Thankfully the majority of the American people aren’t buying it. Support for Israel is at nearly an all time high. We can probably in part ‘thank’ ISIS for that. This morning we learned yet again of another ISIS beheading of an American citizen: Peter Kassig. What was his crime? He went to Syria to help feed the refugees of war. He even converted to Islam under captivity. But ISIS didn’t care. They wanted to kill another American to continue to teach the United States a lesson. That was made clear in a video of a man clad in black whose face was completely covered threatening to advance ISIS forces into America and do it here. That was accompanied by another video of mass beheading of Muslim captives.
It is interesting to note that these videos actually attract fighters to ISIS. One may wonder how a brutal system like this could attract anybody. There are many reason I suppose. Like the romantic image of the underdog fighting for a cause. But one cannot discount the religious motive of some of their recruits. That is the scariest motive of all.
Religious motivation is very powerful. People sacrifice their lives for it. That is how suicide bombers are recruited. They are dying for the sake of sanctifying God in the holy cause of righting the world for God.
How will the world be ‘righted’? It will be done by establishing a caliphate. A caliph is a successor to Mohamed that will rule – tasked with assuring Sharia (Islamic) law will be implemented and followed to the letter. Laws like cutting off the hands of a thief… or stoning women who cheat on their husbands. And other such niceties.
They view the non Muslim world as degenerate and worthy of destruction unless there are conversions to Islam. This is their ultimate goal. All is fair in pursuit of it. That is what makes them so tough to defeat. They don’t care if they die or how many innocent people they kill along the way.
Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Jihadists are no different. While their tactics have not been quite as brutal as ISIS (yet) that doesn’t mean they don’t have the same goals. (Although the brutality has not quite matched ISIS, it has still been petty brutal. Ask the families of the 3 kidnapped and slaughtered Israeli teens that eventually precipitated last summer’s Gaza war.) This is why they will never recognize the state of Israel and will continue to fight it until they win back all of ‘Palestine’.
Fundementalist Muslim clerics preach it from their mosques all over the world. Increasingly so. They always have been. Israel must perish. Its existence is a theological impediment to Islam.
Does any sane person think that if Israel stops building settlements that these people will say, ‘OK, let’s make peace now and allow a Jewish state to exist in our midst’?! This does not mean I support new building in the settlements. I don’t. What it means is that the fundamentalist goals of destroying Israel will not change. Clerics will still be preaching it to the ever increasing population of devout Muslims.
And yet these clear facts seems lost on those who say that Israel should take chances for peace. It is one thing for the rabid Palestinian academic and his willing accomplices in the university to preach that to the gullible student that has no understanding of the issues. But for a US government to not realize the folly of pursuing peace under these conditions? That is mind boggling!
Even more inexplicable is that some of the nations of the world normally friendly to Israel have unilaterally recognized a Palestinian State! By doing this they have given succor to Israel’s enemies and fodder to ISIS. Bashing Israel is right up their alley because a strong Jewish State in their territory (the Middle East) is ultimately the biggest impediment of all to establishing a caliphate there. And then eventually marching on to the rest of the world toward that goal.