Hamas' Trash Talkin'

[B-Man]

Glad to see Israel's policy of targetting terrorist leaders is working. Hamas is on the run.

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Hamas' Trash Talkin'
by Joel Mowbray

April 22, 2004


Hours after an Israeli missile claimed the life of Hamas head and co-founder Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the terrorist organization released a statement promising “100 unique retaliations” that would shake “the criminal entity.”

Senior Hamas official Ismail Haniya told more than 70,000 “mourners” at Gaza City’s largest mosque, “Every time a martyr falls, Hamas is strengthened.”

But as the kids on the playground would say, Hamas is just talking trash.

Amid all the hyperbole about “exploding a volcano of revenge” and what not, Hamas refused to name its new leader. They’re afraid. “They” is the appropriate term here, not “it” as in the group, because Hamas’ leaders all know their deaths are imminent.

Hamas’ reticence notwithstanding, media reports were quick to identify the new terrorist leader: Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, Rantisi’s number-two and the personal physician to the late Sheikh Yassin, who met the same fate as Rantisi nearly a month ago.

Dr. Zahar has to know he’s next.

None of this is particularly good news for terrorist masterminds, but it is great news for more than just Israelis.

Young Palestinians should feel safer already.

Hamas’ hierarchy has been so busy trying to avoid their own deaths that they haven’t had nearly as much time to send little Abduls and Kareems to theirs.

Even if you want to take Hamas at its word that it really is devoting itself to “100 unique retaliations” instead of trying to find “100 unique undisclosed locations,” the terrorist group was no less determined to kill Jews last month (or last year) than it is right now.

Following the targeted killing of Hamas’ “wheelchair-bound” “spiritual leader” Sheikh Yassin on March 22, threats were aplenty.

Hamas promised to “kill hundreds of Zionists on every street, in every city and everywhere in the occupied lands.”

Only, it hasn’t happened. That’s not to say that Hamas won’t be successful in killing more Israelis, but it most likely won’t be as successful as it has been.

With Hamas leadership preoccupied with staying alive—even Yassin essentially lived underground in the months before his death and Rantisi went to great precautions as well—strategy and attack coordination are bound to suffer.

In fact, that has already happened. The lone suicide bombing since Yassin’s death was over the weekend, on the same day Rantisi got to test that “72 virgins” theory. Only one Israeli died.

This month free of suicide bombings came not on the heels of a truce or a peace agreement, but after Hamas had pledged to “open the gates of hell.”

The reason should be obvious: terrorism is not, and never has been, a grassroots, bottom-up movement. It is a top-down indoctrination industry that relies on brainwashing and a handful of key organizational leaders.

The young Palestinians who blow themselves up in the name of “martyrdom” (and getting their families huge paydays) do nothing more than detonate. The bombs are built for them, and the date and location of the attacks are chosen by the likes of Yassin and Rantisi—and, of course, Yasser Arafat.

What Israel is attempting is to cut off the head of radical Islamic terrorism. Will this work? It’s hard to say what the exact impact will be, but it certainly can’t make things any worse, no matter what many so-called experts have predicted.

It is impossible to radicalize further a population that has been brainwashed since childhood not just to hate Jews, but to kill them. It starts with the textbooks, if not with “delightful” nursery rhymes, and then teens and adults are fed a daily dose of such swine through the Arafat-controlled Palestinian media.

And lest we forget, Hamas’ stated goal is to eliminate the Jewish state. So if its members need the killing of their leaders to stick to their original goal, that can only mean they were slacking off before. Which we all know, sadly, was not the case.

With its leaders marked for death, Hamas might not succeed in getting what it wants. But at least Rantisi did.

Shortly after his predecessor Sheikh Yassin died, Rantisi said, “We will all die one day. Nothing will change. If by Apache or by cardiac arrest, I prefer Apache.” Thankfully, his wish came true.

[Chris Alger]

Two points of view:

1. Sharon's anti-terror policy is working.

Incorrigible terrorists thrive in the occupied territories to such an extent that virtually no Palestinians living there deserve rights that most people believe are fundamental: right to vote, right of expression, right of movement, right of self-defense, etc. On the whole, the 3.5 million Palestinians in the territories support terrorism and indoctrinate their children to sacrifice themselves as martyrs, so that Palestinian society can produce an infinite supply of terrorists. Accordingly, Palestinians are doomed to live eke out miserable existences under martial law for the indefinite future.

Israel's policy of assasination, however, which has killed some 200 alleged "terrorist leaders" has nevertheless put a huge dent in the ability of Palestinians to wreak havoc. This has both reduced the supply of potential terrorists and instilled a grave fear of death into would-be suicide bombers.

