The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
Ever since Hamas was “elected” to run Gaza
and then followed the usual “one election/one time” Middle East
formula, it has bragged nonstop that its agenda is to erase Israel off
the face of the earth (cf. the wall map in the office of our Rep.
Rashida Tlaib).
Its unabashed nihilist boasts resonated throughout the Palestinian “movement.” Its fiery threats delighted the Arab street.
Indeed, Hamas was soon celebrated as the most “authentic” of the radical Palestinian terrorist movements.
Which cadre of thugs could top its
end-of-days rhetoric, its assured and steady supply of money and weapons
from Iran, its satanic eagerness to mutilate and dismember, and the
sanctuary and financial wherewithal offered to it by our “ally” Qatar?
None.
Since Hamas was viewed as the most “volatile” and creepy of the
Palestinian factions, and the most useful to Iran, the Obama and Biden
administrations appeased the murderers. Was it not part of their
hare-brained grand strategy of empowering theocratic Iran and its
Syrian, Hezbollah and Hamas hirelings?
Their campaign (remember the “they
literally know nothing” media and the Obama “echo chamber” created by a
boastful Ben Rhodes?) was to forge these disparate Islamists into a
crescent of resistance to Israel and any “moderate” Arab regime (recall
the Obama-Biden transitory hatred of the Gulf sheikdoms).
The result would be “creative tension”—as well as payback for the Israeli election of Netanyahu.
Through this formula, Obama believed he
could always pressure Israel to grant concessions to radical
Palestinians thanks to the looming threat of an ever-menacing (and
soon-to-be nuclear) Iran with help from Obama’s other friends—the
then-Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and Obama’s pal the
neo-Ottomanist and antisemite Erdogan of Turkey, Obama’s self-described
personal liaison to the Islamic world.
Yes, this was sheer madness—if perhaps characteristic of Obama’s well-known orneriness.
Perhaps someday soon, a few disinterested
historians might even record that the current nightmare in Israel is the
logical end result of what Barack Obama, John Kerry (remember his
Trump-era Paris reconnaissance with the Iranians?), Ben Rhodes, Valerie
Jarrett, Robert Malley, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and a host of other
incompetent but otherwise haughty and dangerous people once conjured up.
A defiant and empowered murderous Hamas
was one of the many dividends of their appeasement and grand Middle East
schemes—given the eagerness of the Obama and Biden administrations to
send hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza despite warnings from their
own experts that such cash would enhance terrorism and abet the evil
work of Hamas with an American financial stamp of legitimacy.
Hence, a soon-to-be nuclear Iran, freed
from sanctions, had enough money (remember the nocturnal cash pallets on
the Tehran tarmac?) to fund its surrogate global death squads.
Hamas has killed Jewish civilians for
nearly two decades, always escaping the full wrath of Israel’s
retaliation by appealing to the amoral consciousness of left-wing
European and American governments. It counted on ample help from both
Iran and Arab regimes, along with Turkey, which always screams
“instability” at the first sign of Israeli retaliation.
The blustering Hamas has now murdered over
1,000 Jews in their homes, preferring especially to gun down children,
reportedly behead babies, torture the doomed, rape the helpless, execute
the elderly and brutalize women—topping the killing off in good SS
fashion by gleeful dismemberment and desecration of Jewish corpses.
So, they finally got their wish for their
own version of the Holocaust, for what they had always bragged would be
the “final” Israel-ending war—as their cowardly elders announced last
Saturday from their protected enclaves.
Yes, Hamas promised their mass killing of
innocents would ignite the Muslim world, and incite simultaneous attacks
on Israel from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and perhaps Egypt—all as their
planned anniversary replay of the 1973 Yom Kippur War’s first 48 hours.
And it may—or may not.
The ebullient people of Gaza seemed
initially enthralled at videos of mutilated Jews and showed their zeal
by spitting on hostages carried back home for supposed Roman-like
triumphs before their public sacrifices. Videos of the gruesome killings
of Jews were hot downloads on Gaza mobile phones.
Now mutilating dead Israelis, now boasting
how brave their sons were in slaying unarmed Jews inside Israel, Gazans
assumed a shocked Israel would capitulate.
Would not its megaphones in the West characteristically protect them and restrain Israel?
Could not they themselves always ensure a
few thousand of their own civilians be sacrificed as expendable human
shields of their missile pads, and thus become necessary fuel for their
boilerplate accusations of “war crimes” that usually curtail Israeli
retribution?
But now the Israeli retaliation seems oblivious to all that.
It may not be like the past incursions
into Gaza that were manipulated by a cowardly Hamas to gain media
sympathy for “collateral damage” that they themselves engineered.
Predictably, as Israel ramps up the air
attacks and prepares for the ground assault, the global media is showing
a concern for civilian collateral damage in a way it never quite did
for murdered Jewish innocents and beheaded infants.
Western governments are terrified of
Middle Eastern killers who may return to their previous attacks on
European citizens. After all, Western left-wing suicidal immigration
policies have ensured large unassimilated Muslim populations. Millions
have fled the self-created violence and tyranny of the Middle East only
to cheer it on from a safe distance in their adopted Western homelands,
whose welcoming of these “refugees” is now so often reciprocated with
sheer contempt for the apologetic hosts.
Nonetheless, the Gaza crowds of 48 hours
ago who were boasting of their sons murdering with impunity and spat on
bound defenseless women, are now aggrieved. But they might as well be
barking at the moon about the supposed “unfairness” of the Israeli air
counterattack.
Among the rubble of Hamas high-rises, they
are weeping for media cameras, calling on a corrupt and antisemitic
United Nations for accustomed relief, threatening on spec the West with
who knows what (is it now infant beheading or body dismemberment?) and
in general suddenly quite unhappy about their “final” war they just
recently boasted was all but won.
Will the heroic legions of Hamas who
beheaded and raped now pour out in the streets to fight the IDF and push
them into the sea as promised?
Perhaps not?
Some final thoughts: Why has Iran gone
from bragging three days ago about its training and tutelage of the
Hamas killers to suddenly pleading that while it is certainly delighted
about the beheadings, rapes, executions and mutilations, it technically
had no actionable role in ensuring them?
