Radical Islam is the monster, and it is on the march in the Middle East. And those who are suffering the most from radical Islam’s rise there are Muslims themselves, although Christians, Jews, and ethnic minorities of all kinds — gays too — don’t have it much better.

The pictures from Iraq are horrifying, as the world watches in real time radical Islam’s ruthless intentions; as we watch Muslims, Christians, and ethnic minorities stagger to safety under treacherous conditions near the Syrian border; as we watch ethnic cleansing in slow motion live on TV, the governments of the Western world beset by paralysis.These bands of religious thugs have only one thing in mind: total domination.

By whatever name they call themselves — Hamas, al-Qaeda, ISIS, Islamic Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood — these mobsters all want the same thing, and they play by a set of rules that even most mobsters abhor. These religious Nazis know no moral boundaries, and understand only one language: absolute power. They want total control of every aspect of the human being, including whom to pray to.

Especially whom to pray to. Like rapists, the monster wants control not only of its victims’ bodies. It wants control of their minds and souls. Only force will stop this monster. And the monster knows full well that the Western world has lost its appetite for battle — has lost its nerve. And by “the West,” of course, one can only mean America. Because the rest of the civilized world lost its nerve nearly a century ago, and never got it back. Everyone, that is, but Israel.

But that’s because Israel doesn’t have a choice; it is surrounded by the monster. Israelis know it intimately. And Israelis know that to defeat the monster, one must confront it and kill it. Otherwise it will kill them. In their neighborhood, the monster’s name is Hamas. This monster used to use women and children as human bombs. But leave it to Hamas to redefine depravity.

In Gaza last month, Hamas practiced human sacrifice, using women and children as human shields while piling up the body count. Hamas booby-trapped hospitals and schools, and did so with the full knowledge that it would cause the deaths of countless innocents.