OPINION:
The global war on terrorism, a military campaign initiated by the U.S. in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, drew to a gradual conclusion during President Barack Obama’s tenure. However, radical Islam’s war on the West has never ceased.
Over the weekend, three Americans were killed and three wounded in an ambush by an Islamic State group terrorist in Syria’s security forces. The Wall Street Journal reported that the attacker appears to be a former Islamic State group insurgent who had joined Syria’s security forces after the fall of President Bashar Assad as part of an “infiltration operation.” It was a rare deadly attack against American personnel in the region, for which President Trump has vowed retaliation.
On the first night of Hanukkah in Australia, two radicalized militants gunned down and killed at least 15 people, including a 12-year-old girl, at an event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. The revelers — celebrating the festival of light amid darkness with doughnuts, a giant menorah lighting, holiday crafts and menorah kits — were targeted by a father and son, the latter named Naveed Akram, reportedly of Pakistani origin.
Mr. Akram was known to the Australian security services for his connections to the Islamic State group, but they didn’t believe he posed an immediate threat. Early reports indicate he and his father were radicalized at their mosque. Police also found explosives and an Islamic State group flag in their vehicle.
Back in the U.S., a gunman opened fire Saturday during a final exam review for the economics class of a Brown University professor, who also teaches Jewish studies courses, in Providence, Rhode Island, killing two and wounding nine.
The professor’s Brown biography states that she served as economics professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and that her studies include the “economics of immigration, specifically econometric analysis of the outcomes and impacts of immigrants in the United States and Israel,” that she has “testified before Congress and participated in Knesset committee deliberations,” and that she explores “the intersection of economics and Jewish studies.”
She was reportedly not in the classroom at the time of the shooting, and the assailant, at the time of this writing, is still at large.
On Friday, German police arrested five men — three Moroccans, a Syrian and an Egyptian — foiling a planned attack on a Christmas market. Around 8 p.m. that evening, a gunman fired about 20 rounds at a home in Redlands, California, that featured Hanukkah decorations. The homeowner reported that minutes before the shooting, the assailant(s) screamed an antisemitic slur and “Free Palestine.” The Redlands Police Department is investigating the incident as a potential hate crime, with the instigator(s) still on the loose.
In 2016, Mr. Obama explained why he consistently avoided using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” during his presidency. He called it a “political distraction” that would make no difference in U.S. counterterrorism operations.
“If we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims as a broad brush and imply that we are at war with the entire religion, then we are doing the terrorists’ work for them,” he said. Like his liberal counterparts in Australia, Mr. Obama repeatedly denounced Islamophobia and downplayed growing antisemitism.
After the horrific 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, where 29-year-old Omar Mateen fatally shot 49 people and wounded 58 more after swearing allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group, then Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Mr. Obama downplayed his radical Muslim ties. He called for stricter gun control, most notably reinstating the assault weapons ban.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese proposed “tougher gun laws” after the pogrom on Bondi Beach this weekend, the worst attack on the Jewish community since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel. No mention of stricter immigration laws or why a 24-year-old Muslim male who was known to the government for his Islamic State group ties was allowed to possess six firearms in a country where guns are essentially banned.
Liberal politicians lack the moral clarity to denounce clear anti-Western attacks on the Jewish and Christian communities carried out by radical Islamists around the world. They allow antisemitism to grow and fester in our society by defending slogans such as “Globalize the intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as free speech. Violent protests are described as “mostly peaceful,” as liberals sympathize with their anti-colonialism message.
Any mention of antisemitism is paired with a warning against Islamophobia, however disparate attacks on the two communities have become since Oct. 7.
Western civilization is under attack by radical Islamists hell-bent on killing Jews and Christians. Western leaders need to confront this fact as the serious threat that it is or sacrifice our liberal democracies and republics in the name of Allah. There is no in between.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
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