The truth is that Hamas right now is
alternately threatening and begging Western governments, beseeching its
suddenly mum Iranian suppliers, whining that Hezbollah and the
Palestinian Authority have not yet sufficiently shared in the
bloodletting of this war and generally railing for more jihad from a few
of its increasingly so-so, nonplussed Middle Eastern sponsors.
Hamas fears it may have boxed itself in,
with two American aircraft carriers between it and Iran, with private
satisfaction from many Arab states that their nuisance Hamas might at
last have committed suicide through its mass homicide, with even fanatic
supporters hard-pressed to make their “moral” case for the beheading of
babies and with a half-million IDF soldiers on their way to deliver
divine justice upon them, perhaps in the Lincolnesque Second Inaugural
sense of “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
Translated, that means for the first time
in its existence an unholy Hamas may not get out of its self-created
rendezvous with what it has so duly earned, given there is now no
assurance of third-party relief and thus no restraint on Israel.
Even a shaken and shamed Biden
administration—guilty of an open border and its de facto support for
Hamas and Iran, but suddenly scared of a furious election-cycle American
public—may for a while not call off Israel.
The arrogant but half-educated Harvard
crowd, the European Islamists, the woke and pampered antisemites on
Western campuses, the AOC socialists, the pro-Hamas Squad, the BLM
chorus who cheered on the Hamas glider death attack, of course, CAIR,
and all the usual suspects, for now, are as furious as they are
impotent—petulant that, for once, just this once, and for a while longer
at least, no one is listening to their oh-so-tired amoral defense of
the indefensible.
Why are the Islamic jihad groups fighting against Israel? Why do they
think that committing the dismaying actions we saw in Israel on
Saturday is the right, and indeed the righteous, thing to do?
As the death toll from Saturday’s jihad massacres in Israel continues
to mount, the world looks on in horror at the atrocities that were
committed — the wanton massacre of people at a peace concert, the beheaded babies, and so much more. It is hard for Americans and Europeans to fathom how or why any human beings would do such things.
Now, however, two jihad groups, including the one that was behind the
massacres, Hamas, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’
Fatah, have issued statements that clarify exactly what they think
they’re doing. As you might expect, they both make for chilling reading.
The indispensable Palestinian Media Watch reported Monday
that “a Telegram channel associated with Fatah’s military wing the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, is calling on Palestinians to slaughter Jews
who they term ‘apes and pigs.’” That’s actually a reference to the
Islamic holy book, the Qur’an, which, in three separate passages, refers
to Allah punishing Sabbath-breaking Jews by transforming them into apes
and pigs (2:53-65; 5:59-60; 7:166).
Fatah’s exhortation to jihad also includes this: “Fight them, and
Allah will punish them by your hands, and he will lay them low and give
you victory over them, and he will heal the hearts of people who are
believers.” That also is from the Qur’an (9:14) and expresses one of the
biggest differences between Judaism and Christianity on the one hand
and Islam on the other. While both the Jewish (Deuteronomy 32:35) and
Christian (Romans 12:19) traditions say that vengeance for wrongdoing is
up to God, and not for any individual to pursue, the Qur’an tells
Muslims that they are to be the executors of the wrath of Allah: he will
punish errant human beings by the hands of the followers of Muhammad.
This is how the jihadis who killed Israeli civilians wholesale on
Saturday could do so while believing they were doing nothing less than
carrying out the will of the one and only God. They believe those whom
they killed to be enemies of Allah and the Muslims, and consequently to
have deserved everything they got, and more.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif hailed the beginning of what he called “Operation
Al-Aqsa Deluge.” He said that the massacres of that day were just the
“first strike,” and that much more was coming. Deif declared: “I say to
the masses of the people and our nation, and to the free people of the
world: Today, the wrath of Al-Aqsa has exploded – the rage of our
people, our nation, and the free people of the world. I say to our pure mujahideen:
This is the day that you make this criminal enemy understand that its
time is up. ‘Kill them wherever you may find them.’” That also was a
quotation from the Qur’an (2:191, 4:89, cf. 9:5).
These documents of Hamas and Fatah are nothing new. Hamas and its
allies always speak of their conflict with Israel in Islamic theological
terms; yet this is the one aspect of the conflict that Western
policymakers never take into consideration.
Article 13 of the charter emphasizes the importance of Jihad: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
The indifference has reached a
point where some Western media outlets and officials continue to label
Hamas terrorists as "militants." The October 7 carnage, during which
Jewish women, children and the elderly were brutally murdered, shows
that there is effectively no difference between Hamas and the Islamic
State (ISIS).
In 2017, Western media outlets published stories arguing that
Hamas has recognized Israel's right to exist by accepting the "two-state
solution." The only problem is, it was not true.
Many in the international media, however, failed to report that the new program also
states that "Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall
be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the
circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation
lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation
of Palestine, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea."
In its charter, Hamas makes it clear that it remains faithful to
the words of the prophet Mohammed, who was quoted as saying: "The Day of
Judgement will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the
Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and
trees will say O' Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come
and kill him." (Article 7)
Article 13 of the charter emphasizes the importance of Jihad:
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.
Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste
of time and vain endeavors."
Notably, the new Hamas program did not replace its 1988 charter.
In fact, the program repeated Hamas's commitment to the destruction of
Israel through Jihad, but pointed out that since this goal cannot be
achieved under the current circumstances, the group is ready to accept a
temporary state on any land it obtains as a first stage toward the
annihilation of Israel. Hamas, in short, is saying: We will take
whatever you (Israel) give us now – starting with a Palestinian state –
and we will use this to slaughter you.
Hamas launched its attack on Israel because it does not see a
difference between a Jew living in a West Bank settlement and a Jew
living in a city inside Israel.
For Hamas and its followers, all Jews are "settlers" and
"colonialists," regardless of their geographical location. Hamas
launched the attack as part of its effort to slaughter Jews and
obliterate Israel.
It is time for the international community to wake up and realize
that Iran and its Palestinian proxy terrorists are as determined as
ever to wipe Israel -- and America -- off the map.
Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Mashaal, Saleh
Arouri, and Khalil al-Hayya, living safely in five-star hotels in Qatar
and Lebanon, actually invited reporters to document them during the
special prayer they held to thank God for the massacre of Jews. These
bogus leaders also evidently do not give a damn about the thousands of
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who have lost their lives, homes and
loved-ones as a result of Hamas's thirst for Jewish blood.
