The Long March from Jihad to Xenophobia
During his recent visit to Gaza, Jared Kushner — Donald Trump’s ever-serene son-in-law and self-appointed statesman — was asked on television what he had seen there. His reply: “It looks like a nuclear bomb was dropped.” When pressed further — “Was this genocide?” — Kushner, a man more comfortable dealing in property than in pity, said “No.” Buildings turned to ash, hospitals to craters, hunger to strategy. But unlike Afghanistan in 1979, the “Muslim world” did not erupt. No calls for jihad, no volunteers crossing borders, no princes emptying treasuries. Where, one might ask, are the new Mujahedeen? To find them, we must go back to that bitter winter of 1979, when the Soviet Union marched into Afghanistan. The Soviets said they came reluctantly, to rescue a collapsing ally. But once Soviet boots touched Afghan soil, a guerrilla army sprouted almost overnight — the Mujahedeen , “fighters of Islam.” They were not Afghans alone. They came from the deserts of Arabia, the plains of Egy...