Palestinian terrorism continued to take a toll in Israel this week, with an Israeli soldier being stabbed to death and two women being injured in a stabbing on Monday, and three soldiers and a border police officer injured as a car driven by a Palestinian rammed into them on Tuesday. In his visit to Jerusalem this week, Secretary of State Kerry rightfully observed that “no people anywhere should live with daily violence, with attacks in the streets, with knives or scissors or cars” and that “Israel has every right in the world to defend itself. It has an obligation to defend itself”.
To be sure, Israel is defending itself against the wave of terrorism it is currently experiencing, which, since mid-September, has claimed the lives of 22 Israelis. However, killing Israelis is not the sole objective of these terrorists. As the recent tragic attacks in Paris and Mali indicate, we are witnessing the proliferation of terrorism from the Middle East to the rest of the world.
Whether terrorism strikes the streets of Paris, Tel Aviv, Ankara or Cairo, it has a clear common denominator in all of these instances – radical Islam. This week, the State Department issued a travel advisory alerting U.S. citizens to possible travel risks due to increased terrorist threats from groups like “ISIL (aka Da’esh), al-Qa’ida, Boko Haram, and others, acknowledging, in effect, the threat of a global network of diverse Muslim terrorist groups waging a relentless war on everything we stand for as free and democratic societies.
The ultimate goal of these terrorists is to create a world where women are chattel, gays are hanged, and minorities are either eliminated or persecuted; in other words; a world in which Israel and the United States do not exist. The international community must work together in order to defeat the threat posed by militant radical Islam, and in order to protect and safeguard the values of life and freedom we all cherish.