Those who continue to defend Iran and Hamas are complicit in
their campaign of genocide against Jews. Pictured: A senior Hamas
delegation, headed by military leader Saleh Arouri, visited Iran and met
with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on July 22, 2019. Arouri was
quoted as saying that the "Palestinian resistance and Iran are in one
front in facing Israel." Khamenei was quoted as expressing satisfaction
over the "progress" the Palestinians have made in the past few years:
"while the Palestinians used to fight [Israel] with rocks, today they
possess precise rockets." (Image source: khamenei.ir)
Hamas's October 7 war on Israel did not surprise those who have been
following the actions of Iran and its regime-backed Islamist terror
group since it was founded in late 1987.
Since then, Hamas, with Iran's help -- Hamas does not have a
productive economy in Gaza -- has carried out countless terrorist
attacks, killing and wounding thousands of Jews by suicide bombings,
shootings, stabbings and car-rammings, as well by firing tens of
thousands of rockets into Israel, a country the size of New Jersey
(roughly 22,000 km2).
In 2002, Hamas committed one of its deadliest massacres during the
Jewish holiday of Passover in the Israeli city of Netanya. Thirty
civilians were murdered and 140 wounded when a Hamas terrorist,
disguised as a woman, detonated a suitcase filled with powerful
explosives in the dining room of a hotel where Jews were celebrating the
Passover holiday. Most of the victims were senior citizens (70 and
over). The oldest victim was 90 and the youngest, 20.
Over the past three decades, Hamas officials never concealed their
group's ambition to destroy Israel through Jihad (holy war). Hardly a
day has passed without another Hamas statement concerning the need to "liberate all Palestine" (meaning destroy Israel).
Days before the latest Hamas attack on Israel, the terrorist group called
on all Arabs and Muslims to "continue the legitimate struggle in all
forms" until Israel is defeated and expelled from "our historical land."
The statements by Hamas officials and leaders over the past three
decades were not empty threats. They were backed by literally thousands
of terrorist attacks
against Israel. Sadly, many in the international community chose to
look the other way as Hamas continued its threats and terrorist attacks.
The indifference has reached a point where some Western media outlets
and officials continue to label Hamas terrorists as "militants." The
October 7 carnage, during which Jewish women, children and the elderly
were brutally murdered, shows that there is effectively no difference
between Hamas and the Islamic State (ISIS).
The Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel used the very tactics
employed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq: Burning people alive, raping women,
beheading civilians, and abducting women (including an 85-year-old
Holocaust survivor on a wheelchair) and children.
Why, then, are Hamas terrorists labeled "militants" while ISIS members are called "terrorists"?
It is because of the identity of the victim. When the victim is a
Jew, then the perpetrator is a "militant." Yet when the victim is a
non-Jew, the Muslim extremist is called for what he really is: a
terrorist.
Attempts by some Westerners to whitewash Hamas and portray it as a
small group of fighters challenging Israel, one of the most powerful
countries in the Middle East, have continued in spite of the atrocities
committed by the group over the past 35 years. Bizarrely, the attempts
have continued even while Hamas leaders themselves were stressing that
their group has not changed and remains committed to slaughtering Jews and eliminating Israel.
In 2017, Western media outlets published stories arguing that Hamas has recognized Israel's right to exist by accepting the "two-state solution." The only problem is, it was not true.
The argument was based on a political program announced by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal at a press conference in Doha, Qatar.
The British newspaper The Guardian then claimed
that Hamas, in its new program, had made "the biggest concessions" by
agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel.
The paper quoted a part of the program that says:
"[Hamas] considers the establishment of a fully sovereign
and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along
the lines of June 4, 1967, with the return of the refugees and the
displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula
of national consensus."
Many in the international media, however, failed to report that the new program alsostates that:
"Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine
shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the
circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation
lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation
of Palestine, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea."
Other sections of the political program, falsely presented by some
media outlets as a sign of Hamas's purported moderation and pragmatism,
actually reaffirmed the group's original charter, published in 1988.
"There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity"
"Resistance and Jihad (holy war) for the liberation of Palestine
will remain a legitimate right, a duty and an honor for all the sons and
daughters or our people and our Ummah (Muslim community)."
The 1988 Hamas charter states that "our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious." It quotes Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is an offshoot), as saying: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
In its charter, Hamas makes it clear that it remains faithful to the words of the prophet Mohammed, who was quoted as saying:
"The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight
the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and
trees. The stones and trees will say O' Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a
Jew behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)
Article 13 of the charter emphasizes the importance of Jihad:
"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except
through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences
are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
Hamas says in the charter that "the land of Palestine is an Islamic
Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day" (Article 11) and "the Jihad for the liberation of Palestinian is an individual duty of every Muslim" (Article 15).
Notably, the new Hamas program did not replace its 1988 charter. In
fact, the program repeated Hamas's commitment to the destruction of
Israel through Jihad, but pointed out that since this goal cannot be
achieved under the current circumstances, the group is ready to accept a
temporary state on any land it obtains as a first stage toward the
annihilation of Israel. Hamas, in short, is saying: We will take
whatever you (Israel) give us now – starting with a Palestinian state –
and we will use this to slaughter you.
Additionally, no senior Hamas official has ever gone on the record to
announce the revocation of the charter, which calls for the elimination
of Israel and replacing it with an Islamic state. On the contrary;
Hamas representatives have gone to some length to let it be known that
they have not abandoned their desire to kill Jews and destroy Israel.
Days after the political program was announced, Hamas's envoy to Iran, Khaled al-Qaddoumi, asserted
that there was no change in his group's attitude toward Israel. The
program, al-Qaddoumi said, does not include any recognition of the
"Zionist entity," adding:
"The Palestine that we believe in and want is every inch
of the historical land of Palestine, from the [Jordan] River to the
[Mediterranean] Sea. Therefore, this [program] is an affirmation of the
principles of Hamas, that it wants everything."
Mahmoud al-Zahar, another Hamas leader, also emphasized that the new political program does not mean that his group has changed its position toward Israel:
"Most importantly, we did not recognize the Israeli
entity. Our acceptance to establish a Palestinian state on the 1967
borders does not mean that we recognize the [Israeli] enemy or give up
Palestine."
