After Iron Dome, ‘go to the source’

With Soviet-sponsored subversion, guerrilla warfare, and subversion plaguing the planet in 1981, President Reagan and his administration took office vowing to “go to the source” to crush the pestilence.

It ended a decade later, successfully, after the Reagan Doctrine exploited the Soviet Union’s internal crises and kicked the legs out from under the Soviet empire and the Communist Party.

In the Senate, Joe Biden and John Kerry fought Reagan every step of the way.

Almost halfway around the world, Israel is up against two strategic enemies: the Islamist regime in Iran and the terrorist group Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Israel has been going to the source in Iran, its most immediate existential threat. The mullahs’ nuclear missile infrastructure has been suffering a string of losses lately.

But there’s another source to confront. As this week’s Hamas missile attacks have shown, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood remains busy terrorizing Israel’s civilian population and targeting its infrastructure.

Iron Dome, Israel’s miraculous version of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative to destroy enemy ballistic missiles, has been doing its job.

Shooting down missiles after they’ve launched is Israel’s last line of defense.

Even if it destroys all of Hamas’ missiles, Israel’s job isn’t over.

As with Soviet-era terrorism, the problem is as much the terrorists as it is the sponsors.

In the case of Hamas, the source is the terrorists’ primary state sponsor: Qatar.

Ruled by a jihadist one-man regime that’s fantastically wealthy from natural gas, Qatar has had it both ways for a long time. On the one hand, it has sponsored jihadist terrorism and Muslim Brotherhood subversion around the world. It funded and provided sanctuary to terrorists who murdered Americans. It knew the United States would look the other way.

It knew because it had provided its al Udeid military base for the US Central Command. And because it lavished a fortune on politicians, lobbyists, think tanks, universities, retired diplomats and generals, and other hacks and grifters – Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, pro-Trump and anti-Trump – to buy or rent their support. Or at least to get their silence.

And to acts as agents of influence to destroy the careers of those who called out Qatar as a state-sponsor of terrorism.

Qatar has judiciously used its cash to buy both American politicians and jihadist terrorists.

With the Biden-Harris administration showing favor toward the mullahs in Iran, Israel knows it’s window of opportunity is closing.

With Biden-Harris and their handlers leaning heavily toward the Muslim Brotherhood that seeks to subvert all the Arab countries except Qatar, Israel’s new Arab friends are in danger.

The Gulf Arabs won’t act on their own, of course. Politics are complicated there. But some of them could quietly help, or at least look the other way, as they often do.

Israel can handle its interests quite well on its own. It doesn’t need the US. And the US would be wise not to get drawn in.

But striking back against Hamas alone isn’t going to solve much. It’s time for Israel to go to the source.