Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Defeating Terror without Apology



by Daniel Doron


Syrian President Bashar Assad is a despicable person, but there is one thing he is right about -- the only way to defeat terror is through war.

Many experts claim that terror can only be curbed if negotiations are on the horizon. But where does the blind assumption come from that establishing a criminal Arab state right next to us will eradicate terror? If the Palestinian Authority is an example, then the future Arab state will be corrupt and its rulers will only continue tormenting their citizens, bankrupting them and leaving them to stew in squalor, while fanning the flames of their rage and frustration against the "occupation."

The Hashashin, a group of 11th century assassins who were perhaps the first terror group in history, were completely eradicated by the Mongols. The British defeated terror in India and quashed the Arab revolt in 1939. The Communist uprising in Greece was crushed, and so was the one in Malaysia. Hafez Assad, Bashar's father, all but destroyed the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, and King Hussein of Jordan did the same to Fatah. The Red Brigades in Italy, the Japanese Red Army, the Baader-Meinhof Group in Germany and the Shining Path guerrilla organization in Peru, were all -- without exception -- obliterated.

Even in Egypt, restraining the Muslim Brotherhood in the past was not achieved through potential negotiations, and the present is no exception.

The former Shin Bet heads featured in the 2012 movie "The Gatekeepers" all presented an understanding I believe to be flawed. It might explain why they -- and our wonderful Israel Defense Forces -- have failed to eradicate terror. It seems they have yet to learn how dangerous it is to insist on adhering to a fixed idea, and not only when it comes to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. We, it seems, have failed to hear the alarm bells that sounded when it was revealed that the people with whom we entrusted our security and our future, although very talented, were also very naive.

Who but a naive individual would have agreed to entrust his reputation to a manipulative director, whose sole purpose was to make us understand and sympathize with terrorists, and -- in the name of pursuing justice -- make us feel guilty?

The heads of the Shin Bet did not invent this erroneous worldview, it was a consensus fostered by the media, academia and dozens of learned commentators, who explained to us, hundreds of times, that the use of force -- in Lebanon, in Gaza Strip and in the West Bank -- has always failed.

Yes, we used force, but we never used enough force to reach a decisive resolution. We never tried to decisively stop the massive aid given by Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, or by Egypt and Iran to Hamas. Instead, we opted for inefficient solutions, such as imposing a closure, which only penalized the innocent population.

Instead of drying up the swamp, we killed the mosquitoes. We wasted precious ammunition on destroying primitive rocket launchers, but we have yet to try the one proven solution: destroying the terrorists' headquarters. We wasted effort on assassinating operatives and junior commanders, but only sparingly, so they were easily replaced. A democratic state must, naturally, exercise restraint and avoid harming innocent people, but if all else fails, it must use brute force.

The mighty IDF can defeat terror groups, which number a few thousand operatives, but it must first set aside its flawed conceptions, most notably the belief that terror cannot be defeated through force. The hope that establishing yet another irredentist state will bring peace is a false one.


Daniel Doron

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5439

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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