To ignore the importance of human dignity and self worth is to make a grave mistake.

I used to mainly focus on poverty as the leading cause of the desperation necessary to drive average people to acts of terrorism. I believed that, with the eradication of poverty, the end of acts of violence would follow close behind. I still believe that poverty plays a significant role in fostering the kind of hopelessness to bring people to violence. However, more evidence shows that poverty is an element of a much broader issue — humiliation.

As John F. Burns of the Washington Post pointed out this week, Arabs know their history. About 1,000 years ago, Baghdad was a world center of learning. Art, poetry, philosophy, science and mathematics flourished under the Muslim Caliphs. The history of Moorish Spain with its largely coexistent Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities is passed down through generations. However, this profound sense of pride of Arab history has been quashed by the nearly continuous colonization and dehumanization of the Arab world by European and American powers.

The late, great scholar Edward Said dubbed this idea Orientalism, the collection of false generalizations that characterize the West’s portrayal of the East to further the West’s colonial ambitions.

Writing in The Nation in 1998, Said said, “Very little of the detail,the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.”

As Burns said of Iraq, “Since the modern state’s founding in 1921, they have been under the boot of colonial rulers, imposed kings or brutish dictators. Now, it is America’s boots they feel on their necks.”

So many times while I was in the Middle East, I heard people say they want to see serious changes in their governments, just not at the hands of Western superpowers.

Evidence for this claim is plentiful. Two weeks ago, Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, enraging Palestinians and so many others around the world.

The assassination, illegal under international law, drew strong criticism from China, Russia and many European countries, even mild statements from the United States. China and Russia, of course, are hardly ones to preach human rights.

Many Palestinians disagreed with Yassin’s desire for a theocratic Palestine based on Shar’ia Islamic law. So why the outrage from all segments of Palestinian society? Because Palestinians believe — and this is shocking — that they should be able to decide their own future. The humiliation of Israel’s assassination of Palestinian leaders without punishment from the world community cannot be underestimated.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who now and again gets it right, said in a piece last November, “Never, ever underestimate a people’s pride, no matter how broken they might be. It is very easy for Iraqis to hate Saddam and resent America for overstaying. Tap into people’s dignity and they will do anything for you. Ignore it, and they won’t lift a finger.”

It is amid this backdrop of indignity and humiliation that extremism is taking hold on both sides. U.S. news organizations do an all-star job of telling the story of Palestinian and Arab extremism, whether it is isolated incidents or acts of violence.

However, one mustn’t look far for signs of Israeli extremism, coverage of which is isolated ironically to Israeli newspapers.

In late February, for example, Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper, had the only reports of Deputy Defense Minister Ze’ev Boim’s openly racist comments while speaking at a memorial ceremony for the victims of a bus attack.

He said, “What is it about Islam as a whole and the Palestinians in particular? Is it some form of cultural deprivation? Is it some genetic defect? There is something that defies explanation in this continued murderousness.”

Extremist ideas of genetic tendency to violence propagated by Mr. Boim and his kind are not the mainstream in Israel. His fellow members of the Israeli government called on him to apologize or resign. But this is just the kind of ethnocentrism that delivers the message to Arabs loud and clear.

It is not until the world community addresses the deep-seated humiliation and indignity felt in the Arab and Muslim world as a result of imposed Western economic, political and military interests that work begins toward a more hopeful future for all.