Alan Perlman, a resident of the community of Carmel in the Hebron Hills region, is a technical writer. Perlman has a master's degree in social work. He can be reached at ahperlman@yahoo.com.
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Very soon, America must decide on its response. The Israeli experience may help illustrate the impact of terrorism and what can be done to combat it.

Occasional terrorism with minimal casualties poses no real threat to the target nation. Devastating as such terrorism is to the victims' families, its effects are easily absorbed on the national level. The nation and society continues to function as usual.

When terrorism is ongoing rather than occasional, its impact on a nation can become severe, even when casualties remain relatively low. Israel has been a target for terrorists for its entire national life. The level of terrorist activity ebbs and flows. This year it is flowing, taking the lives of some 170 people, roughly comparable to the number of people that might be killed if hijackers blow up a single airplane.

But the impact on Israeli society has been tremendous -- well beyond the personal price paid by victims and their families and friends. Tourism and are all related leisure time enterprises are crippled. People leave their homes in fear, wondering if they will return. Israeli morale is relatively low. The lack of an effective government response has already collapsed one Israeli government, and may well collapse another.

Terror is not limited to its most extreme level. Rather, it occurs at all levels, and the lower the level, the greater the frequency. America may have to prepare itself for ongoing suicide, car bomb, and pipe bomb attacks, as Israel has come to endure. And it should learn from Israel's failed policy of restraint. There can be no restraint when it comes to dealing with terrorism, as a demoralized Israeli public can testify.

Nevertheless, Israel's current situation pales, quantitatively and qualitatively, in comparison to the World Trade Center attack.

With the attack on the World Trade Center, the Rubicon has been crossed. No longer is terrorism about blowing up twenty people in a pizza shop or bus, or even about killing all the passengers on a doomed flight. It is about several handfuls of terrorists leveraging technology to kill ten, twenty, or thirty thousand people in one go, turning a passenger jet into a guided missile, a flying bomb.

Rather than demoralizing America, this attack has had the opposite effect. It re-ignited American patriotism and unified America as a nation - a nation that wants to make the enemy pay, and pay dearly.

Behind this spirited determination, however, is the faith of Americans in their government. America was caught by surprise, but now that America is aware of the danger, it will prevent a recurrence.

And prevent a recurrence it must, because if this act is successfully repeated, or if the attacks escalate, America's spirited determinism may well give way to utter fear and despair, and to a total lack of faith in the government and the nation - a major victory for the terrorists, who want nothing more than to see American society crippled or destroyed.

One characteristic of terror is that its acts are never one-of-a-kind. There are terror "firsts," but those firsts get copied, and if allowed, they become operational norms. There is no ceiling to levels of terror. In the terror Olympics, today's record holder will be eclipsed by tomorrow's record breaker.

Following a first occurrence of terrorism, the targeted country becomes wiser. It implements defenses against such terror, and may even anticipate upcoming forms of terrorism. But as a country implements defenses, terrorists implement workarounds. It becomes a never-ending battle of outflanking the adversary.

For the terrorist, the number of failures is unimportant. What counts are the successes. If a nation stops or prevents one hundred attacks, but fails to stop three, the net result is three terrorist victories. As Israel, arguably the world's most effective nation in preventing terrorism, has painfully learned, the prevented attacks are irrelevant to both the nation and the terrorists. America must understand that terrorists love to kill and expect to die. Their only desire is that their kill ratios far exceed their die ratios. Therefore, in simple mathematic terms, if a terrorist organization kills 10,000 people in one go, and in return America wipes out fifty or one hundred terrorists, the terrorists win a major victory. And with this incentive, they will strike again and again.

To launch a war against terrorism, America must first identify the source of terrorism. This is made difficult by the Western outlook and sense of political correctness that allows it to attribute terrorism to individuals or organizations, but never to whole societies, nations, or religious groups.

We might have no problem calling Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Hizbullah terrorist organizations, but we would balk at calling Palestinian society a terrorist society. We have no problem calling Osama Bin Laden and his Qaida group a terrorist organization, but we balk at calling Afghan society a terrorist society.

Yet, in truth, there are terrorist societies -- societies in which terrorism is not the domain of a lunatic fringe, but rather the mainstream outlook of the overwhelming majority of the people. Recent surveys conducted by Palestinians indicate that over 90% of their people support terrorist suicide bombings. Funerals for terrorists draw tens of thousands and become celebrations of the martyr and incitements to the next deed. This society is ensuring perpetuation of the terrorist mentality by teaching its little children to become suicide bombers.

Only in a terrorist society like this can people bludgeon other people to death, or disembowel them with their bare hands, simply because they don't like them. And only in a terrorist society like this will people spontaneously turn out in the thousands to dance and sing and pass out candies to celebrate the mass murder in the World Trade Center. Only such a society will celebrate the deeds of a bin Laden.

Terrorist states sponsor terrorism, provide logistical support, training camps, and other forms of support and encouragement. And the majority of them are Islamic, whether religious or secular. Much has been written recently on the difference between normative Islam -- a mainstream religion practiced peacefully by millions of adherents, and Radical Islam -- a religious-based totalitarian, terrorist political movement.

The war of the West is not against all Moslem societies. But Radical Islam characterizes several nations, including Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran and Libya. Its secular version characterizes such rogue states as Syria and Iraq. Palestinian society falls in between the two versions.

The facade of political correctness must be dropped when dealing with a threat like this. These societies actively seek non-conventional weaponry, and will clearly use them if given half a chance.

More ominously, Radical Islam has a strong domestic foothold in America and Europe. While it may not characterize mainstream Islam in these countries, the homegrown support for terror groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas is far from insignificant. Radical Islamists in America appear to have played a major role in the execution of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

America's course of action remains far from clear, but this will indeed be a battle between the forces of good and evil, at home and abroad And America must ensure that good prevails. It would do well to understand the nature of the beast before it decides on its plan of action. The threat the world faces today is largely of its own making. For decades, Europe, and to a lesser extent America, have been selling weaponry, technology and nuclear reactors to terrorist states for economic gains. All the while, Israel has been single-handedly waging war against terrorism.

The world condemned Israel when it bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Yet, because of that bombing, the allies were a decade later able to force Iraq back from Kuwait. The apology and thanks to Israel are long overdue, but that is always the case.

In return for its ongoing battle against terrorism, Israel has received nothing but scorn and condemnation from the rest of the world. Even this past week, in the wake of the World Trade Center attack, France's foreign minister to Israel justified suicide bombings against Israel. It is time for the world to take off its blinders and learn the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. Any nation that thinks it will protect itself from Arab terrorism by taking a hard line against Israel is literally making the mistake of its life.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

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