Hamas did not carry out the October 7 massacre because Jews were
living in settlements in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. The Jews who were
butchered on that day lived inside Israel, near the border with the Gaza
Strip. Israel, it should be noted, withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip
in 2005.
Hamas launched its attack on Israel because it does not see a
difference between a Jew living in a West Bank settlement and a Jew
living in a city inside Israel.
For Hamas and its followers, all Jews are "settlers" and
"colonialists," regardless of their geographical location. Hamas
launched the attack as part of its effort to slaughter Jews and
obliterate Israel.
To be fair, both the present Iranian regime and Hamas have made their
intentions clear. Iran, since its 1979 Islamic revolution, has vowed
"Death to Israel" and "Death to America." Why would anyone think they do
not mean it? Hamas has boasted
of its intention to commit atrocities against Jews. These two regimes
have not changed and will never change. It is time for the international
community to wake up and realize that Iran and its Palestinian proxy
terrorists are as determined as ever to wipe Israel -- and America --
off the map.
Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Mashaal, Saleh
Arouri, and Khalil al-Hayya, living safely in five-star hotels in Qatar
and Lebanon, actually invited reporters to document them during the
special prayer they held to thank God for the massacre of Jews. These
bogus leaders also evidently do not give a damn about the thousands of
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who have lost their lives, homes and
loved-ones as a result of Hamas's thirst for Jewish blood.
Those who continue to defend Iran and Hamas are complicit in their
campaign of genocide against Jews. Such a defense is an outrage not only
to the Jews, but also to the many Palestinians who being used as human
shields and cannon fodder to satisfy the blood-lust of Hamas leaders and
allow them to maintain their residences in the five-star hotels of
Qatar, Turkey and Lebanon. It is also an outrage to the millions of
Iranians being held as virtual prisoners in their own country, while
their leaders sit comfortable and untouched, watching everyone else pick
each other off, while they collect more than $60 billion from violating
US sanctions -- as the Biden administration looked the other way --
that enabled them to prosecute this war.
Just when you think it can't get worse. A Hamas terrorist admits their true motive for kidnapping women and children — rape. pic.twitter.com/tk8BgfG1R9
The Qur’an teaches that Infidel women can be lawfully taken for
sexual use (cf. its allowance for a man to take “captives of the right
hand,” 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30). The Qur’an says that a man may
have sex with his wives and with these slave girls: “The believers must
win through, those who humble themselves in their prayers; who avoid
vain talk; who are active in deeds of charity; who abstain from sex,
except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or the captives
whom their right hands possess, for in their case they are free from
blame.” (Qur’an 23:1-6)
The rape of captive women is also sanctioned in Islamic tradition:
Abu Sirma said to Abu Sa’id al Khadri (Allah he pleased
with him): 0 Abu Sa’id, did you hear Allah’s Messenger (may peace be
upon him) mentioning al-’azl? He said: Yes, and added: We went out with
Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to the
Bi’l-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired
them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the
same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual
intercourse with them but by observing ‘azl (Withdrawing the male
sexual organ before emission of semen to avoid conception). But we said:
We are doing an act whereas Allah’s Messenger is amongst us; why not
ask him? So we asked Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him), and he
said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to
be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born. (Sahih Muslim 3371)
It is also in Islamic law: “When a child or a woman is taken captive,
they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous
marriage is immediately annulled.” (Umdat al-Salik O9.13)
The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in
May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that meant Muslims
would take slaves. In a subsequent interview he elaborated:
Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels. Spoils,
slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and
infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over
countries. This is agreed to by all scholars—there is no disagreement on
this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue
of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed
among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so
on.
When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold
slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name milk al-yamin,
“that which your right hands possess” [Koran 4:24]. This is a verse
from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated.
The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market,
look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but)
she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman,
nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this
point—there is no disagreement from any of them. […] When I want a sex
slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase
her.
Around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in
favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women,
emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the
parameters of Islamic morality.
A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex
slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam
permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth. I brought up
[this man’s] situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a
question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and
what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex
slaves?”
The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim
nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the
religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of
war.”
“Is this forbidden by Islam?” I asked.
“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the
contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The
free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But
the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from
the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the
sex slave does not—she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and
that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”
In January 2016, a female al-Azhar professor stated that Allah allowed Muslims to rape non-Muslim women in order to humiliate them.
"Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map." — Major General Hossein Salami, now commander-in-chief, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, MEMRI, February 4, 2019.
"Look, it's not even just
this $6 billion, which clearly is going to further enrich Iran. It's
closer to $60 billion. If you look at what the Biden administration has
done to help this Islamic terrorist regime in Iran by [stopping
enforcement of] sanctions, by lifting restrictions, by allowing Iranian
oil to increase by 650% over the last year from 400,000 barrels of oil a
day to 3 million barrels of oil a day – all of this has strengthened"
the Iranian regime. — Former US Director of National Intelligence John
Ratcliffe, Fox News, October 9, 2023.
Iran provides roughly $100 million a year to Palestinian
terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and
$700 million a year to Hezbollah.
Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, meanwhile, has already announced
that his country will use the new $6 billion "wherever we need it."
"Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map." —
Major General Hossein Salami, now commander-in-chief, Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, MEMRI, February 4, 2019.
So far, the Biden administration, in a welcome about-face, has
been superb about promising to help Israel defend itself. It is to be
hoped that this policy will continue, in Ukraine as well.
Sadly, however, to the Biden administration, the glaringly central role of Iran, without which Hamas would be able to do nothing, remains nowhere in sight.
Iran provides roughly $100 million a year to Palestinian
terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and
$700 million a year to Hezbollah. Pictured: Iran's "Supreme Leader"
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center)
and Musa Abu Marzouk (left) in Tehran on February 1, 2009. (Photo by AFP
via Getty Images)
The Biden administration, despite knowing that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the largest funder of the terror group Hamas, nevertheless decided to relax sanctions on Iranian oil exports. In 2020, Iran's economy had a reported trade deficit of $3.45 billion; by 2023, according to former US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe:
"Look, it's not even just this $6 billion, which clearly
is going to further enrich Iran. It's closer to $60 billion. If you look
at what the Biden administration has done to help this Islamic
terrorist regime in Iran by [stopping enforcement of] sanctions, by
lifting restrictions, by allowing Iranian oil to increase by 650% over
the last year from 400,000 barrels of oil a day to 3 million barrels of
oil a day – all of this has strengthened [the Iranian regime]"
Just weeks after the US gave
Iran's ruling clerics a fungible $6 billion line-of-credit as an
effective ransom for hostages, the Iran-backed Hamas on October 7
launched a massive attack on Israel, killing more than 1,300 Israelis,
mostly civilians, and wounded thousands more. Iran's leadership and
their Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah have been praising Hamas's terrorist attack on Israel.
