A Blip Among The Real Threats

"Until recently, Hamas was considered the number one threat to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Now, however, it has become evident that Islamic State is also trying to set up bases of power in the West Bank. According to Israeli security sources, dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members in the West Bank have defected to Islamic State in recent months. Their main goal, the sources, said, is to topple the PA and launch terror attacks on Israel."
"Abbas is lucky that the Israeli security forces are still operating in the West Bank, including inside cities and towns controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Were it not for the IDF and various branches of the Israeli security establishment, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Islamic State would have toppled the Palestinian Authority and beheaded Abbas and his officials a long time ago."
"Still, Abbas does not feel comfortable acknowledging the fact that a growing number of Palestinians in the West Bank are joining Islamic State. Abbas fears is that if he admits that Islamic State is already operating in the West Bank, this could dissuade many Western countries from supporting his effort to persuade the world to support the creation of an independent Palestinian state. Like Hamas, Abbas also fears that Westerners would stop visiting Ramallah and other West Bank Palestinian cities once they learn about Islamic State's presence in these areas."
Khaled Abu Toameh Palestinian Journalist, Gatestone Institute

Palestinians waving Islamic State flags attempt to storm the French Cultural Center in Gaza City. Some in the crowd carried posters glorifying the terrorists who carried out this month's attacks in Paris. (Image source: ehna tv YouTube screenshot)

"Last night Hamza and I hung out with friends in the camp until 11:00 p.m. and we had fun."
"He was laughing and kidding."
Friend of Hamza Muhammad Hassan Matrouk

"First we fired in the air, but he didn't stop."
"Then we shot him in the legs."
"He said he decided to achieve that [reaching paradise] by carrying out an attack."
Israeli police spokesman

The nation accused by Arabs and Palestinian sympathizers around the world of being an "Apartheid state" has many concerns it must be alert and responsive to. There are no other countries in the world existing from beyond recorded history in their heritage geographic area of the world that are surrounded by unremittingly belligerent nations, and none that must guard themselves constantly against attack and become immune to hostile criticism when the attacked nation defends itself to avoid total annihilation.

On the macro-scale of threats there is the promise from the Islamic Republic of Iran that it plans to demolish the State of Israel. Its proxy terrorist militia Hezbollah stands ready to give aid in that scenario, but will not necessarily be required should Iran, as it plans, come into serendipitous possession of nuclear weapons. Closer to home there is the terrorist group Hamas masquerading as a responsible administration, vying with Fatah to destroy Israel, while posing as friends of the West.

But from Pakistan and Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia, Jordan and Syria and all points in between there is ample dedication to ensuring that the State of Israel somehow, by some means, meet its end in a new Holocaust of proportions sufficient to bring an end to the offence of a Jewish state existing in an Arab/Muslim world order. And then, there is the death by a thousand cuts, where seemingly ordinary Palestinians suddenly run berserk and embark on a spree of blooding.

Those events can take place anywhere in the world from Argentina to Bulgaria, France to Norway, Algeria to America, and they do with some level of regularity. Not, however, approaching the regularity at which Israeli Jews are subjected to violent atrocities by those aspiring to ascend to Paradise through their response as Muslims to the call to jihad and vengeance against an 'occupying' force; a state forced to protect itself from the malign effects of anti-Semitism ancient and modern.

The latest, a young man from the West Bank city of Tulkarem who had entered Jerusalem illegally for the express purpose of committing a bloody atrocity against Jews. Hamza Muhammad Hassan Matrouk, 23, took his inspiration from earlier attacks against Jews occurring in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the West Bank by Palestinians using knives, cleavers, guns or vehicles in their deadly rampage against Jews identified by their leaders as oppressors planning genocidal attacks against Palestinians.

In the attack that began aboard a bus in Tel Aviv the driver was attacked then passengers stabbed, and the stabbing was continued when the murder-frenzied man attacked people on the street as well. One woman was stabbed in the upper back as she fled in panic for her life. This was a man said to have no relation to any political or armed faction, a perfectly normal young man who the night before was out carousing light-heartedly with his friends.

This speaks of a mass psychosis of hatred brimming over into planned and alternately spontaneous murderous violence with an unstoppable agenda to begin with the Jews, cleansing the world of opposition to Islamist conquest through a universal Caliphate under which in due time all other nations of the world must pay obeisance or face a similar cleansing of their heritage, their culture, their religion, their lives.

Members of the Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir demonstrate in Copenhagen, Denmark, demanding a worldwide Islamic Caliphate, in 2006. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons/Epo)