Radical Islam: Raging unabated, Israel Hayom, Dr. Reuven Berko, July 4, 2014
(Why do we persist in calling it “radical” Islam rather than merely Islam?)
The Islamic Movement in Israel, which stars Sheikh Raed Salah and is committed to the same goals, also enjoys — for the present — the protection of democracy, which does not know how to defend itself. Any criticism directed toward them comes up again the self-righteous Muslims, “the moderate and nonviolent ones” — who refrain from condemning Islamic radicalism to a man.
Why is it so difficult to explain to the Western world who Israel’s enemies are and the nature of the person facing us? The average terrorist whom we face is typified by psychopathic behavior — to put it succinctly, he is disturbed. As more time passes, and the waves of blood shed by the Islamists sweep over the Middle East, it appears that the Western World regards most of these Arabs and radical Muslims as a disturbed, developmentally-delayed child who seeks honor, whom it is better to forgive each time he ruins everything.
When the efforts of the “disturbed child” to accomplish his goal by force fail, as others are harmed and the surroundings suffer enormous damage, he yells “Freeze” as if he were playing tag, and demands a “do-over” because none of it ever happened.
The global Islamic killing spree is carving its way toward the West, which is burying its head in the sand • Israel can take care of itself here, but will have a much tougher road combating the anti-Semitism poisoning the West.
Jihadists in Iraq | Photo credit: Reuters
The kidnapping and brutal murder of the three teenage boys by members of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas is part of an inconceivable array of global Islamic atrocity. Mass murders, rape, theft and the mass flight of people from their homes — offered as a message of persuasion by radical Islam and Muslim Brotherhood commentators to the world as part of the Hamas power center, the dawa network. While Western world leaders refuse to internalize the Islamic threat to their countries and families, signs indicate that it is precisely those of weak intellect in Europe and the United States who understand exactly what the Islamist sheiks are talking about.
It appears that the mentally ill and the moonstruck understand the message of Islam and its preachers, and are responding to the call of Allah. These “joonim” and “jamaisim,” alongside young European-born Muslims who wish to destroy Europe from within, volunteer in their numbers and travel to the Middle East to do the murderous work of the sheikhs, who deliver their incitement under the protection of democracy.
These young people join the mujahedin on various battlefronts in the crumbling Arab states. They joyfully adapt themselves to the terrain, grow beard, slaughter and execute thousands of innocent civilians. They record their bloody acts of murder on video and send the videos to the West.
When they finish their work in this region, they will return to the West, armed with indoctrination, experience in killing and a taste for blood, to complete the work of murder, intimidation and terrorism (“irhab”). All this will be done precisely according to the biography of the messenger Mohammed, which they acquired at the price of blood in the Middle East’s killing fields.
The leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel also serve as part of the web of global dawa. In Israel’s case, it means the elimination of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants, “who disguise themselves as the children of Israel, robbers of waqf property in Palestine, part of Western imperialism, a religious group with whom God is eternally angry and that does not deserve a homeland.”
The purpose of the message of dawa is to intimidate and convince the infidels (Christians and Jews alike), by persuasion or by the sword, to accept the up-to-date, correct and only religion that is supposed to control and rule the world. The grotesque version of Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” that Hamas published makes the message very clear: Any Jew who does not leave “Palestine” voluntarily will be killed.
The Islamic killing campaign of dawa is run by subcontractors who commit murder in the name of Allah. Hamas and Islamic Jihad nest in global Islamism’s hothouse of murder alongside al-Qaida, the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). In Islamist language, these groups are known as the “hard core.” They make no move without prior instructions and guidance, covert and open, from the production managers — meaning the sheikhs, who preach their genocidal doctrine on radio stations, on website and in mosques, just like Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Mashaal and the other groups of “saints” we know well, who also ordered the kidnapping of our young men.
While the sheikhs claim that the political-ideological wings of their groups are kept separate from the operational wings, the operational groups go out to do their murderous work well-fueled with Koranic verses and bizarre interpretations, products of the fevered brains of the “innocent” sheikhs. Those who run the murderous Islamist show live in luxury homes and ride in Mercedes cars in the West, even as they enjoy the protection of democracy and the obligation to be politically correct.
The Islamic Movement in Israel, which stars Sheikh Raed Salah and is committed to the same goals, also enjoys — for the present — the protection of democracy, which does not know how to defend itself. Any criticism directed toward them comes up again the self-righteous Muslims, “the moderate and nonviolent ones” — who refrain from condemning Islamic radicalism to a man.
The production of the murder of the three teenagers by Hamas was managed similarly. The sheikhs incited, the operational personnel of the time succeeded in kidnapping Gilad Schalit and profited handsomely. Later on, Hamas members tried dozens of times to recreate that success and failed. After the “successful” kidnapping and murder that the Hamas operatives perpetrated in Hebron, “high-ranking members of Hamas blessed the hands that had committed the crime” and, as usual, denied any involvement by the “leadership” in the crimes committed by the “staff.”
This maneuvering room made it possible for Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, whom Hamas wanted to embarrass and push out, not to sever the relationship with Hamas and demand clear proof of the Hamas leadership’s involvement in the crime. In this way, he sought to maintain the existing state of “unity.”