Iran provides
roughly $100 million a year to Palestinian terrorist organizations such
as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and $700 million a year to
Hezbollah. Thanks to the Biden administration, the sudden influx of billions
of dollars into the regime's treasury will help the regime to provide
more funds, arms and rockets to its terrorist proxies, including
Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, meanwhile, has already announced that his country will use the new $6 billion "wherever we need it."
This has caused outrage in the US House of Representatives and Senate. Senator Marsha Blackburn said in a statement:
"Just weeks ago, the Biden administration handed over $6
billion to Iran, and today, innocent Israelis were murdered by
Iran-backed terrorists. We must continue to support our strongest ally
in the Middle East and their right to defend themselves against these
unprovoked, horrific attacks."
"This is exactly why so many Americans and Israelis were
disgusted to see President Biden give the Iranian regime $6 billion last
month. Every dollar given to Iran funds terrorism in the Ayatollah's
quest to destroy Israel. Iran is behind today's invasion and everyone
must say that as we stand with our Israeli allies."
Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi, a former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces' Gaza Division, warned
on July 24, 2023: "For the last year and a half, Iran stated clearly
that its main strategy is to make the Samaria region another Gaza." The
Iranians, he added
, are "pouring money and smuggling weapons into the region. They are
supporting Hamas and the PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] and other
factions within the Palestinian Authority."
As the Iranian regime has been sponsoring, funding and arming terror groups on Israel's borders, the Biden Administration has been carefully looking the other way.
Iran's regime, since its Islamic Revolution of 1979, has repeatedly made its policy towards Israel clear: it wants Israel to be wiped off the map. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who enjoys the final say in all of Iran's domestic and foreign policies, proclaimed to the youths of Iran that they will soon witness the demise of both Israel and American civilization. This announcement was confirmed on Khamenei's official website:
"You young people should be assured that you will witness
the demise of the enemies of humanity, meaning the degenerate American
civilization, and the demise of Israel."
The current commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Major General Hossein Salami, also made the strategy of the Iranian government vehemently clear:
"Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global
political map. And, it seems that, considering the evil that Israel is
doing, it is bringing itself closer to that."
As a tirade Khamenei posted on Twitter straightforwardly said: "the Zionist regime will perish in the not so far future."
So far, the Biden administration, in a welcome about-face, has been
superb about promising to help Israel defend itself. It is to be hoped
that this policy will continue, in Ukraine as well.
Sadly, however, to the Biden administration, the glaringly central role of Iran, without which Hamas would be able to do nothing, remains nowhere in sight.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and
advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of
Harvard International Review, and president of the International
American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
'I told my family that we would not surrender, that it would be better to die than be a prisoner in Gaza'
JERUSALEM, Israel - Incredible
stories of survival and bravery are surfacing in Israel, one week after
Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack that left more than 1,300 people dead
and a further 120 people, including U.S. citizens missing, most likely
being held hostage in the Gaza Strip.
From the
forest where thousands of people had gathered for a music festival to
the agricultural communities that dot Israel’s border with Gaza, there
are hundreds, if not thousands of Israelis,
who are beginning to share the incredible stories of how they escaped
the clutches of certain death at the hands of well-armed and ruthless
Palestinian terrorists.
Noa Ben Artzi, 25
Noa
Ben Artzi, 25, was with her friends at the Nova Music Festival on
Kibbutz Re’im in Southern Israel on Saturday when she started hearing
rocket fire overhead.
Noa
Ben Artzi, 25, was with her friends at the Nova Music Festival on
Kibbutz Re’im on Saturday and is a survivor of the Hamas attack.(Noa Ben Artzi)
"I
was in my tent and thought it was fireworks, but when I went outside, I
saw chaos, hundreds of people were running towards me, to the parking
lot behind me," she recalled to Fox News Digital on Friday. "We started
gathering our things and headed towards the car."
But the group,
who included Ben Artzi’s best friend, Norelle, did not make it much
past the parking area, because the traffic had come to a standstill.
Jumping out of their cars, they ran for cover in a nearby bomb shelter, a
small concrete structure with one entrance and no windows, which is
used for protection in open spaces.
"At first, we were near the
entrance, but then around 25 or 30 people crammed into this tiny space
and people at the back were starting to suffocate," Ben Artzi said. She
agreed to switch places with people further back, and when one of her
friends started having a panic attack, Noa suggested they sit down on
the floor, where there was more air. When another woman also began
hyperventilating, Noa suggested she join them, too.
"I hugged her
and asked her name, she said it was Michele," Ben Artzi recounted. "We
sat like that for about 25 minutes, and the next thing I heard was
people saying, ‘They’re coming, they’re coming.’"
Noa Ben Artzi and Michele, another survivor, in the hospital.(Noa Ben Artzi)
Ben
Artzi does not remember what happened next only that shots rang out,
and a grenade was thrown into the shelter. She woke up to find herself
buried under a mass of lifeless bodies.
"At
that point, I was on my back with three or four bodies on top of me.
One of the bodies, lying across my stomach, was really heavy, his head
was on my throat," she said. "My head was on someone else’s chest, and
then I realized that it was Michele – she was still alive."
Over the next three hours, the two women lay together in the dark with dead bodies pinning them down as the Hamas terrorists
continued firing rounds of ammunition into the shelter, throwing in
grenades, and even lighting a fire outside. As smoke poured inside, the
new friends whispered to one another to boost morale.
Then they
heard Hebrew voices outside and water being thrown onto the fire. The
flashlight of a police officer shone inside the shelter, and Ben Artzi
tried to draw attention but was too far under the bodies.
Noa Ben Artzi in the hospital.(Noa Ben Artzi)
"The
police officer kept going in and out, because there was no air in
there, it was filled with smoke," she said. "I tried to move the bodies,
but every time my hand went inside them because parts of them were
blown away."
