Guest
Column: Peace According to Radical Islam
by Reuven Berko
Special to IPT News
October 24, 2014
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 England is
debating whether to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood, the religious,
ideological and operative supporter of Hamas. Various political pressures,
however, have prevented British security from designating the Muslim
Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. One can hope that the ISIS
execution of American correspondent James Foley, carried out by a
British-born Muslim, would be a wake-up call for not only the British, but
all the European security services. The chilling similarity between the
horror of Foley's execution at the hands of a British-born ISIS operative
and the Hamas execution of dozens of Gazans, as well as the ISIS slaughter
of hundreds of virtually naked Syrian soldiers, should have sounded alarm
bells regarding the dangers inherent in the fermenting Islamic enclaves in
America and Europe. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case.
The West's decades-long apathy toward Hamas' attacks on Israeli
civilians turned into shock and horror when the Hamas' sister organization,
ISIS, used the same tactics on Yazidis, Christians, Shi'ites, Kurds and
anyone else the group classified as "infidel."
The activists of the Muslim enclaves in Europe, which bred volunteers
for ISIS, are now demonstrating in the streets – not only against Israel –
but against their host countries. They are testing the limits to see how
far they will be able to go when they decide to organize riots. When that
happens, they will not only be inspired by their political sheikhs, they
will be supported by mujahedeen, volunteers who fought in Syria and
Iraq and returned to the back yards of their home countries as seasoned
fighters.
The whole world is slowly becoming aware of the situation, yet American
Secretary of State Kerry still tries to promote Qatar and Turkey, which
openly support terrorist organizations all over the globe, as "honest
brokers" to negotiate peace between Israel and Hamas. State Department
Spokesperson Marie Harf still actively defends Qatar, whose Al-Jazeera TV
is shamelessly used for propaganda against Israel, Egypt and Jordan, and
calls for rioting on the Temple Mount. It accuses Jordan of collaboration
with Israel in Israel's so-called attempts to "Judaize" Jerusalem
and uses all means at its disposal to foment unrest in Jordan against the
king and to dethrone him.
The American aerial attacks on ISIS in support of the Iraqi and Kurdish
Peshmerga armies indicate that the Americans turned a corner, perhaps too
late, in their understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Islamic
terrorism carried out by the ISIS, al-Qaida, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, the Al-Nusra Front and the other terrorist organizations which
slaughter, rape and pillage, sell women and behead infidels, all in the
name and for the greater glory of Allah, Muhammad and Islam. Now, with
American planes in the skies over Iraq, President Obama is willing to talk about "a cancer that has
grown" in the Muslim world after many politically correct years of
avoiding putting "Islamic" and "terrorism" together in
the same sentence.
And yet, the American administration remains stubbornly blind when it
comes to countries like Qatar and Turkey, which fund and motivate Islamic
terrorism. That may be because of a hidden agenda of military-economic forces
too powerful to resist, such as arms sales and naval bases. America, which
wants to be seen as fighting for global justice, ironically finds itself
acting against the best interests of Israel and Egypt, and in support of
countries like Qatar, which bear direct responsibility for the current
morass in the Middle East.
Rumors abound that following Operation Protective Edge, Hamas is willing
to reach a two-state peace agreement with Israel based on the 1967 borders
as part of the Palestinian Authority's national consensus government.
Really? The PA leadership learned the hard way that Hamas cannot be trusted
and that nothing its leaders say can be taken at face value. The 2007 Hamas
putsch of the Gaza Strip, during which the PA leadership was thrown from rooftops
and shot in the streets, taught Fatah to be wary.
When the PA established the "government of technocrats" with
Hamas last spring, Hamas promised it would abstain from terrorist attacks,
and shortly thereafter abducted and murdered three Israeli youths, all the
while issuing denials to every available media outlet.
Israel even thwarted a Hamas coup plot against the PA in the West Bank,
confiscating guns, weapons and explosives and arresting senior Hamas
activists.
During recent meetings in Cairo seeking pledges to rebuild Gaza, it
seemed forgotten that Hamas steadfastly refuses to disarm and demilitarize.
In his last United Nations speech, PA President Mahmoud Abbas promised to
follow in the footsteps of the fedayoun and rejected Israel's
security claims.
