DONATE: Please support Tikun Olam with a donation. This article and others like it cannot be found in much of the progressive media, let alone in the MSM. I break stories which are censored in Israel. I’m able to do this thanks to sources who entrust me with their confidence. You are the beneficiary. So please show your appreciation for this effort by giving a gift now.
Some people say terrorism is a dead-end. I say it’s a two-way street.
In the past week, Palestinian militants launched three attacks inside Israel, which killed 11 people including three police officers and two Ukrainian foreign workers. Two of the attackers were, according to the Israeli security services, Bedouin affiliated with ISIS. The third, and most deadly attack, in the ultra-Orthodox community of Bnai Brak, killed five people. This was the highest death toll from terror attacks since 2006
There have never been terror attacks inside Israel by ISIS. This is a new front in the terror war Israel faces. Even the Shin Bet, which prides itself on intercepting hundreds of such attacks before they happen, has been caught unawares. It doesn’t even list ISIS as a terror organization which it tracks. How are these militants tied to ISIS? How has the Shin Bet defined or identified such affiliation? Who recruited them and what means did they use? Did they receive instructions from anyone outside Israel?
Unlike most terror attacks against Israelis, these ISIS-associated individuals who perpetrated the first two shootings were Palestinian citizens of Israel. Israel has always viewed its Palestinian minority as a Fifth Column endangering from within the security of the “Jewish state.” It has regularly arrested and imprisoned Palestinian citizens (including MKs) with strong nationalist views. Nevertheless, Israeli Palestinians have, until the last Al Aqsa riots which led to pogroms against their communities, always maintained loyalty to the state. Such loyalty can no longer be taken for granted.
One of the attacks happened in Beersheva, just six days before a much-ballyhooed meeting, in the same city, of Arabs states with Israel and US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. Israel touted it as the latest manifestation of normalization of the “Jewish state;” accompanied by a parallel Arab abandonment of the Palestinian cause. The terror attack served as a pointed reminder that while the Arabs may want to forget Palestine, Palestinians will not go quietly. They have a nasty habit of reminding the world that they exist and refuse to accept abandonment.
The attacker in the most recent Tel Aviv incident was from Jenin. Though not affiliated with ISIS, his motivation was also Islamist in nature. In a picture, he stands smiling before the Dome of the Rock. Israeli reports indicate Hamarsheh was not a lone wolf:
Somebody transported him to central Israel and armed him with an M16 assault rifle. This time, it’s unlikely that the attack was a so-called lone wolf attack, carried out by individuals who are not affiliated with a terrorist organization.
Not only did someone drive him into Israel, he arrived in Bnai Brak on a motorcycle. These are complex logistical arrangements. An Israeli source indicated to me that the preliminary finding is that Islamic Jihad sponsored it. Hamarsheh earlier spent 20 months in prison for plotting with an Islamic Jihad operative to mount a suicide attack in Israel.
The Religio-Political Nexus
Until Israel began restricting religious worship rights at the Haram al-Sharif last year, much of the Palestinian resistance has been focused on political issues of power and control (of land, people and natural resources). But mass violence instigated by Israeli Border Police who repeatedly ransacked the Al Aqsa mosque and restricted physical access for worshippers to the holy site, led to nationwide sectarian violence with bands of Jewish vigilantes roaming the streets hunting for Palestinians. Religion has now become a key element in the Palestinian struggle for rights and justice.
Israel has attempted to ‘manage’ the security issues by bolstering police presence during Ramadan. As if a Muslim holy day is somehow the locus or motivator for Palestinian violence. As if every other day of the year is free of the rage which Palestinians express during the holy month. The anger and frustration of Palestinians cannot be confined to a day or a month in the year. It is every day of every year. Ramadan is but a smoldering ember that ignites all of that pent-up resentment.
Which Israeli security forces are now patrolling the Palestinian streets to suppress potential violence? The same ones last year who provoked the worst inter-communal violence in the history of the state: the hated Border Police. Who arrested scores of Israeli Palestinians suspected of ties to ISIS? The Shin Bet, tasked with the hopeless task of keeping its finger in the dike of Palestinian rage.
