The good terrorists

Caroline B. Glick wrote in JWR Wednesday was a difficult day. First, on Wednesday morning Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel's annihilation. Then, a few hours later, a Palestinian terrorist blew up at a Hadera felafel stand in and murdered five Israelis. Israel's responses to these events revealed as much about its strategic confusion as Ahmadinejad's speech and the bombing revealed about our enemies' strategic clarity.

In the case of Iran, Israel's response was well-conceived and executed. In calling for the annihilation of Israel — a UN member state — Iran stands in grave breach of the UN Charter, which stipulates that member states must foster peaceful relations with one another. And so, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom ordered Israel's ambassador at the UN to demand Iran's expulsion from the world body.

The demand does not stand a snowball's chance in hell of being accepted, but I am glad he said it.

In sharp contrast to Israel's clear, understandable and constructive response to the Iranian threat, the government's response to the bombing in Hadera was marked by confusion, defeatism and absurdity. How is this the case? First it should be recalled that in the immediate wake of last week's terror attack at the Gush Etzion junction, the Aksa Martyr Brigades — the terror group belonging to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party — issued an announcement claiming responsibility.

Oops.

Oddly, in the hours that followed, IDF commanders and government ministers denied Fatah's claim and insisted that Hamas, not Fatah, had carried out the attack that murdered three.

Well they can't continue talking to Abbas if they admit his people did it.

Although no evidence was ever presented to back up this claim, let's assume that it is true. Still, the question arises: What does the fact that Fatah claimed responsibility tell us about Abbas's Fatah party, on which Israel and the US are currently pinning all their hopes for peace and security?

What you knew already. They want you just as dead as the other terrorist groups do.

After Wednesday's bombing, the Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. As is their habit, the terrorists claimed that the massacre of Israeli civilians was their response to the IDF's killing of their terror commander Luai Sa'adi in Tulkarm earlier this week. But then something interesting occurred. In Gaza City, masked Fatah and Islamic Jihad terrorists held a joint press conference where they claimed joint responsibility for the bombing. A Fatah spokesman further announced that any attack against Islamic Jihad will be viewed as an attack against Fatah as well. Disturbingly, no Israeli newspaper other than The Jerusalem Post reported on the press conference.

Then target both a Fatah terrorist AND an Islamic Jihad terrorist for the next retaliation, and let us see how long their union will last.

And that isn't all. Like the government, the Israeli media also ignored the fact — reported again exclusively by the Post's Khaled Abu Toameh — that in the same IDF raid where Sa'adi was killed, Majed al-Ashkar, a senior Fatah terror commander, was also killed. The Israeli Hebrew-speaking public has not been informed that the two had spent the past several months establishing joint Fatah-Islamic Jihad cells throughout Judea and Samaria and Gaza.

For his part, Abbas, whom the Sharon-Peres government and the Bush administration uphold as Israel's partner in peace and the fight against terrorism, has been making some interesting moves. Abbas has told the Americans and the Israelis that he is working to end Fatah terrorism by integrating the Aksa Martyrs Brigades into the Palestinian security forces. But on Wednesday night, Channel 2's reporter in Gaza interviewed three such "former" terrorists as they stood in position outside the ruins of the community of Neveh Dekalim. The flag flying from the top of their tent was that of the Aksa Martyr Brigades. One man was in uniform and the other two were wearing civilian clothes. All were brandishing the same AK-47 rifles they received as terrorists. All claimed that they are still part of the Aksa Brigades. As one Palestinian source noted to the Post, the fact that Fatah and Islamic Jihad terrorists are now operating in the same cells raises the prospect that Islamic Jihad operatives will infiltrate the Palestinian security services by claiming to be Fatah terrorists. As members of the security forces, these murderers will receive training at the hands of Russian security personnel who are now operating in Gaza.

The answer is clear. Disarm Fatah, Islamic Jihad, or Hamas. It won't happen, but that is the answer.

....Apart from all of this, the attack in Hadera on Wednesday showed — yet again — that the security fence that the Left touts as the ultimate antiterror weapon is worthless. Officers in the Central Command claimed that the bomber was able to enter Israel by going through one of the several dozen gates in the fence. These passages were set up to enable both Israelis and Palestinians to pass through the fence legally and can be easily exploited by terrorists.

The fence is a good idea, and just because someone claims that is the way they got in, does not mean it is true. The fence is not finished yet, and they could have gotten in that way. Or perhaps inspection procedures at the gates needs to be improved.

Even if Israel were to seal the gates (a move that would induce immediate protest from the Palestinian "human rights" camp), the terrorists would still find a way to infiltrate into Israel. As they did two years ago on the Trans-Israel Highway, they can dig a tunnel. Or as they did four years ago along the fence separating Israel from Lebanon, they can build a ladder. Since the time of the Assyrian Empire 2,700 years ago, there has never been a defensive wall that cannot be breached by an enemy with sufficient will to do so.

True, but is a lot better than nothing. And you might try a chain link fence parallel to the wall, but 1 mile inside, establishing a no-mans land that no one should be inside of, and hence anyone inside will be shot. And a tunnel a mile long would be hard to build, undetected.

.... The Sharon-Peres government, like every other leftist government since 1993, insists on making a distinction between "good" terrorists from Fatah and the Palestinian Authority and "bad" terrorists from the Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Yet the Palestinians themselves make no such distinctions.

Nor do I. The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.

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