Don’t focus on Hamas alone

The kidnapping and brutal murder of the three youths Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar, and Naftali Frenkel demand an appropriate, significant, and focused response by Israel. There are those among us who call themselves “moderate” and are urging us to use our heads and calling the others — those they say tend to “respond from the gut” — “extremists.” As of now, it seems like both groups have conservative tendencies: repeating the same thinking and conduct that has characterized Israeli leadership, Left and Right, since the Black September of 1993, when the fraudulent, capitulatory deal with the entire Palestine Liberation Organization was signed.

Then and now, Israeli leadership — Left, Right, Center, or any other direction — has made a distinction between two types of enemies: “good” terrorists who need to be given respect and gestures of honor, and “bad” terrorists, who need to be fought. Even when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas forged an open alliance with his twin brother Hamas, President Shimon Peres spoke of him as a friend and legitimized the vermin that Israel’s official government is trying to denounce. 

And the government, the one that declared Operation Brother’s Keeper in response to the kidnapping of the three teens by an alliance of “good” and “bad” terrorists, those of Abbas and those of Hamas, is only waging war on Hamas. The partner of Hamas on one hand and of the extreme Left on the other is exempted. He continues to fly around the world to show his clean hands and to receive obsequious Knesset members and “intellectuals” from the extreme Left, even as he sticks to his alliance with his “bad” brothers. Brothers in blood! The “right-wing” government, which is trapped in and devoted to the Oslo idea, has decided that its enemy is not only Hamas, but also its ally in Ramallah. But despite everything, it continues to supply both of them with free electricity and other services. The Jews have turned into their enemies’ tax collectors and water bearers.

A fitting, significant, and focused Israeli response must begin with casting off the fixation with artificially dividing the enemy into “good” and “bad” when both are partners in the same mission – wiping Israel off the map. So long as Israel’s government and media continue to treat Mahmoud Abbas and his followers as “good,” deserving partners to who it is possible and desirable to hand over the heart of the land of Israel, it could become entangled in a completely immoral war. One that would endanger Israeli soldiers in a war of Hormah against Hamas that if it succeeds would see Israel present the fruit of the victory over the “bad” terrorists to their “good” brothers who are backed by and admired by Christian and Muslim anti-Semites, as well as “blue and white” anti-Semites. There is no less moral and more corrupt act than making our soldiers the silver tray on which an enemy country is founded in the heart of the land of Israel.

Abbas’ condemnation of the kidnapping, and even the latest cooperation from his security forces (terrorists in uniform,) must not confuse Israel or perpetuate the foolish thinking that has characterized it for the past 21 years. This thinking has led us to the situation in which Israel is unwilling to consider any path other than the suicidal one known by the mendacious code “the two-state ‘solution,'” which is no solution and no peace.

Professor Ron Breiman is the former chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel.