WarSclerotic

War on Hamas is war on the Islamic State, Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth, August 10, 2014

Gaza has been shoved to the back pages. France and other European nations are concerned with the threat of Islamic terrorism. For some reason, that same threat didn’t show up on their radar during the Gaza war.

The West is gearing up for war, too. This weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama gave the U.S. Air Force the go-ahead to attack the Islamic State in Iraq to prevent the radical Sunni group from committing genocide. Britain is already giving off signs that it will soon join in, and France, which recently launched anti-terrorism operations in Libya, Mali, and the Central African Republic, doesn’t intend to be left out. Some wars are justified.

The threat of terrorism and radical Islam has returned to the headlines in the West. News broadcasts in France are reporting, obviously, on the threat the Islamic State represents. Iraqi Christians who fled the group have received asylum in France, but on Saturday, rather than demonstrating in solidarity with their Christian brothers, people in Paris took to the streets in a show of support for Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood.

But let’s be clear — Gaza has been shoved to the back pages. France and other European nations are concerned with the threat of Islamic terrorism. For some reason, that same threat didn’t show up on their radar during the Gaza war.

And if we’re talking about Gaza, we could assume that the European street would understand that a war against Hamas is the same thing as a war on the Islamic State. Hamas and the Islamic State are both Islamist terrorist organizations that seek to change society and swathe it in Islamic green, whether Muslim civilians want that or not. Heretics, by the way, have no place there.

Islam expert Anne-Clementine Larroque, writing in Le Figaro on Saturday, explained the difference between Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the jihadists. An interesting analysis, which will help Israelis realize that what is perfectly clear to us is not yet clear to the Europeans.

Larroque explains that the Muslim Brotherhood are reformist Islamists with a political agenda: Some of its branches might display violent tendencies, but that is not its goal. Hamas was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a movement, but also has a military arm. The Islamic State, on the other hand, is a jihadist group.

Conclusion: We should talk with Hamas, and eliminate the Islamic State. Who would have thought we’d ever draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable terrorism?

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