When I woke up this morning and heard the news that Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig had been released, I was elated. Elated and amazed, because like many other people I was pretty well convinced they were dead. What a relief! What a happy ending.
Except that it isn't over. More details of this story are going to be coming out over the next hours and days, and now that these men are safe (which is to say, out of Gaza), it's time for some pay back. Will it happen? I doubt it. But for those of us who care about such things, some reckoning is in order.
My elation at Steve and Olaf's release was quickly replaced by outrage when I heard about their forced conversion. The video turned my stomach. It should turn the stomach of every American and every person of whatever nationality who believes that the concepts of liberty and freedom have any value and any meaning. What sort of religion, in this day and age, would demand converts at the point of a gun or the blade of a sword? What sort of religion would even want such "converts?"
In any event, as has been pointed out elsewhere (and it was my first thought after hearing about this "forced" conversion), Centanni and Wiig are now marked men if they retract their coerced statement of faith. That would make them apostates under Islamic doctrine, subject to the death penalty at the hand of any devout Muslim who wishes to glorify Allah by carrying out the sentence. So it isn't over. Not by a long shot.
Here are a few claims that we should bear in mind:
PA security officials said they knew the identity of the kidnappers from day one, but refused to elaborate. They said the kidnappers belonged to one of the local militias in the Gaza Strip that used the name Holy Jihad Brigades as a cover- up.
Hamas officials last week told The Jerusalem Post that the kidnappers belonged to one of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah militias and that they were seeking money and jobs.
They pointed out that dissident PA security officers and Fatah gunmen were behind the kidnapping of more than 20 foreigners in the Gaza Strip over the past two years. All the foreigners were released unharmed after the PA leadership me the demands of the kidnappers, they said. None of those responsible have ever been arrested.
Why not? Whose responsibility is it and what's the hold-up? I've heard speculation that these are the same good folks who murdered three American diplomats back in October, 2003. They haven't been arrested, either. Time for some tough questions.
Now this is Hamas talking, and what they're saying here is that it's really Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah who are the terrorists here, not Hamas, who is claiming hero status in this drama. An interesting tactic, and one that is no doubt designed to confound the Bush administration, which has openly embraced the terrorists of Fatah while shunning those of Hamas.
Meanwhile, we have Islamic Jihad, quietly pursuing the same agenda in the background, as vividly articulated in this report on an IJ summer camp by Avi Issacharoff:
All the Palestinian factions have been talking about social welfare in the past several weeks, including Islamic Jihad. Hisham, one of the camp directors, volunteers to discuss the children's schedule. He prefaces his remarks with the opening chapter of the Koran, Al-Fatiha.
"Gaza suffers from shellings, terrible economic straits and threats to the life of each one of these children day and night," Hisham explains. "So we try to detach them from the bad feelings and the horrors they are exposed to. They come in the morning and have lessons in sports such as soccer or volleyball. Afterward they go to the beach, where they swim and run around, followed by lunch. We don't forget our martyrs, and we teach them about making sacrifices on behalf of the Palestinian people and tell them the truth about Islam."
When asked about this "truth," Hisham launches into a monologue on history from his perspective: "We teach the children the truth. How the Jews persecuted the prophets and tortured them. We stress that the Jews killed and slaughtered Arabs and Palestinians every chance they got. Most important, the children understand that the conflict with the Jews is not over land, but rather over religion. As long as Jews remain here, between the [Jordan] river and the sea, they will be our enemy and we will continue to pursue and kill them. When they leave we won't hurt them."
This is the message. It's the message of Islamic Jihad, but it's also the message of Hamas, and Fatah, and every other organization that operates in the so-called "palestinian territories." It's the only message and it's not going to change. Not if Israel ends even more of the "occupation," not if Israel stops the "incursions," not so long as Israel exists. It's time to get this, and it's time to react, respond, get our heads out of the sand, get mad enough to do something to put an end to it once and for all. By whatever means necessary.
