April 28, 2016: A Terrorist Is a Terrorist Is a Terrorist
By Carol Rushton
Once again, terrorists have pulled off a major terrorist attack. Mere months after the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, ISIS terrorists have set off bombs in an airport and subway system in Brussels, Belgium. These terrorists have murdered over 30 people and wounded hundreds more. Once again, the world is shocked and appalled. Once again, world leaders are condemning the attacks.
Why are people shocked that terrorists murder and injure people? Why are people shocked that terrorists WANT to murder and injure people? Europeans and Americans are overall very peaceful and accepting. Why would anyone in their right mind want to murder and injure us? Haven’t we said that Islam is a peaceful religion time and time again? Haven’t we accepted thousands and thousands of Muslim immigrants into our countries? Haven’t we tried to make them feel welcome in our tolerant, multicultural societies?
It never fails to amaze me that Westerners cannot understand the Arab mind. It never fails to baffle me that Westerners are shocked by the atrocities of terrorists, including the beheading and crucifying of Christians and non-Muslims in the Middle East who refuse to convert to Islam. Westerners act as if there were never any terrorist groups before ISIS that murdered innocent men, women, and children and bragged about it afterward.
When Westerners are not being shocked by acts of terror by terrorists, they are spending their time thinking up inane and bizarre solutions to stop this new wave terror in their countries. The liberal Labor Party in England actually came up with the idea that having tea with terrorists would turn them into mild mannered, cultured aristocrats who prefer going to opera instead of making IEDs. Christine Shawcroft, a Labor Party member, said, “I think we should bear in mind that having cups of tea might actually be the best kind of system of defence and national security that you could have” (Truth Revolt, March 21, 2016, “Britain’s Labour Party Suggests Having Tea With ISIS, Not Air Strikes,” http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/britains-labour-party-suggests-having-tea-isis-not-air-strikes). Terrorists around the world are still doubled over in laughter over this statement.
Terrorist attacks have been going on for years. The following is just a small sample of what terrorists have done in Israel.
On May 15, 1974, terrorists with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) went on a killing spree in the Israeli town of Ma’alot. They ended up killing 31 people, including two Israeli Arab women, and an Israeli Jewish couple and their son in an apartment building, and 22 children after Golani Brigade soldiers stormed a school in which the terrorists were holding 115 people hostage.
In 1978, PLO terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel’s Coastal Highway. The terrorists killed 38 Israeli civilians, 13 of which were children, and wounded 71. Before hijacking the bus, the PLO terrorists had stolen a taxi to get transportation, murdering the taxi’s driver and passengers. During these attacks, the terrorists threw grenades and shot at cars, killing and injuring passing motorists.
On October 19, 1994, an Arab terrorist blew himself up on a bus while on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, murdering twenty-two people, all Israeli Jews except for one person from the Netherlands.
A Hamas terrorist blew himself up on a Jerusalem bus near the city’s central bus station on February 25, 1996. Twenty-six Israeli Jews lost their lives that day. I used to take that same morning bus when I was volunteering at The Jerusalem Post.
One of the more famous terrorist attacks in Israel occurred at the Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem. An Arab terrorist blew himself up at the pizzeria on August 2001. Fifteen civilians were murdered, including seven children and a pregnant woman; 130 were wounded. One woman is still on life support in what is called a “permanent vegetative state.” Her toddler daughter survived the attack. I remember eating at that same Sbarro in the 1990s with a friend.
The story of the Hatuel family is a great example of the depraved minds of terrorists. David and Tali Hatuel, both Orthodox Jews, had moved from southern Israel to a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. On May 2, 2004, Tali Hatuel was driving the family car. She had just picked up their four young daughters from school and was on her way to a rally in Ashkelon to campaign against the Israeli’s government plan to remove all settlements in the Gaza Strip and turn it over to the Arabs.
