RUTHFULLY YOURS

Since last Thursday, when an Israeli soldier shot a subdued terrorist in the head, the issue of the IDF’s Code of Ethics has been debated to death. Arguments about whether the usual rules of engagement should apply to situations like those that have grown so commonplace over the past six months are not at all new in the Jewish state; they are as old as its enemies’ repeated attempts to wipe it off the face of the earth in one way or another.

The current method has taken the form of a “lone-wolf intifada,” the term coined to describe a disorganized war of attrition waged mostly by young, knife-wielding Palestinians on Jew-killing rampages. That it is not deemed an official “uprising” by the Palestinian powers-that-be who encourage it passively while actively egging it on is the only thing that differentiates it from previous waves of terrorism to which Israelis were accustomed.

The soldier who has become the topic of every dinner-table conversation from Metula‎ to Eilat is now serving as a symbol for all sides of the dilemma that our boys and girls must face as soon as they finish high school and don an IDF uniform. It is impossible to know what his parents told him before he got on the bus to go off to basic training. But I admit to telling my own children, each in turn, that I’d rather visit them in a military prison than in a graveyard.

That particular sentiment was born of watching my kids grow up in a society whose underlying message was that it was just as important to be armed with a law book as a gun when forced to fight enemies with no rules of engagement whatsoever. Other than useless slaughter, that is. And backing from an “international community” with extremely high double standards.

Indeed, the first time I allowed my 7-year-old to walk by himself to school, a report on the radio that a terrorist was on the loose in our neighborhood sent me tearing down four flights of stairs, with babies in my arms, to make sure he was safe. As it transpired, my son had made it to his classroom, but an 18-year-old female soldier named Iris Azoulay was not so lucky. After kissing her own mother goodbye before heading to the bus stop to return to her base, a Palestinian laborer — who had worked in the area for years painting houses and the like for Jewish families he knew well — went on a stabbing spree with a 15-inch knife and slashed her to death. Right in front of her home.

His birthday was March 26th just a few days ago. Also known as Abu Mazen….an Arafat in a suit….within days of his election his buddies in the Brigades of Al Aqsa killed six Israelis as another “peace”offering….rsk

Last night the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas appeared on Israelis’ television screens to tell them that peace is still possible. He even conceded that there have been some incidents of incitement in the Palestinian media. As for the relentless wave of stabbings that have plagued Israeli cities in recent months, well that is just a matter of Palestinians losing hope in Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state solution, Abbas explained.

In some senses Abbas is right. Peace, like many eventualities, is certainly possible. But not while Abbas is around. Because while Abbas might graciously concede that some of his state controlled media outlets may have regrettably dabbled in the occasional anti-Semitic terror incitement, such a lamenting tone would suggest that all this has been going on contrary to his own wishes.

The Palestinian Authority’s mandateless president has always cut a pretty disingenuous figure – the quintessential phoney moderate – but if he expects Israelis to believe that he hasn’t been at the forefront of the incitement that has already got so many of them killed, then he must think Israelis are as gullible as he clearly believes his own people to be.

WASHINGTON — Police have stepped up security for Jewish students at a major state university in upstate New York after graffiti threatened to “kill all kikes,” using a derogatory term to refer to Jewish people.

A picture of the vandalism, scrawled on a men’s bathroom at the State University of New York at Buffalo, was obtained by The Times of Israel.

University police were notified of the incident last week, after a Jewish student noticed the inscription and told the school’s Hillel director, Dan Metchnik, who then informed university officials.

Police ordered university facilities to remove the language from the bathroom stall and opened an investigation. They further specified that they believe it to be an isolated incident.

The university put out a statement condemning the hate crime and confirmed that, in response, university police had increased patrols near the Hillel office and elsewhere on campus where students were celebrating the Jewish holiday of Purim.

Metchnik, an Israeli, was shocked to learn of what happened. “We’ve had some anti-Israel and anti-Zionist expression on this campus in the last few years,” he told The Times of Israel. “But we haven’t seen this kind of vicious and explicit anti-Semitism, not for awhile.”

There is a famous photo of Anjem Choudary, the head of multiple banned organizations calling for imposing Sharia law on the UK whose follower was responsible for the Lee Rigby beheading, getting drunk as a young law student. Friends recall “Andy” smoking pot and taking LSD, sleeping around and partying all the time. Andy was really well integrated, but he still turned back into Anjem.

While the proliferation of segregated Muslim areas, no-go zones in which English, French or Dutch is the foreign language, is a major problem, it is a mistake to think that “integration” solves Islamic terrorism.

It doesn’t.

The Tsarnaev brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings seemed integrated. Nobody noticed anything wrong with Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino shooter, or Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber. They weren’t lurking in a no-go zone. They had American friends, an education and career options if they wanted them. They didn’t want them. And that’s the point.

Bilal Abdullah was a British-born doctor who tried to carry out a terrorist attack at Glasgow International Airport. He wasn’t marginalized, jobless or desperate. He had a cause.

Quite a few converts have become Muslim terrorists. If integration were the issue, white converts to Islam wouldn’t be running off to join ISIS or plotting terrorist attacks like Don Stewart-Whyte, who converted to Islam and planned to blow up planes headed from the UK to the US. Along with his friend Oliver Savant, the son of a secular Iranian father and British mother, they are the reason why you can’t carry liquids onto a plane.

Muslim terrorism is not caused by failed integration, but by a conscious disintegration. What is often described as “radicalization” is really a choice by “integrated” Muslims to become religious and to act on their beliefs. Muslim men who formerly dressed casually begin growing beards and wearing Salafist garb. They consciously reject what Western society has to offer because they have chosen Islam instead.