Random beheadings

The phenomenon of "random beheadings" has already begun in western countries.  On May 23,  Lee Rigby, a soldier returning to his barracks in Woolwich London, was run down by two Nigerians, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, in a car and was then stabbed and beheaded by them in broad daylight.  They did not run away, but stayed and told bystanders that this was an act of Islamic retaliation for the killing of Muslims in "our lands."  They were arrested and are still in custody.

On Sept 4 the body of an 83 year old woman, Mrs. Palmira, was found beheaded in her back garden in Edmonton, London. A man who was a convert to Islam, wielding a machete, was later arrested by police after he tried to attack two other people in the area.  On Sept. 26 a man reportedly beheaded one woman and stabbed another at his former workplace in Oklahoma shortly after being fired. The man was then shot by an off-duty police officer.  Both the suspect and the woman who was stabbed are expected to survive.  The suspect, Alton Alexander Nolen, is a 30-year-old man who has been trying to convert his coworkers to Islam, but this beheading was not designated a terrorist act.

Of course, everyone knows about the beheadings of the two US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff in the past months by IS in Syria, in supposed retaliation for the US-led air attacks against IS positions.  Also a British journalist David Haines was beheaded as well as recently the aid worker Alan Henning.  A French photojournalist Hervé Gourdel was also captured and beheaded by IS sympathizers in Algeria.

This is terrorism, the infliction of a sense of terror in the population in every day life by such gruesome acts.  We in Israel know the feeling well from the continuing campaign of terrorism against our civilian population by Palestinian terrorists.  British PM David Cameron described the beheading of Henning as "absolutely barbaric," we feel the same about the random killings of Israelis, such as the barbaric murder of the three Jewish teenagers in June on the West Bank, by Hamas terrorists.  Although the means of killing differ slightly, the effect is the same, the murder of innocent individuals for a political purpose, this is terrorism.