EDITORIAL Oil, silence, and terrorism
Oil suffers from an unfortunate association with terrorism. When terrorists kill 58 people in Israel within 9 days, therefore, suspicions run high that cash from oil production is somehow involved.
This does oil no good. Valid or not, the suspicions add to the list of unsound but often persuasive reasons not to use petroleum. Producers-private or state-owned-don't need any more arguments against consumption of oil products.
Moreover, suspicions about links between oil and terrorism-to the extent they're unfounded-divert attention from what should be the top priority: the establishment of lasting peace in the Middle East.
Covert role
Oil money may or may not have played some covert role in the latest round of brutality in Israel. Hamas, the Palestinian militant group claiming responsibility, doesn't boast of ties to any particular oil producing nation.
It is not far-fetched, however, to believe that Hamas, Jihad, and other such groups receive funds from sympathizers throughout the Middle East. And the connections hardly end there. The suicide bomber in one of the recent attacks in Israel was an Arab-American.
The fact remains that while no one alleges official U.S. complicity in the bombings in Israel, governments of Middle Eastern countries, including the oil producers, don't so easily escape suspicion. Part of the reason for this is the way they react-or don't react-when terrorists go on their bloody sprees.
Oil producers of the Middle East must understand that their characteristic silence on these issues looks to outsiders like support for purveyors of random death. The silence thus associates oil with terrorism. It provides moral, if not logical, foundation for the persistent case against oil consumption.
Worse, their silence keeps them from contributing to the cause of peace. At this point, a huge contribution would be unqualified denunciation by regimes in the Middle East of the Israeli killings.
Such a step would brim with danger. To a great extent, politics in the Middle East amounts to keeping radicals in the shadows. A regime that rebukes the murderers of Israelis risks bringing extremists into its own streets. Hence the strategy of silence and, possibly, acquiescence to unofficial support for terrorism abroad. Such is the frailty of political balance in the Middle East.
Before speaking out against disruptions to peace in the Middle East, therefore, unconfident governments would need security assurances-very quiet ones-from stronger countries outside the region. The U.S. and other developed countries should be willing to pay this price for expressions of support for peace to whatever extent countries in the Middle East are willing to make them.
And how can Middle Eastern oil producers not be willing to support peace? It is their region that must endure radicalism's eternal threat. It is their stability that creaks under pressure from unrepudiated extremism. And it is their most vital commodity that suffers by association.
Right and wrong are easy to distinguish in questions of peace and terrorism. And the moral question has nothing to do with citizenship, religion, or ethnicity. Terrorists-whether they're in the Middle East, Belfast, or Oklahoma City-serve only one cause. That cause is hatred. It is indefensible and in no way justifies murder.
The need to speak out
Peoples and governments that believe this must say so. They also must defend those governments that take risks by speaking out for peace. Regimes not willing to take the risk must recognize that continued silence makes a statement that is not welcome in a world revolted by the bloodshed in Israel and, before that, London and Oklahoma City.
The oil industry should hope there are Middle Eastern regimes wavering on the brink of doing what's right. It can help by reminding those regimes that the world that so abhors the politics of hatred also happens to consume a lot of oil.
Copyright 1996 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.