The Hamas leadership initiated the kidnapping — whose purpose, if it worked, was to recreate the Schalit prisoner-exchange deal with a higher yield. Terrorist groups are usually quick to take public credit for terror attacks and sometimes steal that credit from one another. This time, the plan was to kidnap Israelis without leaving any signature, at least at the first stages.
With their backs to the wall
For a long time before the kidnapping, Hamas planned to hide the kidnappers until such time as they chose to reveal them. The kidnapping was timed to take place on the eve of the elections that are scheduled to take place in the Palestinian Authority in about six months. At that point, Hamas had planned to reveal them and demand the release of an exorbitant number of prisoners. The gain from that would have been huge: Without any explicit statement, the Palestinian population was supposed to figure out that Hamas had carried out that “lofty” mission.
That was how Hamas planned to emerge from the trap of its political, economic and military isolation and, like a Trojan horse, join the “legitimate” Palestinian government without violating, at least at first, Abbas’ commitments to the West and to Israel. At the same time, Hamas would have emerged from its hardship and won the elections, carried on the wings of its success. In case of Israeli pressure, Abbas would be portrayed as a collaborator with Israel, as indeed happened.
Unlike “jihad tourists” who commit murder in the name of Allah, who are indifferent to the local Islamic population, Hamas, which has civilian control over its population, is sensitive to damage to property and life, and that is where its vulnerability lies. In the balance between profit and loss, Hamas emerged by the skin of its teeth from the bloody adventure of the murder of the three boys. The radical Islamic bloc that sprouted in Sinai was suppressed by the Egyptians, and the Islamic bloc in Gaza is also in a bad way because of the Israeli-Egyptian grip.
It turns out that even an abhorrent group of murderers that portrays itself as people “whose lust for death is stronger than the Jews’ desire for life” cannot ignore the Palestinian casualties, who paid with their lives for the kidnapping and murder it committed. Even if Hamas were to try to ignore it, the Palestinian public, which calculates its successes in “heads,” would remind it.
No revenge must be taken against Hamas that would restore it to the status of the popular underdog in the territories and throughout the world. Even the expansion of settlements would serve as moral justification for Hamas’ activity and would remove the world’s support for the existing settlement enterprise, which rests on accepted reasons.
While Hamas’ back was up against the tough wall of Egypt, its infrastructure in Judea and Samaria was crushed and its operatives jailed, and Israel’s arm is still outstretched both in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza. Hamas’ political isolation and economic and military troubles have increased following the failed attack, and the future of its reconciliation with Fatah is in doubt. We should bear in mind that even in this stalemate, the reserves of rockets, cement and other resources are steadily decreasing. Hamas will try to conserve them, and we will reduce them over a long surgical and meticulous process, not in a single blow.
While Palestinian Authority officials wax sanctimonious and warn against Israel’s response, even as they wait for Israel to eradicate the competing group, it appears that Hamas is having trouble enforcing discipline among the rejectionist organizations. After all, that is what its people did to the Palestinian Authority as it was taking form.
This trap, which will also be at the foundation of Palestinian chaos in the future, will make every agreement with them irrelevant.
After all, there will always be someone who stands up against the governmental monopoly over the sovereign power. In the situation that has been created, Abbas must not benefit from the “goat syndrome,” since he was the one who brought the “goat” of Hamas into the house, but is in no hurry to remove it. This being the case, whenever he should bid Hamas farewell, he will not be deserving of any political reward.
A slap to the West
Hamas is well integrated into the strategic view of the global Sunni Islamic project, which is funded by the Gulf states, mainly Qatar. From Israel’s vantage point, the organization’s great advantage is its “honesty,” which lies in the fact that it openly states its goal of destroying Israel. This makes it easier for Israel to act against it, including in the public-relations arena.
Unlike Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organization strives for the same goals, but its manipulative approach to accomplishing them makes it difficult for Israel to fight back against its schemes to destroy it (such as the “right of return”).
Since Hamas is responsible for the original population from which it sprang, the possibility that it will take over Judea and Samaria as well is not such a bad scenario, since if that happened, Israel would be able to free itself of the political and operational restraints on its behavior there. One way or the other, Hamas’ preparations for taking over Judea and Samaria, alongside the existing lack of trust in the PA’s intentions, require long-term Israeli control over the Jordan Valley and the crossing points in any future political formula. This control will keep the adventurers of the global jihad movement from infiltrating into the territory and protect the western part of Jordan from subversive ferment.
The purpose of the Islamic effort is to create a contiguity of salients and armed Islamic “emirates” in the region and in various parts of the world, and the Islamists have set their sights on Jordan. These salients are to unite eventually as a “large global Islamic caliphate.” Radical Islam has many nesting sites. They are in Africa, the Middle East, Russia and the Arabian peninsula. Signs of this nesting are also evident in Europe, the U.S. and other countries.
The situational picture that reflects the progress of global Islam’s invasion is full of contradictions, dynamic and utterly unstable. No one can tell what the outcome of the war will be, since some of the countries that cooperate with the West against radical Islamist terrorism, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, are actually aiding the radical Islamist groups that plan to destroy the West in the end.