Finally, police officers found Ben Artzi, lifted the dead bodies off her, and dragged her outside.
"I couldn’t stand because there was no blood circulation in my legs, and I could not breathe because of the smoke," she said.
"I
found out later that Michele had been shot in the back, but we did not
realize it while were there. Thank God, she is still alive," said Artzi.
"It’s a total miracle."
She was notified late on Friday, however, that her best friend, Norelle, had been found among the dead.
Yonatan Ben Reim, 56
When
Yonatan Ben Reim heard the Iron Dome rocket defense system spring into
action near his home on Saturday morning, he thought something did not
sound right.
"It was shooting like a machine gun, because there
were so many rockets," Ben Reim, a retired police officer who lives in
the community of Prigan near the Gaza border,
said. "I told my son, Yuval, ‘Listen, if they are shooting like this
into the sky, then they don’t want us to look at the ground.’"
A
few minutes later, Ben Reim heard gunshots, and something did not feel
right. "I told Yuval, ‘Listen what we are hearing are not Israeli guns,
they are Arab guns,’" he recounted to Fox News Digital. "I told Yuval to
gather everyone into the bomb shelter, and I waited in the living
room."
Yonatan Ben Reim, 56, a survivor of the Hamas attack, pictured standing with his family, wearing sunglasses.(Yonatan Ben Reim)
A
little while later, Ben Reim heard people outside speaking Arabic.
Aiming his revolver at them, he started firing. Then, he said, "All hell
broke loose . . . it was like a Hollywood movie."
"There were
eight terrorists outside, and I just ran for the shelter and closed the
door just as they entered my house," he said. "They were calling out in
Arabic, "Put your hands up, it’s the police."
Ben
Reim recounted how the terrorists moved from room to room, throwing
grenades and firing from AK47 rifles. He handed Yuval, 22, another
handgun and told him to stand by the window while he covered the door.
"We
could not seal it up perfectly, and they started shooting at us through
the window. We shot back at them with 150 rounds and then started
praying," he said.
This
image from video provided by South First Responders shows charred and
damaged cars along a desert road after an attack by Hamas terrorists at
the Tribe of Nova Trance music festival near Kibbutz Re'im in southern
Israel on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (South First Responders via AP)
The
family, Ben Reim, Yuval, his wife, his other two sons, and a young
daughter stayed inside the shelter for more than two hours while the
terrorists went through his neighbors' homes trying to convince the
residents to show themselves, threatening to burn down the houses and
shooting through the windows.
"I told my family that we would
not surrender, that it would be better to die than be a prisoner in
Gaza," said Ben Reim, who eventually managed to contact the local
civilian security force, who arrived and confronted the terrorists,
taking them out. Two members of that civilian force were killed in the
gunfight.
Ben Reim said that he acted like a robot throughout the ordeal, while the rest of his family quietly followed his directions.
"We all spoke in whispers and were very calm, even though we did not think that we would get out alive," he said.
Yonit Kedar, 42
Yonit Kedar, 42, said that she is still in shock that she managed to survive the attack at the Nova Festival.
Yonit Kedar, 42, is a survivor of the Hamas attack at the Nova Festival.(Yonit Kedar)
"I
had no idea that we had escaped a massacre until later that evening,"
she told Fox News Digital. "Even when I was in the car driving and saw
people running through the fields, I did not realize that we were
running for our lives."
The
site of hundreds of partygoers, some running barefoot, is something
that will stay with her for a long time, said Kedar. "My grandmother is a
Holocaust survivor, so it was really triggering, but I am glad that I
did not see anything worse than that."
In fact, Kedar’s story is
borderline surreal. The 42-year-old mother of two said she had no idea
that terrorists had infiltrated into Israel, even as she and her friends
fled the party as rockets flew overhead.
"My
story is quite calm and collected," she recounted. "I have two young
children, and I could not see any possibility of me not getting home.
That did not even compute in my mind."
Kedar describes how she
and her friends, also mothers of young children, were the first to pack
up their belongings and leave the festival, but after becoming stuck in a
line of cars, they jumped out and hid under a bridge as the rocket fire
continued.
"We
did not see or hear the gunshots. We were sure that the only danger was
coming from the sky," she recounted. "We did not know that the traffic
jam was caused by the fact there were terrorists shooting people dead in
their cars."
While Kedar’s group was hiding under the bridge,
the terrorists unwittingly passed them. When she and her friends ran
back to their car, where they were told to drive eastward, over the
nearby fields.
"My car is not a jeep or even a 4x4. It is not
meant to go over fields, but I just kept on driving, driving, driving
and keeping my head forward," she said.
It was then that she began to hear the gunshots.
"We
were surrounded by people on foot, and we told them to get in the car,"
she said, describing how a group of 20-year-olds just jumped inside.
"They were panting and screaming. Many people were on drugs or
psychedelics, and it was just horrific hearing them cry."
At
one point, Kedar said, she was driving with the doors open and people
were just jumping in and out. Eventually, she arrived at a road, and out
of nowhere, she said, there was a soldier driving with his tires blown
out. He told them to head to a nearby military base.
With
eight people now inside her car, Kedar made for the base, even as
gunshots rained down behind her. She stayed on the base for a few hours
and then headed back home to Tel Aviv. It was only in the evening that
she realized the extent of what had happened in southern Israel last
Saturday.
"I just really can’t believe that we survived," Kedar said.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The above stories have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Ruth Marks Eglash is a veteran journalist based in Jerusalem, Israel. She reports and covers the Middle East and Europe. Originally from the U.K, she has also freelanced for numerous news outlets. Ruth can be followed on Twitter @reglash
Targeted leader had been arrested by Israel in 2005 for kidnapping and murder but was released six years later in a prisoner swap.
Israel announced Saturday it had
killed a top Hamas militant it said was behind last week’s terror
massacre as forces amassed near Gaza awaiting orders for a possible
ground invasion.
The Israeli Air Force said it used a drone to kill Ali Qadhi, a
commander in the Najaba force of Hamas, after obtaining intelligence
from the Shin Bet security agency.
"Ali Qadhi led the inhumane, barbaric October 7 massacre of civilians
in Israel," Israel Defense Forces announced. "We just eliminated him.
