Unless Israel Defeats Hamas-ISIS, the West is Next

Alejandro Mayorkas, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, reported to Congress this week about increased security threats in the United States following the Hamas-ISIS terrorist attacks of 10/7.

At the same hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray shared a similar warning: “While we work to assist our Israeli colleagues and understand the global implications of the ongoing conflict in Israel, we are paying heightened attention to how the events abroad could directly affect and inspire people to commit violence here in the homeland,” the director said.

The national director of the Secure Community Network (SCN) told the committee, “We have seen historic increases in antisemitic threats and incidents … the 772 incident reports SCN logged in October marks the highest of any month in our nearly 20-year history, a 192% increase from October 2022.”

Tal Schneider reports in the Times of Israel that the Hamas mass abduction event may lead to global copycat attacks. “Israel historically serves as a ‘guinea pig’ for acts of terror,” Reichman University’s Professor Boaz Ganor said.

“What happened on October 7 is unprecedented from an Israeli perspective,” Prof. Ganor said. “The only known international precedent is the abduction of 276 girls by Boko Haram” in Nigeria in 2014. Ganor warned that Israel “is a sandbox for learning terrorist methodology.”

“Since forever, Israel has served as a test case for new terrorist methods and a model for imitation for terrorist organizations worldwide,” Prof. Ganor explained. “This was the case with hostage-taking, airplane hijackings, and even suicide bombings. Therefore, the world must realize, and as soon as possible, that we are currently facing a new type of arch-terrorism — and I have no doubt that we will see similar things in Europe because they have done it here and are subjecting an entire population to terror.”

“The historical record of terrorist organizations underscores that Israel often serves as an ‘experimental ground’ for acts of terror,” Schneider reported. “For instance, the trend of aircraft hijacking was initiated with the 1968 hijacking of an El Al plane to Algeria by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Similarly, incidences such as breaking into a school and taking children hostage date back to 1974, during the Ma’alot terror attack orchestrated by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, resulting in the loss of 28 lives, mostly children from Safed.”

Well aware of the implications for the free world, columnist David French writes in the New York Times, “World pressure, including pressure from diplomats and from the streets, should focus on Hamas. Demand that it end the war by laying down its arms and freeing the hostages.”

French argues that goals for abolishing war dictate that approach. “The goals have been clear — outlaw wars of aggression, enforce the law of war, and preserve the system by defeating aggressors and holding lawbreakers personally accountable for their crimes.”

Writing of Israel’s obligation to succeed in the war against Hamas-ISIS, French writes: “The absence of military resolve in the face of brutal and aggressive war is perhaps the most dangerous. There is no worse way to undermine the world order than to allow aggressors to prevail. We don’t need to refer to the familiar history of Europe in the 1930s to remind us of the extraordinary danger of unchecked military aggression.”

Understanding those realities underscores that Israel is waging a war that will significantly determine if the barbaric Hamas-ISIS terrorist assault of 10/7 is soon replicated in other Western nations.

Some years ago, the Israeli advertising agency, Glickman, Shamir, Samsonov (GSS), developed a campaign designed to help Western audiences recognize the importance of Israel defeating terror locally before similar methods are exported to other parts of the world. Tragically, the campaign has become only more relevant and will soon be promoted on billboards and in social media for Western audiences.

Courtesy Glickman, Shamir, Samsonov.

“Americans, Canadians, Europeans and others must recognize that the IDF is today fighting their war against Hamas-ISIS,” said GSS Chairman Gil Samsonov. “Israeli blood and treasure will largely determine if this barbarism stops here or is seen as successful in which case it’s more likely other jihadist groups will adopt similar tactics throughout the West.”

Israel’s determination to free the hostages, force Hamas-ISIS to lay down their arms, surrender, and free Gaza is as important to the rest of the free world as it is the Israel.

Unless Israel succeeds, the West is next.