My daughter once worked on a kibbutz near Eilat, so the suicide bombing on January 29 in that normally tranquil Red Sea resort is especially sobering. This Palestinian “freedom fighter” struck a small bakery, killing three shoppers who had stopped by for bread and cakes. The two groups taking responsibility for the terror, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, were ecstatic about the success of their “military operation.”
This is what the civilized world is up against, in the United States, Europe, and of course in Israel. The suicide bombers who enthusiastically maim and murder defenseless civilians are celebrated for “bravery” by literally millions in the Islamic nations. Yet, the “death” the bombers expect to endure is merely a temporary inconvenience.
“Verily,” said the late King Ibn Saud to a British guest, “the word of G-d teaches us, and we implicitly believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of G-d Almighty.” This is what the bombers still believe.
The “suicide” bomber never really commits suicide, only homicide. For the young murderer, self-immolation between the croissants and the cupcakes is a most perfect way of warding off death. We must never forget that the suicide bomber is religiously convinced that in murdering any Jew, he will reach immortality. There are also other very palpable rewards (72 virgins in heaven), but immortality is always cited first, especially where the promise is extended to other family members.
In the mosques today, in the Friday sermons, there are frequent citations to the following verse of Koran: “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you there then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.” (Koran 2:191)
“Persecution is worse then slaughter.” What exactly is this “persecution?” The bakery bomber, Mohammed Saksak, 20 years old, was from Gaza – an area from which Israel had “disengaged” in the interests of peace. Significantly, in the midst of a frenzied Palestinian civil war within “liberated” Gaza, the only source of mortal danger to Arabs is fromother Arabs.
The Friday sermons make everything quite clear: “The truth is simple: Israel is land confiscated from the Arabs, and they are trying to get it back…Jews and Israel are the reason for this endless cycle of violence. If the Jews have reasons in the Bible to get the land by hook or by crook, then the Muslims have the right to defend themselves and get back the land from where they have been driven out, by any means.”
The suicide bomber believes that he is engaged in self-defense. His attacks on bakeries and similar “military targets” are always agreeable to him because “persecution is far worse than slaughter.” With this illuminating view, is revealed the still-prevailing Islamic perspective on the “Middle East Peace Process.” With this perspective is revealed the utter futility of further territorial surrenders by Israel.
The message of the Hamas led Palestinian Authority and the terrorist-appointed clergy should finally be understood by both Israel and the United States. It does not need to be decoded. As I have been saying to my readers in The Jewish Press for a long while, the Washington-engineered “Road Map” is an openly twisted piece of cartography, leading Israel not to peace, but to the grave.
Israel itself, all of Israel, not merely Judea/Samaria, is presumed “stolen” territory and must therefore be “returned” to the Arabs. The Palestinian terrorists of every stripe will never cease their murders of Jews until there is an end to “persecution,” that is, until there is an end to Israel.
Israel’s intended Palestinian destroyers are brutally honest about their intentions. The problem is that Jerusalem and Washington never bother to listen. Let them begin by heeding the closing words of a recent sermon in a Jerusalem mosque: “Say [O Muhammad] ‘O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from [all] mankind, then long for death [emphasis in original] if ye are truthful.'”
Copyright The Jewish Press, February 16, 2007. All rights reserved.
LOUIS RENE BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and publishes widely on Israeli security matters. The Strategic and Military Affairs columnist for The Jewish Press, he is well known in Israel’s political, military and intelligence communities.