ISLAM AND THE INFIDELS
By Mike Evans
On the morning of February 26, 1993, Yigal Carmon, then counter-terrorism adviser to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, warned the Pentagon that radical Islam was an imminent threat to America. At the end of his briefing, he was told by smirking critics that they did not consider a religion to be a threat to national security.
Later that morning Carmon flew on to New York, where, while having lunch, a huge explosion took place nearby: Islamic terrorists had attempted to blow up the World Trade Center, killing six people and wounding 1,000.
Last September 11, Islamic terrorists finished the job. No one wants to admit why Americans were attacked just by whom. But Osama bin Laden is only the vanguard of a religious hatred that originates in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and seeks to impose the will of radical Wahabi Islam throughout the world. The terrorist threat that bin Laden demonstrated on September 11 was just the opening salvo in the first world religious war of the 21st century.
An earlier campaign in the same war began in Israel in 1987, called the intifada. From mostly stone-throwing, this violence has escalated into the horrific suicide bombing that has come to characterize the so-called "al-Aksa intifada."
From scenes of Palestinians dancing on West Bank rooftops during Iraqi Scud attacks of the Gulf War, we are now witness to Palestinian mothers celebrating and handing out sweets upon hearing that their sons have blown themselves up killing innocent Israeli bus passengers. In this grotesque dance of death, Islamic zealots who are murderers are revered as religious martyrs.
On December 9, 1987, the Muslim Brotherhood met and issued a communique calling for the intensification of the Palestinian uprising. It was signed by representatives of the Islamic Resistance movement. Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's mentor, developed the theme: "There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except jihad." The goal was simply to export Ayatollah Khomeini's "Islamic revolution" via the Hamas movement, and thereby Islamicize the Palestinian national struggle. Just as Islam had defeated the strongly pro-Western shah of Iran and shamed America, and just as Islam had defeated the communists in Afghanistan and led to the collapse of the Russian empire, so would the "Zionist entity" be slowly bled to death -- and so would the Great Satan, America.
There were no expressions of outrage from leading Muslim clerics on September 12 -- a silence as deafening as that regarding Jews who are slaughtered weekly in Israel by the same type of Islamic terrorists. This same silence has greeted the deaths of Palestinians themselves, who were branded as collaborators and summarily executed for allegedly working for Israel. Just a couple of weeks ago, Ikhlas Yasin, 39, the mother of seven children, was shot and killed by executioners of Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the main square of Tulkarm. An intolerant, radical Islam is striving to become the vocabulary of everyday life, reshaping the language of politics, culture, and traditions and taking no prisoners.
WHY HAS America not succeeded in numerous attempts to implement a peace process between Israelis and Palestinians not in Madrid, not at Camp David, not in dozens of public and secret peace initiatives? The simple reason is that radical Islam does not negotiate with infidels; and if not with the Great Satan, then surely not with the Little Satan.
US President George W. Bush has stated that he found it "strangely coincidental" that every time the US attempted to move toward peace there was a massive terrorist attack in Israel. But there is nothing coincidental in such attacks, for they are aimed both at murdering Israelis and at the same time humiliating the Great Satan. The only thing American brokering has done is weaken its greatest ally in the Middle East and open the floodgates to an ever more aggressive Islamic terrorism. When you reward Islamic terrorists with political or economic concessions, they can only assume that you fear them and that crime pays.
The last thing that corrupt and shaky Arab dictators want is peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Their regimes are sustained by military power and they know they cannot justify having an army without an enemy. Without the Jews to blame for their poverty, illiteracy, and lack of democratic freedoms, their populations would turn on them, as did those of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Rev. Franklin Graham, who prayed at Bush's inauguration and at the September 14 memorial service in Washington, said in his book, The Name: "The United States is engaged in a war against terrorism. But this war has a unique twist for Americans. We are not fighting to stop Hitler or godless Communism...Those who have attacked America invoke their God's name, Allah."
Radical Islam has given birth to a weapon that truly cheapens human life: the suicide bomber. But this will be as nothing compared to the weapons of mass destruction under preparation in Iraq and other radical Islamist states; weapons whose targets may begin with Israel but ultimately are aimed at the world's greatest democracy.
The writer is an author who co-chairs with Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert a national campaign to mobilize Americans in support of Israel.
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