More than 150 people crowded Filene Auditorium on Friday afternoon for a lecture by Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein.
Speaking for just over an hour, Rubinstein discussed not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.
Drawing a parallel between the two conflicts, he said that Israel funded the Hebron Islamic Institute in the 1970s, which later served as a training facility for radical Muslim groups like Hamas. Similarly, the United States funded Afghani rebel groups like that led by Osama bin Laden, the Saudi expatriate who is the chief suspect in the recent attacks.
Dissenting from current theories about the attacks, Rubenstein said, "I am not sure bin Laden is the one who organized it." He said that he did not think bin Laden's organization to be sophisticated enough to launch such a coordinated operation.
Rubinstein also warned the U.S. against simply destroying "the one, two, or three caves in Afghanistan" that harbor bin Laden.
"The streets will produce thousands of others" like bin Laden even if his organization is destroyed, he said.
To counter this trend to radicalism in the Arab world, he suggested first that a real peace be established in the Middle East through mutual concessions.
"Israel should give up most or all of the settlements," Rubinstein said. In addition, he said that the Palestinians should "give up the 'right of return,'" though he added an eventual solution was unlikely to be so simple.
Rubinstein said that recent overtures for peace by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat heartened him.
"Only because of this tragedy, they met," he said. "There's something positive in it, to be sure."
At the end of his presentation, Rubinstein addressed the issue of suicide, which is forbidden under Islamic law. He discussed various opinions of what constitutes martyrdom in defense of the Islamic faith, which Islam permits, and suicide. While not many Muslims have supported the attacks publicly, few if any have condemned them as suicide, he said.
"The sympathy of the masses in the streets is with Islam," he said. As a result, few leaders are willing to denounce the assault for fear of provoking the more radical groups that might see such condemnation as an attack on Islam.
Rubinstein, a columnist and editor at Israel's Ha'Aretz newspaper, has written a number of books, and in 1988 received the Sokolow Prize for journalism. He was also a visiting professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth in 1991, and has visited the campus several times since then to lecture and participate in discussions of Israel.
" I thought it was really neat to hear an international insight on this issue," Ralph Davies '05 said about the lecture, which was sponsored by the Jewish studies program and the Dickey Center.
Rubinstein will participate in a discussion panel today at the Tuck School at noon.