All Hamas terrorists will meet the same fate."
Qadhi had been arrested by Israel in 2005 for the kidnapping and
murder of civilians but was released six years later in a prisoner
swap.
Israel announced it had also killed Hamas Air Force chief Abu Merad.
Heightened concerns follow an extremist’s fatal stabbing of a teacher at a school on Friday.
France elevated to a higher terror
alert Saturday and evacuated the iconic The Louvre Museum in Paris —
home to the Mona Lisa painting — as new threats emerged in the aftermath
of a known extremist’s fatal stabbing of a teacher at a school.
The museum said it had emptied the building and closed for the day
after receiving a written warning, but it reported no injuries or
incidents. Police were seen sweeping the building as tourists streamed
out.
France raised its terror threat alert level and deployed 7,000 troops
after Friday's school attack north of Paris. Authorities and witnesses
alleged the suspect shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before killing the teacher.
The poll shows that about two-thirds of Republicans think Biden is guilty of crimes related to his son's business activity.
Investigations into Hunter Biden's
business dealings have led to ethical concerns about President Joe
Biden, according to an AP-NORC poll.
According to the poll,
35% of U.S. adults believe that President Biden has done something
illegal, while 33% believe he has acted unethically, but not illegally.
House Republicans have launched an impeachment inquiry into the
president, alleging that he was involved with his son's overseas
business dealings and used his position to enrich his family.
The poll shows that about two-thirds of Republicans think Biden is
guilty of crimes regarding his son's dealings, while 8% of Democrats and
38% of independents agree.
Among Democrats polled, 58% believe President Biden did nothing wrong.
Earlier this year, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) accused
Biden of abusing his power as vice president by allowing his son to
travel aboard Air Force Two to help score foreign business deals and has
demanded that the National Archives turn over all flight records from
such trips.
"The coordination between the Biden shady business schemes and the government — everything was organized," Comer stated on an episode of "The Great America Show with Lou Dobbs". "This is very organized criminal activity."
According to the AP, two of the main issues Luxon ran on during his campaign were cracking down on crime and cutting taxes for the middle class.
Conservative former businessman
Christopher Luxon will be the next prime minister of New Zealand,
according to reports Saturday of him decisively winning the election.
The makeup of Luxon’s government is unknown at the moment due to ballots still being counted, according to The Associated Press.
For the last six years, New Zealand had been ruled by progressive leadership, led most of that time by Jacinda Ardern.
Ardern had stepped down as prime minister at the start of this year,
saying that she didn't have “enough in the tank” to continue the job.
She was succeeded by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, who was in the
role for nine months. Hipkins told his supporters late Saturday he had
called Luxon to concede.
At his victory event in Auckland, New Zealand, Luxon said that he was
thrilled to start his new job. “You have reached for hope and you have
voted for change,” he said onstage.
According to the AP, two of the main issues Luxon ran on during his campaign were cracking down on crime and cutting taxes for the middle class.
After the Hamas atrocities, experts scurried to explain why it had
embraced “ISIS tactics”. Many saw the attacks purely as a way of
sabotaging Israel’s talks with Saudi Arabia. Others argued that Hamas
had tried for a small attack that escalated when Israel failed to
promptly respond. Some express bafflement at what Hamas could have hoped
to gain from such an attack.
The experts as usual are wrong because they don’t understand Hamas.
And their ignorance stems from their inability to grasp Islamic
terrorism because they don’t understand Islam.
Hamas, like the PLO and other Islamic terrorist groups, had spent
much of its existence promising to do exactly what it tried to do,
invade Israel, and seize and occupy its territory, taking Jewish
villages and towns by stages over the years until one day besieging
Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Authority, funded by American taxpayers, still airs Arafat’s old speeches in which he calls for
“millions of martyrs marching to Jerusalem”. Americans and Israelis
refused to take such rhetoric seriously. The cost was over 1,200 lives
when Hamas tried to carry it out.
In operational terms, Hamas transitioned from a terrorist
organization to a guerrilla force like ISIS or Hezbollah. Israel had
been conditioned to expect small hit and run raids. It was not expecting
an actual invasion. A hit and run raid with this many Jihadists makes
no sense.
This wasn’t a hit and run raid.
Israeli military leaders are now saying that Hamas had not come just
to attack, but to occupy and take over the Jewish communities that it
invaded. It brought heavy firepower and some of its best trained
Jihadists to not just attack, but to hold, fortify and annex those
areas.
What the world witnessed was mostly the first stage of a three stage
plan. In the second stage, Hamas Jihadists would have secured the
captured communities while in the third stage, Hamas civilians,
especially women and children, would have been brought in to occupy
them. The Israeli military would have had to choose between firing on
enemy civilians crossing the border or trying to fight Hamas once it was
operating from behind its own human shields.
The captured villages would have been functionally annexed. Even if
Israel had recaptured them, it would then have to expel the Muslim
civilians now living inside them. Human rights groups and international
pressure might have prevented Israel from taking such a step.
Fortunately Hamas never reached the third stage of its plan. Israel
managed to destroy the invaders before they were able to fortify
themselves and complete the second stage.
But there is every reason to think that Hamas or other Islamic jihadists will try it again.
The Hamas attacks were predictable when viewed in the context of
Israel’s history and of the tactics of Islamic groups like ISIS, the
Taliban, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al Qaeda and ISIS affiliates in Mali,
Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen, to name just a few.
Terrorism is only the first stage of Islamic warfare. Once they have
the numbers and the firepower, Islamists transition to guerrilla
warfare, seizing and holding territory that they then expand outward
from, killing and driving away non-Muslims and unaffiliated Muslims.
The Hamas attacks followed that same strategy. Even the vicious
cruelty, the rapes, the beheadings, the torture and the dead children,
are part of the standard Islamic playbook. Beyond gratifying their
followers and gaining new recruits, atrocities are used to drive away
the non-Muslim populations so that Muslim populations can be brought in
to replace them. .
Terror was used to depopulate Kashmir of Hindus. The Islamic crimes
included raping and sawing a Hindu teacher in half while she was still
alive. ISIS employed similar tactics as do the Islamic Jihadis operating
in Africa. Rape and the murder of children are used to panic
non-Muslims into fleeing and leaving the area to be colonized and
occupied by Muslims.