Israelis must be asking how three separate attackers, all of whom were known to the Shin Bet for their willingness to engage in acts of violence, evaded detection? How did its vaunted security apparatus, which has maintained relative “quiet” for over a decade, fail so badly? But rather than viewing this spate of violence through the security lens, it must be viewed through the lens of Palestinian mass suffering. No amount of Border Police or Shin Bet agents can constrain an entire population seething with rage. Attempting to do so is a fool’s errand.
Prime Minister Bennett is urging all Israelis with gun permits to carry their weapons with them at all times. As if putting a gun in the hands of every Israeli civilian will end the threat of violence. It makes it more likely that someone will kill someone else thinking they’re a terrorist. There have been many accounts of Israeli Jews attacking and even murdering Mizrahi Jews, African refugees, Israeli Jews (and another), and Israeli Bedouin, believing they are Palestinian terrorists. Now, with every Jew armed, they will find it easier to kill than merely beat someone to a pulp. Perhaps the worst irony is that Bennett is realizing the “dream” of Meir Kahane: “For every Jew a. 22!”
As for the blocking of Muslim worship imposed last year, imagine for a moment that you were a regular worshipper at your local church or synagogue. Suddenly and without warning or explanation, police surround your place of worship and block the entrance. Say, they use tear gas against worshippers inside the building, claiming they are being assaulted by them. Say they take axes and break their way into your sanctuary firing stun grenades and tear gas canisters among the worshippers. Imagine the local evangelical megachurch claims it owns your church property and plans to replace it with a satellite worship facility. Imagine the mayor of your town is the pastor of the megachurch, and preached sermons of hate against your church and religion; then gave the order for police to defile your holy space.
How would you and your co-religionists react if there was no recourse and all your protestations fell on deaf ears? Maybe you could control your anger for a month or a year. But after repeated hate and insult over years, you would harbor the same impulses as Palestinians. You’d take aim, either figuratively or literally, against figures of state violence who represent this repression.
Unfortunately, the answer to all these questions is “Yes,” for Israeli Jews. Their lives are more valuable, their blood redder. Israel is a Judeo-supremacist state which has raised the Jewish religion, as defined by its settler state theocracy, on high. Jewish is good. Jewish is supreme. Palestinian or Muslim is not only bad, but it is malevolent; an existential threat.
Given this reification of Judaism, how else would we expect Palestinians to respond than by mounting their own green crescent flag high from the battlements? If Israeli police can storm the Muslim holy places and defile them, and settlers can prepare for the day the Haram al-Sharif will be destroyed and replaced by a Third Temple, why would Palestinians not take up the call to defend their holy places?
In response to the terror attacks, Israeli Jewish thugs have gathered around the country shouting “Death to Arabs.” Their goal, if they articulate one, is to rid the country of “Arabs.” But if they could, how would they do it? Mass extermination? Trucking a million to the border and dumping them in Jordan? Hasn’t that been tried before? It didn’t go so well, either for the victims or the perpetrators, did it?
Israelis are angered that Palestinians in the attacker’s hometown, Jenin, celebrated his attack. This outrage presumably aims to portray Palestinians as animals lusting for Jewish blood while celebrating death. This is a very common trope among Israel’s apologists. But let’s put it another way: if you were an oppressed minority who watched helplessly for decades as your children, youth, and elderly were wantonly murdered, what emotion would you feel? How did the Jewish partisans feel when they blew up a German convoy? Of course, they felt pride and joy at striking a blow against the oppressor. Would I prefer that Palestinians not celebrate? Of course. Can I judge or denounce them for doing so? No. Unless I must denounce the partisans, which I cannot do.
It’s also another bit of hypocrisy to claim Palestinians are the instigators of violence. Where did these Palestinian militants learn the lessons of violence? Not from their religion or tradition. But from the Israeli oppressor. As H. Rap Brown said about violence during the American Civil Rights movement:
“I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary.”
