Repeat a lie a thousand times

A myth has been propagated that terrorism comes from poverty and studies have shown that terrorists are better educated than their own country men.

One piece of the Krueger-Maleckova evidence involves 129 members of Hezbollah who died in action, mostly against Israel, from 1982 to 1994. Hezbollah is now designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. Biographical information from the Hezbollah newspaper al-Ahd indicates that the fighters who died were, on average, more educated and less impoverished than the Lebanese population of comparable age and regional origin.

A similar finding applies on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Israeli Jewish extremists who attacked Palestinians in the West Bank in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Many of the extremists were Gush Emunim members. A list of 27 of the Israeli terrorists reveals a pattern of high education and high-paying occupations.

Krueger and Maleckova also examine surveys conducted last December with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. These polls tell us about who supports terrorism, as opposed to who are the terrorists. One set of answers reveals a high level of support for the general policy of attacking Israeli targets. This support is stronger among the literate than the illiterate. In another question, a remarkable 80% of respondents thought that the suicide bombing last June that killed 21 youths in a Tel Aviv nightclub was not terrorism. (The respondents recognized overwhelmingly that this act was regarded as terrorism by international opinion.) Moreover, the Palestinians’ adherence to the view that the mass murder of civilians was not terrorism was independent of education and higher among those working than unemployed. Hence, support for terrorism was not reduced by increases in education and income.

So why does this man write that “Unlike in Islam and Christianity where fundamentalism is mainly present among the illiterates, Hindu fundamentalism is an exclusive baggage of educated Hindus”? Because he is an expert in bullshit.