “Your blood is the currency we use to pay back you and your government for the sins of religious tolerance or political independence.”
The first message reflects a value system that justifies indiscriminate attacks against people because they belong to an “enemy” religion, ethnicity or nationality, and thus sanctions the targeting of innocents as a matter of course.
The bombing of synagogues betrays an Islamist worldview that regards Jews — all Jews — as “the enemy” who, in the words of the former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, “rule the world by proxy.”
Today a frightening number of Muslim politicians, theologians, journalists and academics espouse a wild-eyed anti-Semitism, which posits that only by defeating “the Jews” will Islam regain the hegemony that is its due.
Fueling this logic are various media forms throughout the Arab world that resurrect the specters of Jewish conspiracies and blood libel; and that call, overtly or in code, for the eradication of Israel and the murder of Jews “wherever they are” (an oft-repeated admonition in Friday sermons by Hezbollah and Hamas preachers).
Rooted in prejudice and paranoia, such incitement creates the rationalization for the murders of Istanbul bombing victims Anet Rubinstein, 8; her grandmother, Anna Rubinstein, 85; and all the other innocent Jews killed last Saturday and in scores of prior attacks in Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, France, Belgium and elsewhere.
The other message delivered in Saturday’s attacks was aimed at the Turkish state and all Turks — indeed all Muslims — who uphold the value of religious tolerance.
Non-Jewish Turks, the majority of the dead and injured in the attacks, committed no offense other than being in proximity to a synagogue. Their “crime” was simply to coexist; and to live in a state and vote for a government that pursues an independent foreign policy.
Al Qaida warns of more attacks, which aim to undermine states, demoralize populations and drive wedges of terror between leaders and the public, and between policy and public opinion. Hopefully, strong intelligence and security measures will thwart those attacks and bring their would-be perpetrators to justice.
Winning this war between value systems will require more than effective policing. It will require a good offense. That means refusing to be intimidated, practicing those values we seek to protect and militantly rejecting bigotry and intolerance, the core values of those who seek to destroy what we hold dear.
Aaron B. Cohen is executive editor of JUF News in Chicago.
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