Muslims had used these same tactics against Jews before the State of
Israel was reborn. During the Hebron Massacre in 1929, Muslims tortured,
killed and mutilated women and children to destroy the Jewish community
in the historic city. During Israel’s War of Independence, Muslim
forces, similar to those deployed by Hamas, tried to overrun Jewish
communities and butcher their inhabitants. The difference is that the
typical ‘kibbutz’ back then was heavily fortified and its residents were
able to hold out even against superior numbers.
While some of the ‘kibbutzim’ targeted by Hamash held out this time
around, others were unprepared for an attack of this kind. Their limited
security forces were overwhelmed by superior manpower once the Hamas
terrorists were able to get past their security barriers. What would not
have worked against a kibbutz in 1948 has succeeded tragically well in
2023.
What went wrong in Israel was not just an intelligence failure, but a conceptual failure.
Hamas views itself as a successor to the Arab Muslim forces that had
attacked Jews in the 20’s and 30s, not to mention the 40s, using these
same tactics. Its jihadist force is known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Brigades after a Muslim cleric who had tried to conduct his holy wars in
Syria and Libya, before coming to Israel where his ‘Black Hand’
targeted Jewish communities.
Israel, like America, treated the actions of terrorists as relevant,
but their ideological worldview as irrelevant, even though the only way
to predict their actions is by understanding what they believe. This
schizophrenic approach to terrorism is necessary to avoid dealing with
the Islamic beliefs that motivate the Jihadists to do what they do.
Every time government officials around the world claim that the
terrorists have nothing to do with Islam, they are blinding themselves.
The false notions that there are “moderate” and “extremist” Islamic
terrorists or that the various terrorist groups are just reacting to
something we did, rather than advancing their beliefs, has made it
impossible for nations to accurately predict future Islamic attacks.
Modern counterterrorism is reactive, training on what the terrorists
are doing now, and learning to prevent it, with no ability to anticipate
when the terrorists change their tactics, as Al Qaeda did when it
switched from centrally planned long-range attacks to ‘lone wolf’
attacks locally. These transformations can only be anticipated by
understanding the purpose of Islamic warfare.
The Jihad is a colonial settler project to subjugate the world under Islamic law. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar said last year
that “we are not talking about liberating our land alone… the entire
510 million square kilometers of Planet Earth will come under [a system]
where there is no injustice, no oppression, no treachery, no Zionism,
no treacherous Christianity.” Seizing Israel is just another stage
toward seizing all 510 million kilometers.
Experts fail to comprehend Islamic terrorism because rather than
understanding how Jihadists think, they project their own tendency
toward unnecessary geopolitical complexity onto them. Unable to admit
that the only way to meet ruthless armed force is with ruthless armed
force, they overthink everything and assume that Islamic terrorists want
us to ‘react to them’.
Islamic terrorists cannot be trusted when it comes to negotiations,
but they should be taken at their word when they describe what their
ultimate goals are. Hamas has been telling us all along what its goals
are. Over the last 5 years, it proposed a ‘March of Return’, urged
Gazans to cut through the border fence and promised that they would
conquer Israel and seize Jerusalem.
The failure to take Hamas at its word about its intentions is what led to this nightmare.
Israel’s political and military leadership needs to fundamentally
reorient its thinking. Hamas partially succeeded in its invasion. That
means that if left to control Gaza, it will do it again. The success it
achieved will spur a wave of recruits and money. Already the propaganda
images have allowed Hamas to temporarily eclipse ISIS as the leading
jihadist organization in the world.
Hamas has always made its intentions clear. It is out to mobilize all
of Israel’s Arab Muslim population and those of the surrounding
countries to provide it with money and manpower to attack, invade and
destroy Israel. After long years of shelling, it launched a first major
invasion to depopulate and then seize Jewish communities within range of
the Gaza border.
Some Jewish communities have now been depopulated. While some
residents will rebuild, others will leave. Hamas is celebrating such
departures as a validation of its strategy that with enough terror all
the Jews of Israel will leave the land. And the Muslims will take over.
Hamas leaders gambled that hiding behind civilians would allow them
to survive any Israeli retaliation. After enough bombs have been dropped
on empty buildings and the media accuses Israel of devastating Gaza and
killing civilians, Biden will threaten to cut off support. Previous
Israeli retaliations have consistently played out this way and this one
may too unless a united Israel is willing to defy the Biden
administration and finish the job. Otherwise Israel should anticipate
that Hamas will rebuild bigger and stronger than ever with more wealth
and a flood of new recruits motivated by tangible evidence of what
horrors they can accomplish. The hostages will be traded for terrorists
once family members level enough pressure on the government. And Hamas
will resume planning for another invasion. And this one may succeed.
The experts will go on getting it wrong because they don’t understand
Islam. And without understanding an enemy’s worldview and beliefs,
predicting their actions is very difficult.
Intelligence failures are rooted in a materialistic reading of the
enemy. Israel was nearly destroyed 50 years ago during the surprise
attack of the Yom Kippur War because its intelligence head was convinced
that the timing made no tactical sense. And he was right. But the
Egyptian invaders prioritized attacking on the holiest day in the Jewish
calendar.
The Yom Kippur War timetable may have made no secular strategic
sense, but it made sense to those who understand that the purpose of
Islamic warfare is to assert the supremacy of Islam over all other
religions. A mandate embodied by the Islamic cry of, “Allahu Akbar”.
From a secular strategic perspective, the Hamas invasion baffles
experts, but scheduled on the day of Simchat Torah, the joyous
conclusion of the Jewish High Holy Days, it makes perfect sense. It was
not a terrorist attack, but an invasion meant to fulfill the Islamic
mission of reconquering Israel, driving out the Jews and colonizing
their towns and cities, killing most, taking captives for ransom, and
others as slaves, which is the entire purpose of Hamas.
And of every Islamic terrorist group operating in and around Israel.
The next time, Hamas will try to reach its third stage, to fortify,
occupy and annex communities within Israel. And then the enemy will no
longer be ‘out there’, but beginning its conquest of Israel, seeking to
link up with Arab Muslim towns and villages for the final campaign of
Jihad.
Unless Israel finishes Hamas now, it will be fighting Hamas deep inside the Jewish State.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is
an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and
Islamic terrorism.