The reason for these events is simple and tragic: the tail is wagging
the dog. Despite the donations from the West and Palestinian
Authority-overseen rebuilding of the Gaza Strip, Hamas continues its
threats to renew its attacks against Israel and boasts of its new arms and
its tunnels under construction. The Palestinian Authority does not even try
to restrain Hamas, but additionally, on Oct. 19, one day after Hamas
political leader Khaled Mashaal appealed to the Palestinians to use weapons
against Israel, Abbas used a PLO meeting in Ramallah to call on the
Palestinians to act against Israel in Jerusalem "with all the means at
their disposal."
The result came soon: a Hamas terrorist from Jerusalem who had been
recently released from Israeli security jail deliberately drove his car
into a group of people waiting for a bus, killing a three-month-old baby
and injuring eight other people. Hamas hailed the attack and the death of the "female
settler."
Hamas threatens Israel's existence. It has systematically violated every
agreement and ceasefire, even 24-hour ceasefires, reached with Israel.
Israel, however, has absolute faith that Hamas will adhere to Article 7 of
its charter, which calls for the genocide of the Jews and the destruction
of the State of Israel. The situation is absurd. Abbas, a partner in a
government in which the other half calls for the genocide of the Jews,
self-righteously accuses Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip. He accuses
Israel of "apartheid" all the while claiming that Jewish presence
in the Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem "defiles"
them. His use of the term "defilement" clearly shows his hatred
of the Jews. In that, Abbas is no different from Hamas and Hitler, but the
international community, as usual, remains silent.
Experience and recent history have taught Israel that radical Islamists
cannot be trusted, because opportunism and treachery are part of their
operational code. The taqia, legitimacy of lying to the infidel, is
part and parcel of radical Islam. Al-Qaida received aid and training from
the United States to defeat the Russians and then destroyed the World Trade
Center. The Lebanese Shi'ites who welcomed Israel with flowers in 1982 and
helped the IDF expel the Palestinian terrorist organizations became
Hizballah and turned their weapons against Israel.
During the 1980s, when Hamas was founded as Al-Mujama' al-Islami, it
cooperated with Israel against the PLO in the Gaza Strip. When the first
intifada broke out in 1986, it changed its name to Hamas and instituted an
anti-Israeli terrorist campaign, which is still ongoing. Hamas operatives
who went to Bashar Assad's Syria, betrayed him and joined the rebels
opposing him. Veteran members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who in the past
had been faithful to King Hussein in Jordan, are now trying to overthrow
his son, King Abdallah. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had
previously been dispatched by the Arab monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia, to
carry out terrorist attacks around the world, are now attacking the
monarchies themselves.
In the meantime, not only did Hamas fail to slaughter the tens of
thousands of Israelis it hoped to with its rockets and tunnel-based
commando attacks, but its defeated leaders, with the aid of Qatar, Turkey
and anti-Semitic Europe, are trying to win concessions from Israel.
Among those concessions are the construction of an airport and seaport,
and secure access to Judea and Samaria, all with the objective of importing
the weapons promised by Iran for the next round of fighting. The refusal of
Abbas representative Azzam al-Ahmad to accept disarming Hamas as a
condition for progress during the Cairo talks, should have been a wake-up
call for Israel's critics. Abbas had committed himself to this requirement
according to the Oslo Accords. And the Hamas plans for a putsch against
Fatah in the West Bank should have been a wake-up call for him. In reality,
he is afraid to set foot in the Gaza Strip and barely controls Judea and
Samaria, whose restless inhabitants mostly support Hamas. For these
reasons, fearing for his own safety, he sent Rami Hamdallah, the prime
minister of his technocrat government, to the Gaza Strip to demonstrate his
government's presence and symbolic authority, and to discuss Hamas demands
for payments for its workers. Hamdallah didn't reach any agreement, and
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri threatens
that Hamas is "running out of patience."
The moderate Arab states know that founding another armed, radical
Islamist country in the region is a bad idea, and for that reason genuine
support for the Palestinian state is fading. Abbas can no longer be part of
the solution because of the danger that Hamas will also take over Judea and
Samaria. It is clear to the leaders of the moderate Arab states that Hamas
will continue its arms buildup and will turn any Palestinian entity,
including Judea and Samaria, into an Islamic emirate along the lines of
ISIS in Syria and Iraq and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and that outcome will
only aggravate the ills of the Middle East.