Israeli anti-terror policy is therefore working. This appears to be Mobray's theory.

2. Sharon's efforts to provoke terror aren't working.

Israeli society is driven by a powerful attitudes of national, cultural and religious entitlement that grew out of the racial supremacy theories that prevailed at at Zionism's nascence. These attitudes are Israel's raison d'etre and provided the ideological underpinning for Zionism and much of Israel's later actions: rejecting the 1947 partition plan as soon as additional territory was acquired, ethnically cleansing most Arab residents, refusing refugee repatriation, rejecting a generous peace offer from Syria in 1949, invading the Sinai in 1956, preparing contingency plans for the conquest of the West Bank, Golan and Sinai well before 1967 ("righting the wrong" of 1948), trying to expand the frontier with Syria in 1967, refusing to withdraw from any territories acquired in 1967, refusing the Rogers plan of 1969, refusing the Sadat-Jarring peace initiative of 1971, colonizing the W. Bank and Gaza, rejecting countless UN resolutions demanding compromise for peace, annexing the Golan, annexing W. Jerusalem, refusing these last four years from even negotiating with the Palestinian leadership, and on and on.

Without this ideology of entitlement and national superiority, much of Israel's history amounts to a pointless turf war, something that can hardly inspire a nation to confidence and sacrifice.

Outside of Israel and its more fervent supporters abroad, hardly anyone believes that Israel has a right to oppress or invade anyone. This is problematic for Israel because it cannot sustain its reason for being without outside help, namely annual aid from the U.S. roughly equal to its military budget.

To justify the aid and other support, Israel has devoted considerable energy to a cult of victimization that echoes the experience of Jews in the holocaust. Under this alternative theory, Israeli actions are almost entirely explained by the need to defend against perpetual Arab aggression and terror.

This propaganda campaign, however, has run its course and few educated people and hardly any diplomats buy it. Most Palestinians favor recognition of Israel. The PLO has renounced terror, unwaveringly agreed to partition for more than 15 years, Israel has enjoyed a formal, unbroken peace and diplomatic relations with Jordan and Egypt for years, and the vast majority of Arab countries have offered peace in exchange for the very solution that Israel purportedly embraced in 1947. Once united in their calls for destruction of the Jewish state, the Palestinian and Arab worlds are now dominated by moderates.

Still, Israel refuses to even negotiate with the PA and has soundly rejected all talk of cease-fires and compromise for the last four years. The enabling acts of this approach have been, exclusively, Palestinian terror. By this I mean the decision in 2001 by a few rejectionist factions to match Israeli occupation and the killing of civilians with attacks against Israeli civlians in Israel. Especially since 9-11, Palestinian terror has effectively tied the hands of the U.S., the only party capable of forcing a solution to the conflict.

Palestinian terror gives Sharon has a permanent green light. Without the terror, Sharon appears as another Milosovic. Sharon must constantly provoke a continuous stream of terror attacks in order to fulfill his dream of annexing the W. Bank settlement blocks and isolating the Palestinians into prison-like enclaves.

Sharon has done this by subverting at least half a dozen ceasefires by Palestinian terrorists and those who claim to be able to influence them. Time and again, Hamas and the other groups have offered cease-fires only to be met by savage Israeli reprisals against civlians and militants, sometimes the very leaders who were instrumental in obtaining the cease-fire.

Sharon's policy of provocation has proven effective. When, for example, one of their reverred leaders was assasinated, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade expanded for the first tiem its attacks beyond the occupied territories and directly to civlians in Israel. Part of this is explained by the desire to escalate, part of it by the leaderless vacuum that leaves behind uncontrollable "loose cannons."

Yet this approach also might have run its course. Sharon has been forced to escalate by the recent reduction of suicide bombings and the willingness of Hamas, IJ and AAM to accept a ceasefire. He's now murdered the two most respected members of Hamas, both civilians, one of them highly cherished, and has been floating proposals with the Bush administration to murder Arafat. This is actually a return to an older Israel policy of exiling and assissinating Palestinian moderates.

But the terrorists aren't biting. There are three possible explanations: (1) that of people like Mobrawy, that the ranks of suicide terrorists have been inexplicably depleted or they are afraid of death; (2) the recognition by Palestinian terrorists that terrorism is counterproductive and helps Sharon, and that they should just give up all notions of armed struggle if it means killing civilians; or (3) the recognition by Palestinian terrorists that their efforts have been insufficient, and should be doubled or tripled, or worse, and may have been directed against the wrong society.

The first explanation is ridiculous and the second is too much to hope for, too pie-in-the-sky. The third is a disaster for so many people that, if true, I doubt that anyone a year from now will be talking about Sharon's "victory" over terrorism by force.