The single largest victim group of Islamic terrorism is Muslims. If anyone needed another reminder of this counterintuitive reality, the utterly vicious attack last Friday in the Sinai is a cruel one. The Islamist terrorists murdered at least 309 Muslims and injured more than 128. (These figures are as of Nov. 27, 11:45 a.m.; in the time since we began writing this editorial on Nov. 27, 11 a.m., the number of dead has increased by four.)
The attack was perpetrated on Muslims at prayer, on their holy day. It is akin to the attack earlier last month in Sutherland Springs by a Christian who murdered 26 Christians at prayer on a Sunday morning. The difference is in the number of casualties; the evil is the same. These Egyptians were Muslim and their murderers were Muslim.
Friday’s wasn’t the first attack in the Sinai. According to the Washington Post, citing the Tahrir Institute on Middle East Policy, since July, 2013, at least 1,000 members of Egyptian security forces have been killed in attacks in Sinai.
While Egyptian Islamists kill Muslims with abandon, their co-religionists are certainly not the only target. Islamic radicals in Egypt have also downed a Russian airliner and murdered Egyptian Christian Copts. That’s only in Egypt. Islamic radicals pose an existential threat across the globe.
Security cooperation between Israel and Egypt has increased. The al-Rawda mosque, the site of the deadly attack, is less than two hours from the Israeli border. Cooperation is not only humane but necessary for Israel’s self-preservation.
Israel must prevent a spillover of internecine Egyptian conflicts into its borders. After all, Israel has its own Islamic radicals to deal with. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: Terrorism “will be defeated even more quickly if all countries work against it together.”
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
