By Brigitte L. Nacos
Mourning the unspeakable murder spree by Hamas in Southern Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the that “Hamas is worse than ISIS.” When ISIS videotaped the decapitation or burning of hostages at the heights of its so-called Caliphate, some commentators said that “ISIS is worse than Al-Qaeda.”
Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas. They all are violent extremists, terrorists, who deliberately target civilians for political ends.
Hamas, the revitalized ISIS and Al-Qaeda networks, and similar entities use political grievances of the people in whose names their claim to commit violence to further their religious ideology and related political goals.
While their political objectives differ according to their origin, they all are religious zealots.
Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden drew his religious extremism from the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arabian Peninsula. ISIS was formerly Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Hamas was a creation of the Egyptian Brotherhood. Unlike those three Sunni organizations, Hezbollah in Lebanon, a huge Shiite entity, was from the outset sponsored by Iran’s government that also supports Hamas.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah have one common objective: the destruction of the Jewish state.
Al-Qaeda and ISIS have far more ambitious and utopian goals, namely, the violent spread of their religion around the globe. As the self-proclaimed Caliph of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi told his terrorist fold, “Next step Constantinople, then Rome.”
The ISIS flags and Al-Qaeda texts found in possessions of Hamas terrorists after the massacre in Southern Israel revealed the shared inhumanity of all these religious supremacists.
And there is another common denominator: Contrary to secular violent extremists who make great efforts to survive their own terrorist attacks, religious terrorists are not merely willing but eager to die and become martyrs. They die to kill.
Add to this the fact that Hamas is not the usual non-state terrorist outfit. Its military arm resembles a well-equipped guerrilla force that uses civilian Palestinians and hostages as human shields. If Israel decides in favor of moving a ground force into Gaza, IDF soldiers will have to fight a difficult urban war.
And then there is the threat in the North of Israel: Hezbollah. Its military wing is far more powerful than Hamas, controls the South of Lebanon, has a huge number of missiles, and other sophisticated equipment.
While I am writing this post, I see this Yahoo headline on the screen: “Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza is ‘imminent,’ officials say.”
When this happens, one can only hope that this war ends soon and before it escalates.
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