(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
I'm afraid. I'm not afraid to admit that. I'm afraid.
I'm afraid of the Islamic State, aka ISIS, aka Daesh. It's the only real father who threatens Israel, who threatens the world, who threatens me.
Those who today face this danger with serenity and indifference will regret it.
The year I was born – 1923 – a foolish demagogue with a comedic bard, Adolf Hitler, attempted to launch a violent coup in Munich. It was averted by a handful of policemen, and quickly forgotten. The world had far more important dangers to fight: The huge inflation in Germany. The young Soviet Union. The dangerous competition between the two mighty colonial powers Britain and France. And in 1929 the terrible economic crisis that shattered the world economy.
But the little Munich demagogue had a weapon that was not captured by experienced statesmen and smart politicians: a powerful mind, a mental force. He transformed the humiliation of a great nation into a weapon more effective than air forces and battleships. In a short time – just a few years – he conquered Germany, then all of Europe, and then set out to conquer the whole world.
Several million people perished during the process. Indescribable misery haunted several countries. Not to mention the Holocaust, a crime almost unparalleled in world history.
How did he do it? It was not mainly with political and military power, but with the strength of an idea, a mindset, an explosion of mind.
I witnessed this for the first 25 years of my life. It comes to mind when I see the movement that now calls itself ISIS, the Islamic State.
In early Christian In the 600s, a simple merchant in the god-forsaken Arabian desert had an idea. In a surprisingly short time, he and his allies conquered the merchant's hometown, Mecca, and then the entire Arabian Peninsula. Then he conquered it all fertile crescent, followed by most of the rest of the world – from the Atlantic to Northern India and so on. His followers reached the heart of France and besieged Vienna.
How did a small Arab tribe manage to achieve all this? Not by military superiority, but by the power of an intoxicating new religion, a religion so progressive and liberating that terrestrial powers could not resist.
Against an intoxicating new idea, material weapons are powerless, armies and marines crumble and powerful empires disintegrate by the Byzantine and Persian empires.
"How many divisions does the pope have?" Stalin replied contemptuously when asked about the power of the church. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union was dissolved and the Catholic Church still stands.
Al-Daula Al-Islamiyah, the Islamic State, is a "fundamentalist" movement. The foundation stone is the Islamic State founded by Prophet Mohammed in Medina and Mecca 1400 years ago. This backward setting is a propaganda ploy. How can anyone revive something that existed so many centuries ago?
In reality, ISIS is a very modern movement, a movement created for today and probably for tomorrow. It uses the most up-to-date tools, like the Internet. It is a revolutionary movement, probably the most revolutionary in the world today.
In the run-up to power uses the barbaric methods of the past to achieve very modern goals. They create terror – not the propaganda term "terrorism" used by all governments today to stigmatize the enemy, but actual atrocities, hateful acts, cutting off heads, destroying priceless national taxes. All to create a paralyzing fear in the hearts of their enemies.
The IS movement doesn't really care about Europe, the US or Israel. Not now. They use them as propaganda feeds to achieve their real immediate goal: to conquer the entire Islamic world.
If ISIS succeeds in this, one can only imagine the next step. After the Crusaders conquered Palestine and the surrounding areas, the Kurdish adventurer Salah-a-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin for European ears) set course to unite the Arab world under his leadership. After succeeding in this, he attacked the Crusaders and exterminated them.
They use barbaric methods from past times to achieve very modern goals.
Of course, Saladin was not an ISIS-like advocate for atrocities. He was a deeply human ruler and was therefore honored in European literature (see Walter Scott). But his strategies are known to every Muslim, including the leaders of today's Islamic "caliphate": first uniting the Arabs, then attacking the infidels.
The last 200 Over the years, the Arab world has been humiliated and suppressed. The humiliation has anchored in the souls of Arab boys and girls, even more than the oppression. Once upon a time, the whole world admired Arab civilization and science. In the darkest centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the barbaric West was dazzled by Islamic culture.
No young Arab can avoid comparing the splendor of the former caliphate with the state of today's Arab reality – poverty, underdevelopment, political powerlessness. Formerly underdeveloped countries such as Japan and China have risen again and become world powers. They beat the West in the West's own game, while Arab fighters continue to be powerless and attract the world's disgust. Even a small group of Jews (Jews, of all people!) Beat the Arab countries.
It has built up a huge stock of contempt in the Arab world – unseen and unnoticed by the Western powers.
In such situations, there are two ways. One is the demanding way: to detach from the past and build a modern state. It was the path Mustafa Kemal chose, the Turkish general, who banned the tradition and founded a new Turkish nation. There was a thorough revolution, possibly the most powerful in the 1900th century, which also earned him the title of Ataturk, the father of all Turks.
In the Arab world, an attempt was made to create pan-Arab nationalism – a kind of half-hearted imitation of the Western original. Old Abd-al-Nasser tried, and the idea was easily swept away by Israel.
The other way is to idealize the past and invoke the role of reviving it. This is the path ISIS has chosen, and it is incredibly successful. With little effort, ISIS has taken control of much of Syria and Iraq, wiping out the official borders set by Western imperialists.
Imitators have established deputies all over the Muslim world, attracting thousands of potential warriors from the Muslim ghetto in the east and west.
Now ISIS has started its march to victory. They seem unstoppable.
This is first and mainly because no one seems to understand the danger. Fighting for an idea? To hell with ideas. Ideas are for the intellectuals. Real statesmen look at the facts: How many divisions does ISIS have?
Second, there are several dangers in circulation: the Iranian bomb. The chaos in Syria. The dissolution of Libya. Oil prices. And now we have the huge influx of refugees, most of them from the Muslim world.
As a giant toddler, the United States stands helpless. The country supports an invented secular Syrian opposition that exists only at American universities. Americans fight against ISIS's biggest enemy, the Assad regime. They support the Turkish leader who fights against the Kurds – who fights against ISIS. They bomb ISIS from the air, risk nothing and achieve nothing. No boots on the ground, God forbid.
To be direct: Trying to stop ISIS means supporting the Assad regime. Bashar al-Assad is a disgusting type, but he has kept Syria together, protected the country's many minorities and kept the Israeli border calm. Compared to ISIS, he is an ally. There is also Iran – a stable regime with a political tradition that extends thousands of years back in time, unlike Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others supporting ISIS.
Our own Prime Minister Bibi has an equally innocent understanding of this as a newborn child. He is calculating, shallow and arrogant. His manic obsession with Iran makes him blind to the new reality.
Fascinated by the wolf in front of him, Bibi is unaware of the cruel tiger creeping up behind him.
