Senior Palestinian Authority officials told the Hebrew news portal Walla on Sunday that the Israeli leadership is rooting for a Hamas victory in the upcoming PA municipal elections. The reason cited for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s ostensible favoring of a majority win for the terrorist organization that runs Gaza over its rival faction, Fatah, is that this would legitimize Jerusalem’s claims that there is no partner for negotiations on the Palestinian side.
Everybody, other than delusional leftists, knows by now that the only difference between one jihadi group and another is internal, involving power struggles and arguments over the best way to eliminate the world’s infidels. For decades, Israel has acted on the hope — and prayer — that this is surmountable. Like all Western countries, even the one situated in the Middle East, Israel operated under the assumption that enemies could be moderated, with heaps of goodwill, territorial concessions and help from the international community.
However, the cold, hard reality, which has been evident throughout history, is that this premise is false. Europe, whose memory is so short that it has forgotten the lessons of World War II, is unable to articulate this realization. But a glimmer of understanding occasionally rears its head among citizens shaken awake by terrorist attacks, whose increasing frequency is beginning to cause insomnia.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel — one European leader whose popularity is plummeting as a result of a spate of gruesome attacks committed by radical Muslims against innocent people — last week made a desperate attempt to defend herself against charges that her open-door policy to refugees was responsible.
”Islamist terror in Germany wasn’t imported with [them],” she said, though more than 2 million unvetted migrants have flooded her country since 2015. The phenomenon of homegrown radicals going to Syria to train with Islamic State terrorists, she explained, “has been concerning us for years.”
How comforting.