Tali and her beautiful daughters never made it to Ashkelon. Arab terrorists, waiting in ambush, fired on the car, causing Tali to lose control and drive off the road. The two terrorists then approached the car and shot all inside multiple times. Tali was about to give birth to the couple’s first son, so the terrorists made sure to shoot Tali’s stomach as well.
It is incredible that David Hatuel showed no anger during or after the funeral. For someone who lost his entire family in one day, David made sure everyone knew he had turned the terrorists, his wife, and his daughters over to God. Eventually, David remarried and started a new family. He said, “I have two options, either to collapse or to continue living. I have chosen life!”
I could go on and on and on, listing and describing the hundreds of terrorist attacks that take place in Israel every year. No book in the world is large enough to contain them all.
Americans and Europeans have turned a blind eye for years over the acts of terrorism Israel has had to contend with since it became a nation in 1948. It was OK for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PLO to murder and maim Jews in the Middle East because these terror groups were in the distant Middle East, killing Jews in a far-away country they could care less about. It wasn’t happening in England, or Germany, or France, or the U.S. It didn’t affect them personally, so they didn’t care. European elitists even had the gall to tell Israelis that they should just get used to terror attacks as the price for “peace.” Now that terrorism is rearing its ugly face in Western countries, with all its attending horrors, these same elitists are suddenly confronted with the terrorism they so blatantly downplayed before. They are discovering terrorists enjoy killing them as much as they do Israeli Jews.
When terror attacks occur, whether in Israel, Europe, or the United States, Arabs celebrate. They laugh and clap their hands while listening to the news reports at outdoor cafes. They pass out candy and pieces of cake in the streets. They hold parties. They seem to actually thrive on murder, death, and blood. The Brussels attacks were no different.
Terrorist groups gain emotional and psychological strength from one another; they feed off of one another. Each time a successful terror attack is carried out by one terrorist group, it encourages the others. They support one another in their hatred for Jews, Christians, and anyone else who refuses to accept the terrorist ideology. I call this the “Brotherhood of Terrorism.”
The one thing that Arabs and Muslims pay attention to is overwhelming brute force. This is why Israel has been able to survive for almost 70 years in the Middle East. Israel refuses to commit national suicide, as the European countries are doing at the present time. Israel fiercely protects its borders and hits back hard when attacked. The vast majority of Arab/Islamic countries will never accept Israel or Jews, but they have a healthy respect for Israel. That’s why they don’t attack Israel anymore – at least, not directly.
The failure of Western countries to project strength and force when it comes to fighting terrorism, combined with accepting thousands of Muslims into their countries each year, is why terror attacks are increasing in the West. Europe’s and America’s refusal to secure their borders allows ever increasing hordes of peoples, legal and illegal, to flood into their countries, undermining and then destroying the Judeo-Christian principles upon which Western civilization was built. You cannot have unbridled immigration policies and expect anything less.
John Adams famously once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” The following are basic facts about Islam and terrorism.
Terrorists murder people. This is what terrorists do. It doesn’t matter if terrorists kill by suicide bombings, shootings, knife attacks, driving cars into crowds of pedestrians, beheadings, or crucifixions. It doesn’t matter if its Hamas, Hezbollah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PLO, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Al Nusra, or Al Shaba’ab. It doesn’t matter if the terrorist attacks occur in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Damascus, Mosul, Baghdad, Bangkok, Paris, Brussels, London, New York City, or San Bernardino.
Oh, there will be a few, like Walid Shoebat, who renounce Islam and terror and become strong, pro-Israel Christians. Muslims like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser will continue their sincere, but what I consider futile, efforts to reform a barbaric, 2,000-year-old religion and drag it kicking and screaming into the modern era.
But the West will have to learn the hard way that the vast majority of these primitives are fit only for being bombed back into the 5th Century B.C. They will have to learn the hard way that Arabs and Muslims hate Christians, Jews, Americans, and Israelis. They will have to learn the hard way that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.
Until the West learns these facts about terrorism, they will never defeat it. Ever.