Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Business as usual

Islamic Jihad sent another teenage suicide bomber to strike outside a mall in Netanya, Israel yesterday killing 3 and injuring 90. This is the second successful suicide bombing inside Israel since the alleged “period of calm” negotiated by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Though Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack and PA Chairman Abbas issued a strong statement condemning the attack and promising to hunt down and arrest the perpetrators of Tuesday’s attack (which seems a little rich from the man who has been actively working to integrate terrorists into his security forces) it is the statement from a Hamas spokesman from Gaza, Mushir al-Masri that I find the most telling:
"This operation is a natural response to Israeli crimes," he said. "The Zionist enemy has desecrated the Koran inside the prisons, is refusing to release the prisoners and is constantly threatening the Aksa Mosque and Jerusalem."

Desecration of the Koran inside the prisons and a refusal to release prisoner’s sounds like the language of Gitmo though the alleged threats on Aksa Mosque and Jerusalem personalize this theme. Why a Jewish state would threaten Jerusalem, the only holy city to the Jews is beyond my ken, and I have yet to reference down the alleged Israeli attacks against Aksa Mosque and Jerusalem but when dealing with the delusionary it serves no purpose to give much credence to which delusions are merely what passes for nuance on any given day. But what is telling is that you have a competing terrorist organization issuing statements of justifications for attacks carried out by a rival group. One can be forgiven for speculating that both groups are in co-hoots with each other and the real rational for Islamic Jihad not signing on to alleged “period of calm” resulted from a separate agreement with Hamas in which Hamas receives some much needed cover to re-group after having its leadership targeted heavily by the IDF prior to the negotiated “period of calm”. Islamic Jihad, unlike Hamas, is not simply a Palestinian homegrown Islamic terrorist organization but has a much wider operational base throughout the Middle East and the West. I suppose that is a fact that many in the West and Mid East wish not to take particular note if the goal is to separate Islamic terrorism from Palestinian Islamic terrorism.

This bombing coming so quickly on the heels of the London attacks should have played prominently on the West’s radar and news screens and yet there is an air of weariness and almost minimal coverage of this recent attack against Israeli civilians. Most of the coverage I have seen in newscasts and papers in Canada and abroad have focused on Palestinian Authority Chairman’s strong statement of condemnation rather than the attack itself, and the statement is treated as if the very words were gifted from on high. How quickly we forget that Arafat himself on occasion issued strong statements of condemnations from time to time. There is an editorial cartoon from the National Post taken from the time of the Passover Massacre that I pinned to my fridge that shows Arafat issuing an order to his security forces to arrest all the terrorists and in the next frame the forces are turning all their guns on each other.

If we continue to draw lines in the sand between attacks on Israel and attacks on ourselves in the West we fall into the trap set by the jihadists that is still preaching and practicing the age all philosophy of divide to conquer. The goal of the mother of all Arab terror groups, the PLO, has always been the destruction of the Jewish state to be replaced by an Islamic state. It does us no good not to remember that Al Qaeda makes common cause with Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, and Hamas. The war against the Islamofascists cannot be successfully fought on all fronts and theatres but Israel. If Israel falls, we all will, it becomes merely a matter of when, and not if.

I never thought that it was a particular sign of good fortune for a collasped Catholic to have a Star of David craved into my door with the immortal words “Kill the Jews” and the first few times I insisted on my landlord repairing the door but as soon as the wood fill and paint dried another Star of David would appear just as mysteriously as the last one on my door. After the third Star of David I stopped insisting that my landlord repair the door. It reminds me daily not only who my enemy is, but who my friends are as well.

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