The free world has no choice but to fight terrorism, the U.S. ambassador to Israel said.
Richard Jones, speaking Tuesday at an Israeli security conference marking the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, said the ensuing war has been protracted and waged on many fronts.
“It is inevitable that we will continue to use force,” Jones told an international audience gathered at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.
“On Sept. 11th, our enemies showed that they were willing to literally murder thousands of civilians and to commit suicide to accomplish their goals. Those who plotted this atrocity along with their apostles in this region and around the world are still committed to violence and will not be stopped except by the use of force.”
He added: “The ideological and political front of this war is fought in homes and workplaces, in town squares and shopping malls, and perhaps most importantly, in the media and cyberspace. We need to take the battle in each of these places and we must win this battle.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in her speech deplored what she described as a tendency in some parts of the world to empathize with radical Islamic terrorists.
“There is a kind of eagerness to understand the reasons for terrorism,” she said. “Only if and when the international community and the international leaders understand that there is no just cause for terrorism, then they can decide on the right actions against terrorism.”
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