UPDATES 9 am Israel time, Sunday, September 21 2014:
**Great news! Iran has offered this morning to help Western countries fight against ISIS/DAAS in return for “flexibility” on its nuclear weapons program. As an Iranian official said: “It’s a two-way street. You give something, you take something.”
Let’s see how much the West really cares about an Iranian nuclear bomb aimed at Israel.
**Great news! Another Israeli schoolbus was attacked 30 minutes ago in the eastern part of Jerusalem near Ras Al-Amud Square. Its windshield and windows were shattered and the students on board were traumatized.
Of course, the Jerusalem police, as usual, were nowhere to be seen because they are too busy helping their friends at the Islamic Wakf keep Jews off of the Temple Mount during the coming high holy days.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Three Hezbollah “militants” were killed last night when a motorcyle suicide bomber blew himself up at a Hezbollah checkpoint south of Baalbak in the Bekaa Valley. Meanwhile, a Lebanese Army soldier who had been captured on the border with Syria was beheaded two days ago. The soldier was the second of 22 captured last month to be beheaded.
What do these two events have in common? Both were carried out by the Syrian arm of al-Qaeda, Jabhat Al-Nusra, a Sunni Islamist group made up of (by their description) “mujahideen” fighting against the regime of Bashir Assad and for an Islamic caliphate stretching from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq.
If this sounds like ISIS/DAAS to you, it should.
Whereas as recently as four months ago, ISIS/DAAS and Jabhat Al-Nusra were fighting with each over which one represented Al-Qaeda in Syria, the two groups have now largely reconciled, with most branches of Jabhat Al-Nusra pledging loyaly to to ISIS/DAAS.
What is the bottom line?
An affiliate of ISIS/DAAS is now operating in Lebanon and carrying out a two-pronged attack against Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army–both of which they rightly accuse of being proxy fighters for Iran (the Lebanese Army has long facilitated the movement of Hezbollah militants into Syria to fight for Bashir Assad).
All of which begs the question of who are “the good guys” and who are “the bad guys”?
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Think about the situation here in Israel where Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres took a barbaric gang of terrorists called the PLO and tried to turn them into “the good guys” by recognizing them in the Oslo Accords. And despite the fact that the PLO never stopped its terrorist activitities and even increased them, the world bought into the idea that Yasser Arafat and his deputy Mahmoud Abbas were “the good guys”.
This impression was enhanced as Hamas grew stronger. Hamas immediately became the “the bad guys” a designation that remained constant for years until recent years when suddenly, and amazingly, we found the Israeli government and IDF saying that yes, Hamas is “bad”, but there are “worse” groups operating in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria such as the Salafists and a zillion others
Heaven help us, says the current Netanyahu government, should Hamas be eliminated. Just think of all “the bad guys” who might step in and fill the power vacuum in Gaza.
Never mind that the recent war saw Hamas, the PLO, the Salafists, and the other “worse” terrorist groups in Gaza firing missiles at Israel. Our government still wants to maintain, and the world wants to believe, that there are “good guys” and “bad guys”.
Yes ISIS/DAAS is abominable because it cuts off people’s heads and enslaves captive women. But guess what? This has been the story of Islam from its beginning.
Saudi Arabia still cuts off people’s heads in its public squares; Iran still hangs gays from cranes and lets their bodies rot in the wind; Hamas still hauls people out of their houses and shoots them in the street; Hezbollah still carries out unspeakable atrocities against men, women, and children in Syria.
And in all of these places women are degraded, demeaned, and sexually exploited. The vaunted “mujahideen” in Afghanistan and elsewhere follow in the noble example of the founder of Islam and regularly “marry” 9 and 10 year old girls–many of whom die during sex or in childbirth.
The names of ISIS, DAAS, Hamas, Turkey, Hezbollah, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jabhat Al-Nusra may change, but they are all the same–there are no Muslim “good guys” anywhere to be seen.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.