Murder They Wrote — and Murder They Did.

 Of course Hamas is responsible for the deaths of the three Israeli teenagers – Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrah.  It doesn’t really matter whether Hamas ordered the assassins to kill these particular Israeli boys. Hamas exhorts the murder of Israelis any time and any place. Murder is its raison d’être.

The Hamas Charter, a crude and archaic manifesto penned by 21^st century fanatics with 12^th century mentalities, gives license — indeed commands, war against any and all Jews (and any and all Christians) who do not see the world as they see it. The Charter, unashamedly, enshrines the notorious, anti-Semitic screed, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Hamas charter lays every calamity, everywhere, anytime at the feet of the Jews and declares that “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims.” “Their scheme,” the Hamas Charter declares “has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their conduct is the best proof of what is said there.”

Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, the League of Nations, every war in history, even the United Nations and its Security Council are all, according to the Hamas Charter, creations of Jews to undermine the rest of the world. “Leaving the circle of conflict with Israel is a major act of treason and it will bring curse on its perpetrators.”

It is a document that could have been penned by Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, over five hundred years ago, but it was penned in our time by men just as evil and just as bloodthirsty.

The Hamas Charter doesn’t merely encourage the killing of Jews — it demands it. “Nothing is loftier or deeper in Nationalism than waging Jihad against the enemy…And this becomes an individual duty binding on every Muslim man and woman; a woman must go out and fight the enemy even without her husband’s authorization, and a slave without his masters’ permission. This principle does not exist under any other regime, and it is a truth not to be questioned.”

The Hamas Charter is reminiscent of the most vitriolic, hateful and deadly ramblings of Julius Streicher’s Der Strummer, the vile Nazi publication, the only mission of which was to inflame deadly passions against the Jews. And just as Der Strummer egged on Germans of every age to attack Jews, The Hamas Charter enshrines killing of Israelis as a noble cause and commends its execution as a religious duty.

Words have consequences, some of which become uncontrollable. They can, and do, regularly metastasize into acts of violence that may or may not be centrally directed.  They were and are, in this case, the harbingers of murder, and they are, in this case, the harbingers of the retribution that is sure to follow.

And for what?  Was the kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli boys merely an aimless act of murder?  We don’t think so. It’s purpose, we believe, was to foment a violent reaction from the Israeli side, which it will no doubt accomplish. Already, a Palestinian teenager has been kidnapped and murdered, presumably as retribution by rogues among the settlers.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately called the murder of the Palestinian boy “despicable,” and vowed to bring those responsible to justice.  The Israeli Defense Forces are urging caution in an effort to keep the murder of the three Israeli teenagers from escalating into a full-blown war.  Hamas on the other hand, issued a remarkably defiant statement. “Blessed be the hands that captured them,” Hamas’s Khaled Meshaal said, according to press reports. “This is a Palestinian duty, the responsibility of the Palestinian people.”

Meshaal has since contacted the chairman of the Arab Summit, Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad, as well as the Yemeni and Sudanese presidents and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak. According to Hamas officials, this was to “inform them of the latest Palestinian developments, and discuss with them the Israeli threats against the West Bank and Gaza, in addition to the responsibility borne by Arab countries to back the Palestinian people.”

Meshaal is reported to have conducted other telephone conversations with the Qatari and Omani foreign ministers to discuss the so-called Israeli threat against the Palestinian people. He invited them to act, on an Arab and international level, to pressure Israel into halting its military operations.”

Meshaal also sent a letter on the morning of June 27 to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, asking him to support the steadfastness and resistance of the Palestinian people in confronting Israel. Meshaal has also held talks with the Russian president’s envoy to the Middle East and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.

President Obama, meanwhile, urged all parties “not to do anything to further destabilize the situation,” while British Prime Minister David Cameron said, “Britain will stand with Israel as it seeks to bring to justice those responsible.”

Whoever kidnapped and then murdered the teenagers did so to add fuel to whatever fire might be simmering in the Middle East.  Israel has enjoyed relative peace and quiet on its borders, no doubt a frustrating reality for its hostile neighbors in the region.  The rest of the Middle East has, for over two years, been enmeshed in a grotesque orgy of bloodletting from North Africa to Egypt to Syria and into Iraq.  Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have been slaughtered and millions have been turned into homeless refugees. The likes of Hamas and others in the region and their idiotic sycophants in the West have long opined that, but for Israel, all would be peaceful in the Levant. But now the world knows that none of the violence endemic to the region, which is certain to continue for a long time to come, has any connection to Israel at all.  So we see the murder of the Israeli boys as a crass and obscene attempt to drag Israel into the fight.  The current bloodletting all over the Middle East is devoid of any connection to Israel and this must be driving Arabists in western countries crazy, and those who preach hatred in the mosques to utter despair.

Israel will be implored to respond with restraint, and she probably will, as she probably should.  We are reminded, however, that those who ask others to turn the other cheek are, more than likely, those who have never been slapped.