Guest commentary: US, Israel must resist return to middle ages

Islamic terrorists despise freedom, democracy

Why should we fight for people whose names we cannot pronounce? That was essentially what British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said on the eve of World War II when he appeased Adolf Hitler. I was reminded of this quote while reading a recent commentary in this newspaper ("Radical faith does harm," Art Hobson, Jan. 27) in which the writer lamented the United States' support of its allies in the Middle East. Indeed, why should Arkansans care about such a faraway place, such as Israel? Why should they care about Hamas attacking Israel? Or that ISIS is killing Christians and Muslims?

Before answering these questions, let me for a moment tell you about Sayid Qutab. He is the philosophical inspiration and the ideologist behind the Muslim Brotherhood. Qutab spent two years living in an all-American home with a family from Colorado. After leaving the United States, he published a book titled "The America that I Have Seen." In it, he considered Americans superficial, materialistic, with too many individual freedoms. To quote his conclusion, "I hate those Westerners and despise them!" His ideology is the bold, ideological line connecting terrorist organizations, such as al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and Boko Haram, into a modern axis of evil that regards the western values of freedom and democracy as a blasphemy. This connection of hate is the reason Hamas publicly lamented the demise of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whom they considered as nothing less than "the Holy Warrior of Islam." It is also no coincidence that on the very same week that ISIS beheaded American journalist James Foley, we also witnessed Hamas publicly executing 18 Palestinians in the public square of Gaza.

All of these extremists do not hate us (America and Israel) because they are unfamiliar with our values, as some naively believe. The terrible reality is to the contrary. Like Sayyid Qutb, they do know America's and Israel's values of freedom and democracy, but wish to eradicate them and those who dare hold them dear.

Our common, core values of freedom and democracy are the primary reason Israel will always be a real and trustworthy ally of the United States. Israelis, like Americans, are unabashedly proud to be a free nation. Israel, as the only real democracy in the Middle East, is the world's proverbial canary in the coal mine serving as the frontline of this war of freedom and tolerance vs. extremism and tyranny. Remember, terrorists first hijacked Israeli planes before the attacks of September 11th. Terrorists went on shooting rampages against civilians in Israeli cities before they did the same in Paris, Brussels and Copenhagen. And, know that every rocket lobbed into Israel last summer would have been launched at the United States, if they could. Given enough time, they will (i.e., the U.S. Department of Defense reported in April 2012, "Iran may be technically capable of flight-testing an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015.").

We all must fight together this epidemic of the 21st century; this political Ebola that aspires to take humanity back to the Middle Ages. Otherwise, it will spread all over the world.

In the words of the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Ambassador Mier Shlomo is consul general of Israel to the southwest United States.

Commentary on 02/26/2015

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