Kenya Blast Expands War Against West

On Nov. 28, as nearly everyone now knows, two missiles were fired at an Israeli commercial airliner taking off from Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya.

The missiles narrowly missed the plane, and the aircraft continued safely to Israel.

Shortly after this failed attack, a vehicle laden with 440 pounds of explosives was detonated in the Israeli-owned Paradise Mombasa Hotel, a popular resort among Israeli tourists. Three Israelis were killed: a 60-year-old tour guide and 12- and 13-year-old brothers celebrating a bar mitzvah with their parents. Ten Kenyans also died in the explosion, and 34 people were injured.

The attacks occurred at a time when many Israeli tourists travel to enjoy themselves on the Indian Ocean beach for the Chanukah vacation.

The hotel was partially destroyed by the initial explosion and partially by the fire that consumed the reception area and most of the lobby.

Upon receiving the news about the attacks, the Israeli Embassy in Kenya went to work immediately. The ambassador, who was in Uganda, cut short his trip and arrived in Mombassa in the early evening to coordinate the rescue operation. The administration officer contacted Dr. David Silverstine, a cardiologist by profession and the personal physician of Kenya’s president. They rushed to Mombasa on the first available flight.

The Nairobi Hebrew Congregation, a small social community of about 300 Jews and Israelis, organized themselves quickly to assist in every way possible, just as they had after the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy. A response team of nurses and businessmen, headed by Dr. Vera Somen, congregation chair, was the first group to go out.

The injured Israelis were evacuated to three hospitals in the city, and by the time the team got there, they had all been admitted. The administration officer and Silverstine went to the hospitals to check on the patients and assess their conditions.

That night, 250 medical specialists, soldiers, security men, police forensic technicians and others arrived in Mombasa aboard six Israeli air force planes. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem and the Israeli air force, they began the evacuation of all the injured, survivors and other Israelis who wanted to leave on air force C-130 cargo planes.

Some Muslim leaders in Kenya condemned the attacks, insisting that if the perpetrators were indeed Muslim, they had disobeyed the Koran by murdering innocents. Others, however, intimated that Israel is to blame for both bombings (Mombasa and the U.S. Embassy). The familiar and flawed logic was that Israel’s activities in the territories have been the primary cause of Palestinian suffering, and have thus produced terrorism.

The rapid mobilization and response of the Israeli and Jewish community, rescue teams and government workers is representative of the reaction to catastrophe among Israeli and Jewish communities worldwide. Surrounded by hostile neighbors at home and scapegoated abroad, these are skills that, sadly, we have had a lot of opportunity to hone.

The regularity and ferocity of attacks against Israel — both at home and abroad — might lead one to the incorrect conclusion that Israel is the cause of the murderous violence against it, or that, indeed, these attacks have something in particular to do with Israel.

Make no mistake. The terrorism in Mombasa signaled not the export of the Palestinian conflict, but the deepening of the war on the West. It was caused not by suffering or economic desperation or occupation, but by ideological extremism and religious hatred — things that bear no correlation to one’s economic or social status.

As one local journalist pointed out, "Kenya has had its share of suffering, poverty, AIDS and tribal clashes, but we don’t blame or bomb anyone."

The United Nation’s own data bear this out. A quick comparison between the United Nation’s list of the 49 Least Developed Countries and the U.S. State Department’s 61 designated terrorist organizations and groups show an overlap of only 25 percent: 37 of the 49 poorest and most desperate countries on earth are terror-free, and half of the rest suffer from nonideological terrorism (as an internal political weapon).

Terrorism will only truly be defeated when governments and people alike stop the blame game, and take more interest in the development of their own cultures, economies and polities than in the destruction of everyone else’s. The attacks in Mombasa unnecessarily took the lives of both Kenyans and Israelis, but those acts just strengthened the resolve of both nations to fight terrorism and not allow it to destroy all that we hold dear, and which has been so hard won.

Einat Kessler is the deputy head of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Nairobi.