After last week’s horrific terrorist attack in Jerusalem, Hamas spokesman Hossam Badran announced on official Hamas television:
“This is a natural response to the crimes of the occupation and invasion of our land by the Jews …”
Such an obscene statement by a sick Islamic extremist, with absolutely no basis in historical fact, is usually not worthy of a response.
However, after his rejoicing in the brutal terrorist murder of a three-month-old baby in Jerusalem, and the wounding of eight other Israelis today, the question must again be asked—what kinds of savages would justify and glorify the murder of innocent children?
We have experienced this many times before. I immediately think of a former Shiloh resident, five-month-old Yehudah Shoham, critically wounded when terrorists threw a giant rock at his head, as he was sitting in the baby seat with his parents in their car. He died from his wounds a few days later.
Another sad story is the death of 10-month-old Hebron resident Shalhevet Pass, murdered by an Arab sniper that was clearly aiming to kill her.
Then, of course, there is the horrible story of the Fogel family in Itamar, in which more than half the family, including both parents and several of their young children, were murdered in cold blood in their home by terrorist infiltrators.
These painful stories have been repeated too many times and have torn apart far too many families, but the terrorists, who derive the justification for their acts from the sick, Jihadist philosophy that is central in Islam, know no remorse—for Jihad—which in practice means holy war against non-Muslims, rejoices in the death of innocent children.
We Israelis, as most people in Western civilization, find such a mentality shocking. Sometime after my then three-year-old son and I were wounded in a terrorist shooting attack (and miraculously survived), I founded the Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund (SICF) to heal the trauma of the terror victim children and to rebuild the biblical heartland of Israel through those children.
Aside from our main therapeutic and educational projects, SICF sponsors camps for children, where the children learn to swim, to play sports, to play music, and to hike. When Hamas sponsors camps for children, the children are taught to fire rifles at “the Jews and infidels” and to die for “Allah”.
It’s critical for our survival as the nation of Israel, and for the survival of the free world, to remember that we are being confronted with an enemy that has a very different mentality than ours. While we rejoice in our children’s lives, they rejoice in their deaths, and even in the deaths of their own.
We will not be discouraged by their hatred, nor by their love of murder and death. We will not cease to confront them on the front lines of the war on Islamic terrorism and I will continue to call on our political leadership to take forceful action.
With G-d’s help, I have no doubt that despite all of our pain, we will triumph. We will continue to rejoice in life and to build for the future through the children.
David Rubin is former mayor of Shiloh, Israel. He is founder and president of Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund and the author of several books, including Peace for Peace and The Islamic Tsunami. He can be found at www.DavidRubinIsrael.com or at www.ShilohIsraelChildren.org.
For the original article, visit israelnationalnews.com.
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Rabbi Eric Tokajer 
Yael Eckstein 