No Palestinian could have put it better. Violence is the weapon of the colonizer to maintain control over the colonized. So it has been through countless colonials struggles (Algeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Congo, etc.). So it is in Palestine. When all the colonized know is violence from the colonizer, it becomes the former’s weapon of resistance.
Islamism in Regional Context
This conflict is playing out in the context of Islamist activism within many Middle Eastern societies (Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt). Despite state violence and suppression of political Islam, it has persisted in all these countries. As long as there is endemic corruption, autocracy, rampant repression, and economic deprivation, Islamism will be a potent alternative. It thrives on hopelessness and bleak horizons. As Steven Cook writes:
…There are ways in which regimes in the Middle East are actually helping Islamists. All the problems of Arab politics that made Islamists attractive in the first place still exist or are progressively worse in the resurgence of post-uprising authoritarianism. Economic opportunity remains limited, avenues for political expression are closed, leaders do not have an emotionally appealing vision for the future, and brutality is a hallmark of political control.
…As Islamists…around the Middle East are afforded fewer and fewer ways to express their grievances and articulate their worldviews, it provides an opening for extremists to fill the gap, leading inevitably to violence.
Nations which permitted Islamists to play a political role have enjoyed far more stability and peace. Nations which attempted to eradicate Islamism have not only failed, they have planted the seeds of their own eventual destruction.
If all this rings a bell in the Israeli context, it should. Israel, even before its founding, treated its Palestinian citizens with disdain or, at best, benign neglect. Their towns had no services, no budget. They were made to fend for themselves. There were no jobs, no education. The State also forbade them from constructing new housing. A young couple could not build a new house, let alone a new family.
Perhaps the worst blow for Palestinians is Israel’s refusal to negotiate a peace agreement that offers full national rights to them. There have not been such talks for a decade. No Israeli government in the past two decades has contemplated Palestinian statehood, let alone a single state for all its citizens. In what seems another historical era, the Arab world once offered Israel the Three Noes. Today Israel offers Palestinian one resounding No which shuts the door to their aspirations. In the face of such a dead end, who is surprised that this people turns to violence as its only means of protest and resistance? Who is surprised at the rise of Islamist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad who offer a powerful response to Israel’s brutality?
I used to warn against the injection of religion into political conflict. I argued that religion was a match that could ignite such disputes. If only, I wrote hopefully, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained political in nature, a compromise might be found. But add the zeal of religion and appeals to the Divine, and disputes become intractable.
But now, given how deeply religion is embedded in most of the countries of the Middle East, including Israel, it’s clear that religion informs every element of life. It is inseparable from politics. I may wish it were not. But this is not the US. Even the few democracies in the Middle East are not secular, as ours is. Whether religion is toxic or not is not the issue. Rather, integrating religion into politics in the least toxic way possible is.
Israel’s NIMBY Response to “Arab Crime”
Apart from Palestinian acts of terror against Israeli Jews. there has been a spate of murderous crime and violence inside Palestinian communities. It has shocked Israeli Jews out of their complacency. Not so much because they care about life in these places or their residents, but because it reflects badly on the state as a whole. Israeli Jews see their fellow Palestinian citizens as primitive and backward. They expect this sort of lawlessness and criminality. But they wish somehow it could be contained or cordoned off from them. That’s why the government has thrown a few million ($45-million to be exact) at the problem and allocated more police to ensure security. What it hasn’t done is treat Palestinians as equal partners, and their communities the same way they treat Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem. Until they do, Palestinian violence will reciprocate Israeli Jewish racism.
The Shin Bet has begun mass arrests in Palestinian villages within the Green Line. Such preventive detention has, until now not been used on Israeli citizens. These are arrests without charge under administrative detention regulations which permit the security apparatus to hold detainees for unlimited time without trial or access to an attorney.
Israel has also never destroyed the home of any Palestinian citizen (though it regularly destroys the homes of West Bank Palestinians who engage in terror attacks). Now, the government is proposing to destroy the homes of those Israeli citizens who committed this week’s attacks. By importing the cruelty and lawlessness of the Occupation into Israel itself, the security forces are erasing any distinction between Israel and the Occupied Territories. Once again proving it is an apartheid entity from the river to the sea, as Amnesty’s report showed.
