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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