Illusive Peace: Israel Must Deal with the Realities

JERUSALEM, Israel -- In his Pentagon speech last week, President Barack Obama said the fight against ISIS is "a long-term campaign" and would not be defeated simply by "a military effort."

"Ideologies are not defeated with guns," he said. "They are defeated by better ideas, a more attractive and compelling vision."

Last September, the president said ISIL (ISIS) is not Islamic because "no religion condones the killing of innocents."

An Arab Israeli imam may disagree with him.

Last week, in a mosque in Umm al-Fahm, about 12 miles north of Jenin, imam Mohammed Ad al-Ghani said the "accursed Jew" is behind every catastrophe "afflicting our Islamic nation" and the world. He lambasted Hamas for allegedly cooperating with Israel against ISIS.

To Ghani and others like him, ISIS is the hero and Jews the bad guys.

"A common enemy?! What, have the Jews and Hamas struck an alliance?! Are they now in the same trench, fighting the mujahideen, who raise the Islamic banner of 'there is no God but Allah?!" Ghani said in a sermon posted online and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

"Behind all the catastrophes, all the bloodshed, all the countries that have been invaded and their governments brought down, all the countries that have been burned down, along with their people, and all the blood that is shed in the streets ... behind all these is an accursed Jew," the imam said, reminding his followers that Allah referred to "corruption upon the land…only in reference to the Jews."

How does Israel negotiate peace with an entity purposed to eradicate its existence? How does one navigate in a geopolitical world that denigrates Israel at every turn, accusing the Jewish nation-state of everything from apartheid to murder?

In the more than two decades since the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organization and its protégé, the Palestinian Authority, have honed their strategies. Their leaders have learned to present themselves as victims of interlopers who stole their land and as such, must be condemned and uprooted.

While the U.S. president pontificates on the attributes of Islam, Israel must deal with the reality on its borders and within the country.

Earlier this week, the Israel Defense Forces announced the formation of a new commando brigade to protect its southern and northern borders from infiltration by ISIS-affiliated terror cells, saying in a statement, "Israelis are taking no chances against a declared enemy."

The new brigade is made up of four Special Forces units -- Maglan, Duvdevan, Egoz and Rimon, each uniquely trained. Their specialties include undercover operations deep behind enemy lines, urban warfare, and reconnaissance, anti-guerilla, and desert warfare.

These elite units protect against infiltration by Islamic terror groups such as ISIS and the al-Nusra Front in Syria and Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS in the Sinai, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli leaders, both political and military, must deal with the realities it faces, including a potentially nuclear-armed Iran and the European Union embracing the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement that recognizes a nonexistent Palestinian state while seeking to undermine Israel in the international arena.

This is Israel's reality and its leaders must, of necessity, deal with that reality on the ground.

Now that's job security!