By RON JAGER—
As a longtime resident of Shaare Tiqva for the past 24 years, Shabbat Chol Hamoed began as a non-eventful day in which the reading of Aicha is for me always a special event. Towards late afternoon on Shabbat, when the ominous gray clouds above began to release winters first rainfall, the entrance to our quiet community quickly filled up with I.D.F. military forces, Shin Bet agents, police, and a large contingent of foreign and local press broadcasting directly to satellites above. It would be only later towards evening that we would hear along with the rest of the country, that yet again, an off-duty soldier on leave was murdered in cold blood by a Palestinian Arab terrorist, who had intended to use the body of the slain soldier as a bargaining chip to negotiate the release of his convicted terrorist brother, serving an extended prison term in an Israeli prison. The murder of Sergeant Tomer Hazan , Hy”d at the hands of the Palestinian Arab terrorist, who entered Israel illegally, through a hole in the security fence, has once again put a spotlight on the ease in which Palestinian Arabs are able to infiltrate Israel by simply walking through a hole in the fence. Lets all remember that the security fence that runs the length of Judea and Samaria was erected in response to the failure of the Oslo Accords and the ensuring terror war unleashed by Arafat and continuing till this very day.
Coincidentally, this past Friday, the day of the murder, Israel marked the 20th anniversary of the signing of the “Oslo Accords.” Undoubtedly, this agreement, one of Israel’s greatest strategic blunders alongside the Disengagement of 2005, has brought upon the good people of Israel only death and mayhem. Even today, the signatories to the “Oslo Accords”, refuse to acknowledge the many “holes” in the agreement, resuscitating the deceitful peace process on and off over the past 20 years, sailing on their ship of fools towards a “two state solution” while ignoring the severe flaws that make the whole rationale behind Oslo inherently false and deceptive. Palestinian Arab terror is a phenomenon that refuses to go away not only because when push comes to shove, Israel’s right to exist is simply unacceptable, but largely because the Palestinian Arabs are part and parcel of the greater Islamic war against anyone and any country that is not Muslim.
One of President Obama’s idiotic gems that he has claimed often is “the core of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is on the way to defeat.” But it is clear to anyone with 20/20 vision that the broader movement of violent Islamism, is actually much broader, and is far from defeated. Sadly, here in Israel there are many in our political leadership, past and present that continue to deny the role of the Palestinian Arab terror has played over the years as part and parcel of the greater Islamic war on the West, on Jews, on Christians, essentially on everyone, even Muslims.
Lets just consider some of the recent terror events over the past week:
In Nairobi, Kenya 30 Islamic terrorists from the Somali group al-Shabab have massacred at least 68 people in an upscale mall while holding others hostage
In Iraq, one suicide bomber blew himself up at a funeral in Baghdad, killing at least 16 and wounding more than 30, while another blew up in a residential area of Kirkuk, wounding at least 35 people. These are the latest in a series of terrible attacks in Iraq, which, according to the Associated Press, have seen “more than 4,000 people … killed between April and August.
Another suicide attack in Peshawar, Pakistan, killed at least 78 people, including 34 women and seven children, at a church. This was presumably the handiwork of the Pakistani Taliban.
Lastly, this past week 2 Israeli soldiers were slain in the Judea and Samaria, one by a sniper, the other by a Palestinian Arab as mentioned above
What these terror attacks show us is that Islamic groups of which Palestinian Arab terror is an integral part are far from defeated. They still have considerable capacity to wreak death and carnage everywhere, given the weakness of Arab regimes across the Middle East and Africa, including the weakness of the Palestinian Authority who has never really made any serious effort to eradicate terror activities either from within their own security personal or among the general Palestinian Arab population.
Despite many in Israel’s political leadership that continue to support the Oslo Accords, we in the Israeli Right including an absolute majority of the residents of Judea and Samaria have succeeded in transforming the public discourse making the “Oslo disaster” a self-explanatory phrase. During the recent elections in Israel a few months ago, not one of Israel’s 35 political parties linked the Oslo Accords to their political platform. The historic importance of the Oslo Accords has nothing to do with the possibility of creating peace between the Arabs and the Jews, but in exposing the true intentions of the Palestinian Arabs as part and parcel of the Pan-Arab Islamic push to reject and destroy any person, and any nation that refuses to accept Islamic rule. This is the real significance of Oslo for many of us here in Israel. As the years pass, Oslo will become nothing more than a footnote to remind historians that the Islamic world, despite signing binding agreements, will never accepts Israel’s right to exist. Deceiving the “infidels” and furthering the aims of Jihad is really what’s it all about, either by the Palestinian Arabs or by El-Keida, two sides of the same coin.