“Israel has always viewed its Palestinian minority as a Fifth Column endangering from within the security of the “Jewish state.”
Yet two of the police officers murdered by these terrorists were Arabs, Yasan Falah, a Druze Border Patrolmen, ambushed while sitting with his partner, Shirel Aboukrat, 19-year-old, and Amir Khoury, 32, who died in Bnei Brak running to save Israeli lives.
Say their names, Richard.
Say, Yasan Falah, Shirel Aboukrat and Amir Khoury, and don’t glorify a terrorist by putting up his smiling face alongside the Dome of the Rock.
That hater was only 16 years old when he tried to buy a suicide vest online from Islamic Jihad (who swindled the stupid kid and turned him into the police).
Israel tried the young hater and gave him a light sentence.
Israel thought the milk of human kindness was inside the young terrorist, but Israel thought wrong.
Really Richard, what’s there to say about a serial terrorist who shoots and kills a Bnei Brak Jew pushing a two year old in a stroller?
Teach us love, compassion, and honor that we may heal the earth and heal each other. — Ojibwa prayer
you are either willfully ignorant or just another Zionist liar…we all know the Druze ( except the Druze from the occupied Golan Heights ) align themselves with the Zionist oppressors (hell, some of the young Druze men that I know have even taken on Hebrew names to suck up to/align themselves with the dominant group)…the other policeman that died and that you name was a Christian Palestinian/Arab and is possibly trusted more than a Muslim Palestinian/Arab by the thugs from the Zionist Police establishment…you talk of the milk of human kindness and quote a Ojibwa prayer all rather melodramatically mind you…go read this to all the Zionist murderers ( whom were never prosecuted ) of Palestinians since ’48 until today…go read this to all the settlers who destroy and vandalize property etc and terrorize the indigenous peoples of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem…go read this to all the prison and security guards that torture, mistreat and humiliate Palestinian prisoners ( imprisoned often on trumped up charges mind you) etc etc…the whole Zionist project and oh so many Zionists themselves are devoid of love, kindness, compassion and honor if you ask me ( unless amongst themselves to some extent only )
The Dutch, who’s East India Company invaded, enslaved and pillaged non-Whites from Batavia to New Amsterdam.
The Dutch, who volunteered by the tens of thousands to glorify the Third Reich.
The Dutch, who committed genocide against the Third World and her Holland’s Jewish citizens.
@ Stoney: What fraudulent whataboutism. I’m no more responsible for the genocide inflicted by the US government 100 years ago on Native Americans than Willem is responsible for the crimes of the Dutch East India Company centuries ago. And insinuating that he has no right to criticize Israel because of Dutch complicity in the Holocuast is simply arguing in bad faith.
By the way, you need to read my friend Mark Klempner’s book, The Heart Has Reasons, about five Christian Dutch who hid Jews and defied the Germans out of a devotion to their religious faith. It is a remarkable story which will, of course, land like a lead balloon in your deadened soul.
No more comments in this thread.
@ Shelly:
Don’t you dare EVER give me moral lessons or direct me to do anything. Not EVER!
So let’s give you a few lessons about Israeli Palestinians. Unlike your mistaken conception, they are not a monolith. In fact, thanks to Israel’s divide & conquer tactics, it has divided Palestinians into different ethnic groups. THere are Christians, Muslims, Druze, Bedouin, Circassian, etc. Druze are the “good Arabs.” Bedouin as well because many serve in the IDF (though in general they are as badly or worse treated than the other groups. The Muslims, of course, are the “bad Arabs.” This means that the Druze, Bedouin and to a lesser extent, the Christians serve in the security services including IDF, Border Police, etc.
Nor do many of those who do serve, do so out of a sense of patriotic duty. Rather, there are so few economic opportunities in their communities that a police job is considered a good one. So waxing rhapsodic about the sacrifice of Israeli Palestinians (or “Arabs” as you so insultingly call them) and their sacrifice to the nation is performative bullshit. All the victims, whether Palestinian, Ukrainian or Israeli were sacrifices on the altar of Israeli apartheid and a brutal thuggish regime and its 70 year reign of terror.