It is also clear that the "Palestinian issue" was never the
main cause of the region's conflicts; on the contrary, if the Palestinian
state does ever come into existence, it will be part of the problem, not a
solution. John Kerry's recent
hint that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is somehow related to ISIS
is not only ridiculous, but it shows how little the international community
in general and the United States in particular understands the Middle East.
The Shi'ite-Sunni enmity-caused-disaster throughout the region, Hizballah
and the Muslim Brotherhood all have nothing to do with Israel and the
Palestinians. How awful for Kerry that it is impossible to link Israel to
the spread of the Ebola virus, as Jews were blamed for the spread of the
Black Plague during the Middle Ages.
The Palestinian issue is barely marginal to the events in the Middle
East. However, the problem can be resolved by renewing the original
territorial affiliations, with the inclusion of security oversight: Judea
and Samaria can be returned to Jordan and the Gaza Strip to Egypt. That
development would facilitate the disbanding of UNRWA, a corrupt and useless
UN agency. In light of the millions of genuine refugees fleeing the ISIS
and seeking a safe haven in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, where they receive
no UN aid, the money financing UNRWA could be put to better purposes. The
Palestinians living in the apartheid Arab states should be given
citizenship and civil and legal rights, and allowed to live and work as
equal citizens.
The world, including the United States, has finally understood that
there is no such thing as "political Islam" and that the Muslim
Brotherhood is the spiritual mentor of all the various Islamic terrorist
organizations. It and its proxies use the preaching of the da'wah to
incite the masses to acts of terrorism as a way of installing an Islamic
rule of the world. Thus, the need to stop ISIS and Hamas is not because
they threaten Israel and Jordan (as noted by the American Secretary of
State), but because they threaten the entire world.
The Middle East has turned a corner. On the one hand, the Iranian
nuclear threat is becoming more prominent, and Syrian and Hizballah
terrorism and missiles endanger Israel and its neighbors. On the other
hand, Islamic terrorism poses a genuine strategic threat to all the
countries in the region, putting the sane Arab states in the same
battlefield trench with Israel. As the king of Saudi Arabia noted, if the
ISIS isn't stopped in the Middle East today, Europe and America will have
to deal with it tomorrow.
Israel's critics had the decency to remain quiet during the summer and
allow Israel to deal with Hamas. They understood the danger of Hamas
terrorism and the need to disarm it. They also understood that Jordan and
Saudi Arabia are next in line, that Israel is the only bulwark between them
and radical Islamic terrorism, and that the Palestinians must not be used
as a tool in the hands of terrorists. For the sake of world peace, the West
has to exploit every chance to stamp out Islamic terrorism. Instead, it
concentrates on rebuilding the Gaza Strip, has no intention of trying Hamas
for its war crimes, and does not bother even to hold Mahmoud Abbas
responsible for his actions.
The Arab world is going up in flames. Hundreds of thousands are being
killed and millions are being displaced, and yet the world is silent,
unless Israel is part of the equation. Thus on Oct. 13, representatives
from 50 countries and the heads of 20 international organizations met in
Cairo to discuss rebuilding the Gaza Strip. They pledged $5 billion for
Gaza without even a hint of disarmament. Instead, they hurled false
accusations at Israel for not using proportional power and causing too much
casualties and destruction, and wrung their hands for the plight of the
Gazans. All this occurred without requiring some kind of mechanism to
oversee the dispersal of funds and building materials and without
demilitarizing the Gaza Strip.
Will the promised money ever arrive? Experience has shown that promises
are rarely kept in the Middle East. And if the money does arrive, will it
be kept out of Hamas' hands or will it buy more weapons and build more
terrorist tunnels? Sweden and Britain, in their rush to recognize the
"Palestinian state" without Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,
prove that they have learned nothing from history. Hatred for the Jews and
the fear of the Muslim enclaves growing in the West have overcome every
existential, rational and humanitarian consideration.
Dr. Reuven Berko has a Ph.D. in Middle East studies, is a commentator
on Israeli Arabic TV programs, writes for the Israeli daily newspaper
Israel Hayom and is considered one of Israel's top experts on Arab affairs.
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