Israel Matzav

On Thursday, for the second time this week, a group of Palestinian terrorists took over the European Union's offices in Gaza. Armed with rifles, the terrorists demanded an official apology from the Danish government for caricatures of Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September. At the same time as the EU offices were commandeered, another group of terrorists in Gaza issued an ultimatum: Either Denmark and the EU issue formal apologies for the publication of the cartoons by nightfall, or the terrorists will begin kidnapping Europeans in Gaza.

It is notable that in the wake of Hamas's electoral victory last week, the Palestinians have placed themselves alongside al-Qaida as the "guardians" of Islamic honor. It says a great deal both about who the Palestinians are and what it is that Israel and the Western world are up against.

At its base, the Muslim furor over the cartoons is part and parcel of their culture war against the West. The Muslims pushing the issue believe that non-Muslims ought to behave obsequiously towards all things Islamic, while the Muslims are free to demonize Jews as monkeys and pigs and accuse Christians of being idolaters. According to the rules of their culture war, if Western societies refuse to behave in accordance with their dictates, the Muslims have the right and duty to attack them.

That is, the culture war that is being waged by the Arabs and Muslims in response to the Danish cartoons is an assault on the West's right to live and govern in accordance with its values. It is an assault on the notions of freedom and self-determination themselves. That the Palestinians should now be placing themselves at the head of the charge against freedom and self-determination should serve as an indicator of who they are and what they stand for. But alas, it is not.

While, under US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's incompetent gaze, the Iranians quickly assemble the capability to build nuclear bombs at will, Hamas is directing its efforts towards building an Iranian enclave in Judea and Samaria. Due to Rice's insistence on reenacting her predecessor Colin Powell's failed policy of seeking UN backing for American actions in the Middle East, Iran is being allowed to achieve independent nuclear capabilities. At the same time, over the long term, Hamas's Iranian enclave in Judea and Samaria could well cause Israel's collapse and thus mitigate the ayatollahs' need to destroy Israel with nuclear warheads.

Hamas's victory at the polls last week was just the beginning of the jihadist group's takeover of Judea and Samaria. In the coming weeks and months, as Western aid continues to flow into the Palestinian Authority's coffers, together with supplemental aid from Iran, Hamas will have the means to gain control of the Western trained and heavily armed Palestinian security forces. The forces' loyalty will be bought simply: with the payment of their salaries. As it secures its control over Judea and Samaria, Hamas will adopt modes of operation similar to those adopted by their terrorist colleagues in Fatah, although it will be far more popular than Fatah ever was.

The main truth that Hamas's rise to power has exposed is not that Palestinian society is perhaps the most genocidal society on the face of the planet. That has been clear for all to see for the past five and a half years of the enormously popular Palestinian terror war against Israel. What Hamas's ascent to power has uncovered is that in everything related to the Palestinian conflict with Israel, the policies of the US-led international community, like the policies of the current Israeli government, are predicated on myths rather than facts.

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Rather than accept the reality or Israel's predicament, the current Israeli government, like its predecessors, insists that the real "root" of the global jihad being waged against it is the presence of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria or the absence of Palestinian statehood in general. So it was that in the shadow of the September 11 attacks, rather than declare Israel's key role in thwarting the aims of the jihadists, Ariel Sharon sent his foreign minister Shimon Peres to the UN where Peres told a befuddled world body that the Palestinian jihad against Israel was completely unrelated to the global jihad. Lecturing the world leaders, Peres waxed romantically over the need for a Palestinian state to be established and for a new New World Order, based on nanotechnology and the Internet to be formed.

Currently, Olmert is ignoring the threat that has crossed Israel's doorstep by designing a diversionary campaign - not against Hamas, but against his fellow Israelis. So it is that rather than contend with the fact that the international community is moving towards welcoming Hamas as its newest member, Olmert declared war on the religious Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria.

Olmert's decision to send a force of 6,000 policemen to the community of Amona on Wednesday in order to destroy nine homes was an act of deliberate provocation. His aim was to divert the attention of Israeli voters from the Hamas state in Gaza and the Hamas state-in-the-making in Judea and Samaria by providing them with pictures of settlers battling riot police. This was necessary because Olmert's only policy regarding Hamas is to transfer Judea and Samaria to their control.

In light of this, Olmert and his associates desperately strive for the Israeli electorate to ignore the fact that the only real issue on the agenda today is whether Hamas will rule over Judea and Samaria or the Israeli military will rule over Judea and Samaria. As Israelis learned from 2000 to 2002, when the IDF cedes control over Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, life for Israelis becomes impossible. The security of Tel Aviv is dependent on Israel maintaining control of Jenin, Nablus, Kalkilya and Tulkarm. The security of Jerusalem is dependent on Israeli control of Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron.

Given the strategic threat that Hamas control of Judea and Samaria poses to Israel, Olmert's fervent wish is for them to postpone their takeover until after the elections, allowing him to continue his diversionary campaign against his own people unfettered by the weight of reality.

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