Don’t you dare ever accuse me of “glorifying terrorism.” Not EVER. Showing that there are two sets of terrorists and that one is responsible for creating the conditions under which the other engages in terrorism is NOT glorifying it. And if you don’t have enough, nuance, intelligence, or good faith to understand that, you don’t belong here.
When you talk about “hater” let’s also include the tens of thousands of IDF and Border POlice who’ve beaten, shot, maimed and killed Palestinians over the years. Let’s not, by any means forget their hate or the hate of a state which treats its non-Jewish citizens as barely human because they are not Jewish.
As for shooting someone pushing a 2 year old, not a word of sympathy for the thousands of Palestinians parents of 2 year-olds who’ve been murdered over the years, not to mention the murder of 2 year babies themselves by Israeli bullets and missiles. You’re hypocrisy and holier than thou attitude is sickening.
You are not long for this blog. Just give me a reason. no more comments in this thread.
“All the victims…were sacrifices on the altar of Israeli apartheid and a brutal thuggish regime and its 70 year reign of terror.”
The reign of terror began 100 years ago when Arab mobs began slaughtering innocent Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron and Tiberias.
Richard Silverstein doesn’t get to define terror. History does.
And lets put to rest your Twitter account lie that Israel ‘executed’ three terrorists. The truth is that the Islamic Jihad terror squad was armed to the teeth, shooting an IDF officer and wounding several soldiers.
https://www.ynetnews.com/category/3083
You can ban me, but the truth is always going to come back and bite you on the ass.
“He who loves the truth has many enemies”–Indian Proverb
@ Shelly: There is one rule about history: it doesn’t lie. But people do–like you.
Have there been massacres of Jews by Palestinians? Yes. Have there been massacres of Palestinians by Jews? In fact, there are so many pre-state Jewish massacres (of Palestinians) on this list I stopped counting after a while.
But more importantly, why were there massacres of Jews? Because they were colonists. Because they bought and sometimes stole land. Even when they bought land from owners far away, they displaced fedayeen working the land as tenants.
Some of the Jews treated the Palestinians well. Some treated them with disdain playing the colonial European masters role they arrogated to themselves.
That’s the real history. You distorted history. You told half the story. That’s the problem with hasabaroids like you. You tell the part of history which is most convenient and you ignore the rest.
I always enjoy reading the bubbeh mayses in Israeli media which regurgitate the lies disseminated by Israeli security services. So you think a bunch of lies told to a willing journalist are true? On what basis? In this circumstance, when there have been three terror attacks killing Jews, the security services need to prove their manhood. When they discover a group like the one executed the other day, they make an example of them both for the Israelis Jews and the Palestinians themselves. There have been numerous times when the security services executed Palestinian militants. This was one of them. I’ve documented many of them in these posts: https://www.richardsilverstein.com/page/2/?s=Execution.
I don’t like you. Let’s make that clear. But I don’t need to like someone for them to comment here. I do require that commenters who disagree with me argue in good faith and state facts and offer evidence. You’re a liar. You’re a cheap propagandist who preens over the smattering of history you know. You’re on the list. Give me a reason. No further comment in this thread.
[comment deleted: I explicitly told you no further comment in this thread. I’ll be charitable and assume you didn’t see this in my comment.
In fact, from now on do not post more than one comment in any thread. You and your hasbara colleagues produce quite enough content here as it is. One comment per thread is more than enough.]
Richard says:
“ An Israeli source indicated to me that the preliminary finding is that Islamic Jihad sponsored it”.
Oh, so this is just Iran settling scores with Israel, via her Palestinian proxy, IJ.
So these terror attacks have to do with Iran and Israel’s Cold War, and not about Palestinian rights.
Thanks. Got it.
And BTW, ISIS gives no thought whatsoever to Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights to self determination.
ISIS wants to create a borderless Caliphate where there are no Arab States or separate nationalities. No Israel. No Syria. No ‘Palestine from the river to the sea’, and no Palestinians, only one billion Muslims living life under strict Shar’ia law.
No surprise ISIS is an anathema to Palestinians.
@ Stoney: Whoa Nellie! Islamic Jihad sponsored the attack, so that means Iran itself was directly implicated? What are you smoking?
You “got” nothing. Why do you think Palestinians commit suicide on Israeli streets? Because of their allegiance to Iran? Because of their allegiance to ISIS? Of course not, the spark is their suffering under the Israeli boot heel. Without the apartheid regime there would be no hatred, certainly not enough to incite a man to get himself killed. Theirs is a desperate act of revenge for decades of misery inflicted on them by Israel. The fact that you deny or reject this makes you a hypocritical, cold-hearted propagandist. You have a axe to grind rather than see reality for what it is. Not to mention what you do is selling snake oil.
Your claims about ISIS are years out of date–showing that you spew a few slogans and hope that I’ll let them slip by. ISIS occupies no territory so it can’t create any state, let alone an Islamic Caliphate.
Not only is this wrong on its face. It’s Islamophobic. As if 1 billion Muslims would agree to live under such a Caliphate. As if ISIS has the power to force them to (and it would have to because few Muslims want anything to do with this cockamamie concept). YOu are treating ISIS as if represents all of Islam. That is Islamophobic. Don’t do that again here.
No more comments in this thread.
Hello!!
I mean this simply as an exchange of ideas.
Not to antagonize you or anything, but in fact ISIS has expanded on 3 different continents and they do control equipment, men and weapons in 24 document locations, with conducted 324 attacks last year. A UK weapons expert like Calibre Obscura, and other experts like the private intel firm organisation called Xtrak have documented everything from them. I suggest you pay a visit to their work.
In short, not only has ISIS not been defeated, they have grown and expanded in a variety of years in the last 2 years. Their expansion in non-levantine theater has given rise to three african affiliates that demonstrate trimester after trimester increased lethality, and their regeneration in the Iraqi-Syrian region (which is their center of gravity) has reached the stage where they are able to coordinate sufficiently to conduct prison-breaks (that enabled them their rise in Iraq in 2013) like what happened at Gweiran. The attacks in Israel indicate a further regeneration of their capabilities.
ISIS is the most powerful non-state on the face of this planet and constitutes a global security threat, and people mistake their intent or their seriounsess at their own peril. ISIS or other militant non-state actors will get their Caliphate simply because they are the ones dictating the fight and their (ineffective) opponents can only play catch up and have nothing to offer (nation-state societies have this foundational problem). ISIS should be seen as an armed syndicate that is fighting absolutely everyone on the planet, and when given the choice, they will choose to escalate the fight, always, so they will look for additional theaters to expand in order to escalate.
The best way to convince people to formulate/embrace views they would not normally have is to subject them to mass chaos that makes the narrative they have about reality untenable, I’m sure you understand this. It’s obvious Muslims will more and more disengage with the “civilized” (I use this term sarcastically) world that despises them and will take matter in their own hands, with less and less intent to cater to secular humanist values and with less and less respect for international world order, and you know, the “powers that be”. This process is what led to ISIS in the first place, and they were certainly able to convince many when they controlled 8 million people. Further victimization of Muslims by their own openly blasphemous and scoundrel “governments” and foreign govt sponsored mass killings ( China, India, and Russia) will fuel this process.
Because of what they have been subjected to, Palestinians are far more likely than everyone else to embrace ISIS or their way of seeing things and will do so more and more, and ISIS will have no shortage of “work” to offer them in return. The only thing ISIS has to do is to tell Palestinians the arabs who betrayed them are all apostates who are no different then the zionists who kill them. And frankly, arab rulers are making a point of publiclty demonstrating disinterest to Islamic beliefs and values at the very same time they are normalizing relation with Israel, so this ill makes ISIS even more believable. The “radicalization” of Palestinian militants will resemble closely the radicalization of Syrian rebels. The conflict militant Muslims have with their governments will fuel the conflict Palestinians are doomed to have with everyone who has agreed to seal their fate. I predict more and more arab rulers and religious “scholars” finding a knife or a bullet from Palestinian ISIS cells.