The U.S. itself is embroiled in that contradiction, since on the one hand it is aiding the Islamists who follow the doctrine of al-Qaida and ISIS and are working against Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria. On the other hand, it is working against them in their fight against its protege, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite ruler of Iraq, who is actually the emissary of Iran. And Iran is part of the awful axis that consists of itself together with the Shiites, Syria and Lebanon, which is working against the West and its friends, including Israel, which they see as an obstacle, perhaps the last one, to an Islamic invasion.
Taking care of the disturbed child
In the meantime, the battlefront between the Sunnis and the Shiites has revived. The rioters of the region, who never really regarded Israel as the major problem, are now focusing on this crisis to decide, once and for all, who will control the Islamic world. The Palestinian problem, which was always marginal, has now been pushed into a forgotten corner, so we must not interfere with the “neighbors’ slaughterhouse.”
Why is it so difficult to explain to the Western world who Israel’s enemies are and the nature of the person facing us? The average terrorist whom we face is typified by psychopathic behavior — to put it succinctly, he is disturbed. As more time passes, and the waves of blood shed by the Islamists sweep over the Middle East, it appears that the Western World regards most of these Arabs and radical Muslims as a disturbed, developmentally-delayed child who seeks honor, whom it is better to forgive each time he ruins everything.
When the efforts of the “disturbed child” to accomplish his goal by force fail, as others are harmed and the surroundings suffer enormous damage, he yells “Freeze” as if he were playing tag, and demands a “do-over” because none of it ever happened. The West’s attitude toward the psychotic rioter who murders his own co-religionists, Christians and Jews is one of tolerance, solidarity and empathy. This approach denies the danger that this “disturbed child” will eventually strike at the women and children of Europe and America.
As far as the West is concerned, nothing can be expected of such a madman, and his antics must be put up with in a spirit of understanding in the hope that he will improve. Indeed, as part of this patronizing, caring, tolerant and inclusive approach, the West has decided that despite his violent and destructive nature, he must not be judged harshly.
The assumption is that the murderer has “Arab pride,” and because of that, his word may be relied upon if he will just give it and sign. Because of this, the West is always willing to start the game over out of a desire to appease him, particularly if the “petri dish” is far from where they live and the victims of this experiment on human beings are the inhabitants of Israel.
The sad expression of this mistaken approach to treatment is the collection of illogical strategic measures being taken in the West’s operation in our region, which stand out for their double standard and biased judgment of the measures Israel takes to survive. While the inconceivable acts of slaughter committed by the Arabs and the Muslims against one another and against us continue, the leaders of the West absurdly demand of Israel “proportionality,” concessions and restraint that endanger its existence.
The Presbyterians, Lutherans and others latched on to this absurdity in this biased attitude toward Israel. These Christian denominations put a yellow badge on Israel’s products with their decision to boycott Israeli products that come from Judea and Samaria (whose factories give a livelihood to many Palestinians). This measure was done in denial of terrorism against Israel and the acts of murder, expulsion, rape and theft that the radical Muslims also perpetrate against Christian communities in the Middle East.
Since the West has abandoned the Christian communities in the Middle East, it is easier to blame Israel’s so-called “rejection of peace” for the regional chaos instead of the ferment and bloodshed so well-entrenched in the natures of the murderous tribes living around us. It is likely that the attitude of these Christian denominations stems from an attempt to appease the Islamic radicals by marking the Jews as a common enemy. By doing so, they expect to ease the Islamic pressure on Christians.
Understanding the jungle
This sick person, the radical Muslim in the Middle East, feels no respect toward either the Christians in the West or even toward his fellow Muslims. The norms of this region have no respect for the life of another, nor for a word, oath or promise. The painful reality, which can be seen on Arab television screens, shows the uncompromising brutality of the inhabitants of the regional jungle and poses existential challenges to Israel.
The law that prevails in this part of the world, since the Jahiliyya (the pre-Islamic period), throughout the Islamic period to this day, is the law of the jungle, which dictates that the inhabitants live in a state of lack of mutual respect and deterrence that stems from the threat of mutual murder. The existence of one human being is a disaster for another, so the view that expresses the proper punishment for harming an enemy is either the destruction of his home or blood feud.
It is hard for Israelis and for moral Western people trying to learn the code of the region’s inhabitants, to adapt to its laws and survive under them. It is also very difficult to internalize that the killing of a family member requires the retaliatory killing of a relative of the murderer to the fifth degree to create balance and deterrence.
According to our neighbors’ code, prison is not a place of disgrace, shame, deterrence or punishment for criminals, but a source of great pride, as the Arabic saying goes: “Prison is for men.” It is hard for one who lives by the saying “respect has to be earned” to internalize the fact that for Arab pride, one does not need to work, since in that culture, honor, in a twisted way, comes from guarding one’s daughter’s virginity until her marriage, and if she fails to preserve it, she must be killed either by her loving father or by one of her brothers at the father’s behest (using a stone to crush her skull).
Anyone who could kill his own daughter in that way is capable of committing any atrocity against anyone else. EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and her colleagues have never heard of any of this before.
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