Global Response Needed Against International Terrorism

Reprinted from Daily Alert, November 17, 2015

Pressure Grows for Global Response Against Islamic State after Paris Attacks – Carol E. Lee
World leaders on Monday pledged to seize on the Paris attacks to deepen their involvement in a global campaign against the growing threat of Islamic State. French President Francois Hollande proposed an alliance with Russia and the U.S. to combat the extremists.
    However, the extent of the new effort depends on how many more military resources, such as troops, world leaders are willing to commit. President Obama ruled out large-scale U.S. deployments. French and U.S. officials also said both countries oppose NATO’s involvement in the Syria war, arguing that the current U.S.-led coalition is a better mechanism for prosecuting the war. (Wall Street Journal)

• The World Can’t Choose Which Terrorists It Gets to Support – Moshe Arens
  With all current attention focused on the terror acts committed by ISIS in Paris last Friday, ISIS is not the only terrorist organization engaged in killing innocent civilians. There are not good terrorists and bad terrorists – all terrorists are bad, there is no excuse for terrorism, and all terrorist organizations need to be fought tooth and nail.
      The entire world has condemned the acts of terror committed in Paris. Is there a reason why nobody outside Israel has condemned the murder of Rabbi Litman and his son [on Friday]? The terrorist organizations that direct their activities primarily against Israelis or Jewish targets outside Israel seem to be granted a certain amount of license for their activities by many in the world. The writer served as Israel’s Minister of Defense three times and once as Minister of Foreign Affairs. (Ha’aretz)
• Paris: The New Normal? – Walter Russell Mead
  Regardless of what kind of response the West ultimately launches, military efforts in the wake of the Paris attacks will not spell an end to terrorism. Nothing we do after Paris is going to make the jihad go away. We can (and we should) crush ISIS. But we can’t change the reality that jihadi ideology is alive and well, feeding off the discontent and disempowerment felt so widely in the Islamic world.
      To survive and to thrive, the West will have to become more like Israel: guarding ourselves constantly against a threat that can’t be eliminated. Paris simply reminds us that, like the Israelis, we live in a dangerous world. The peace and security of the Western world all depend on the vigilance of our security forces and the competence of their leaders. (American Interest)
• The Islamist Tantrum – Bret Stephens
  Before Friday’s carnage in Paris, the world was treated to the hideous spectacle of Palestinians knifing Jews in Israel. The supposed motive of these stabbings was a rumor among Palestinians – fanned by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – that the Israeli government intended to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. This was a story the Israeli government adamantly denied and every serious person knew was false. Yet no senior Western leader dared call out Abbas to correct the record. Palestinian tantrums are sanctified tantrums. The violence they breed might be condemned, but the narrative on which they rest has the status of holy writ. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Same Fight Against Radical Islam – Judith Bergman
  Most mainstream media outlets, which usually avoid any mention of the word “terrorism” with regard to terrorist attacks in Israel, found no difficulty in calling the Paris attacks by their rightful name. Agence France Presse published a list of worldwide terror attacks since 9/11. Only one country was completely missing from the list: Israel. The world embraces France with sympathy and solidarity and declarations that this terrorism must be fought hard, even with the same kind of retaliatory airstrikes that the world so intensely deplores when Israel conducts them.
      As Israelis and human beings, we also show solidarity with the French. We only wish this solidarity was truly universal and not something reserved only for Western Europeans or Americans. Israel suffers abuse for daring to defend itself against terrorism, with everyone voicing their opinions on how Israel must “show restraint.” Israel and the rest of the West are fighting the same enemy – radical Islam. Failure to acknowledge this undermines the West’s own fight against it. (Israel Hayom)

Israel Has Always Been on the Side of the Free World in the War Against Terrorism – Tzipi Livni (Jerusalem Post)

• We must understand that the attacks in Paris will not be the last attacks. Those who seek to impose radical Islamist religion by force will not be satisfied until they are victorious; we must stop them.
• Those who believe that these issues begin and end with the situation in Syria must understand that the struggle is about the future of the entire world. Therefore, limited solutions will not help, certainly not in the long term.
• Now is the time to move from defense to massive offense with one clear goal: to uproot the perpetrators of terrorism at their source and eliminate them. This is the directive that international powers must adopt.
• This is a war that the world never wanted to wage, but it must wage it now. Israel is a natural partner in this fight; our country has always been on the side of the free world in the war against terrorism.
  The writer is the co-leader of the Zionist Union party and a former Israeli foreign minister.