I understand your skepticism at this prediction so let me address it:
The reasons ISIS was not unable or unwilling to penetrate mainstream Palestinian discourse was 1. the deeply nationalistic nature of the palestinian struggle that relies on nation-state narratives (completely at odds with how militant Muslims see things), and 2. the hopes placed in non-Muslims helping palestinians, granting them a seat at the UN, etc, so Palestinians though using Islam as a weapon to fight would be counter-productive for these aims and were generally unreceptive to what ISIS was saying. These obstacles are gone or waning away.
I personally predicted, 2 years ago, when discussing with staunch warmongering zionists who thought that they were successfully fighting “radical Islam” by hurting palestinian farmers that they would soon have to deal with the real thing and that they were not ready for it. I predicted a rapid escalation would happen once ISIS would become involved in the palestinian struggle, and this process seems to be on the way. Palestinians slaying traitor heretics and unbelievers on sight to kill those they hate and get closer to God will prove far more fierce and unpredictable than Palestinians fighing for a homeland.
@ jcorendo: Whew, that’s a lot of comment!
I don’t want to get too deep in the weeds discussing ISIS. Suffice to say, that I’m much more downbeat on these sorts of Islamists. I don’t think they resonate among the Muslim world writ-large. Yes, their popularity and power may wax and wane. And I would never dismiss them entirely as Trump did when he said that ISIS had been “Defeated.” As long as there is hatred and oppression against Muslims, groups like ISIS will gain a foothold. But they likely never attain their previous level of power.
As for the Palestinians, I think you are very wrong about ISIS in relation to them. The Palestinian movement started as a seuclar nationalist one. Religion was tacked on later. So while religion is now a key part of Palestinian political identity, it can never rise to the level of fundamentalist zeal of an ISIS or al Qaeda. Neither of these groups is interested in national rights. Their goals are far broader. Palestinians are not interested in a global caliphate. They want personal and national rights denied them by Israel. So while ISIS will gain purchase among some Palestinians, it will not resonate in the way that Hamas or Islamic Jihad has.
And juxtaposed with these terror attacks is the meeting of the foreign ministers of Israel, the US, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt and the UAE at Sde Boker, itself a reaction to the challenge of Iran and its proxies.
‘Any donkey can knock down a barn, but it takes a man to build one.’
@ Mynah: These terror attacks show that no amount of celebratory meetings of Arab potentates and kleptocrats with Israeli officials can abrogate the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people. Israel thinks it can pull the wool over the eyes of the world by bragging about the Arabs who’ve made common cause with it. But that trick won’t work as long as Israel has its boot heel on the Palestinian neck.
Not to mention that this alleged alliance is skin deep. Once Iran is no longer the world’s bete noir, these Arab states will have little or no use for Israel. Unless of course Dubai stops being the refuge of choice for ex-Arab dictators overthrown by their people. IN that case, a gleaming penthouse overlooking the Mediterranean and Tel Aviv beaches might be a good second choice.
No more comments in this thread.
“…how long should Palestinians suffer under Israeli apartheid, if not genocide, before their resistance takes the form of violence?”
It IS, and always has been, GENOCIDE. Attempts to discuss and problem solve rationally is impossible, as humanity is, again, facing our ultimate predatory potential of mass murder, routinely triggered by pre-concious, instinctual, existential fear of vulnerability, the “territorial imperative” and “mobbing” (facilitated by ignorance, denial and projection). The apex predator species is out of cognitive control on a massive scale with WMDs and a degrading environment. International Organized Crime is in charge. The promise of an ethical “Light Among Nations” is sabotaged utterly by the aforementioned, predatory skullduggery. Although our existence here on Earth is miraculous, none of the miracles appear to be earmarked for saving Palestine, the planet, or israel from it’s desperate, murderous, self-righteous self. Overcompensating for it’s own ethnic genocide, it became the exclusive apex nation of apex human predators. In their billionaire yachts, spaceships and underground bunkers, they are not looking, or turning, back. Human intelligence is overrated.