Why Do They Hate Us?

That was the question everybody in the USA was asking after 9/11, if you remember. At the time, international news coverage in US newspapers was down to extraordinary levels, even by US standards. Since then, wars and other ventures abroad have ensured lots of overseas news. But the question remains unanswered, because the answer is too horrible for most people to admit.

Here's Robert Fisk:

Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.