The scene after the New Year’s Eve mass shooting at an Istanbul nightclub. Photo: YouTube.

Most of the victims of the Istanbul nightclub massacre on New Year’s Eve were local and foreign Muslims. Radical Islamic terrorists have shown time and time again that they embrace death and seek to kill, regardless of who the victims are. Turkey was just the latest example of this.

One of the victims in Istanbul was the Israeli Arab teenager Lian Zaher Nasser. Her father had urged her to stay in Israel because he was worried about her safety in Istanbul. The tragic death of Lian was covered extensively in the Israeli media, and Israel’s leaders offered their condolences to her family. The reason is simple: Israel cares tremendously about its citizens, regardless of whether they are Jews, Christians, Druze or Muslims. So much for the myth about “apartheid” in Israel.

In fact, Christians and Muslims are far safer in Israel than anywhere else in the world — especially since Europe is in self-denial about the threat from Muslim extremists. So much for the myth about “Israel threatening Muslims.”

While Obama is obsessing about Jewish homes in Israel, militant Islam is literally tearing the Middle East apart — and most of the victims are Muslims.

“Liberals” conveniently ignore that far more Muslims have been killed by militant Islam than by America or Israel. Unlike the US and Israel, Islamists mainly target innocent Muslim and non-Muslim civilians. The numerous massacres of innocent men, women and children in places like Cairo, Istanbul, Damascus, Aleppo and Baghdad have been largely met by a deafening silence from self-appointed Western “liberals” who never miss an opportunity to condemn and demonize the Jewish state for defending itself.

By refusing to recognize militant Islam as a common enemy, these Western liberals endanger Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Israel is strong enough to withstand Obama’s and the UN’s obsessive hostility towards the Jewish state, but innocent civilians in Europe and the Mideast can’t defend themselves from hate-filled terrorists.

Maybe that’s why President Obama is loathed throughout the Muslim world, other than in Tehran and Ramallah. While former President George W. Bush was accused of fragmenting and dividing the Middle East, Obama has united much of the region — against his own administration.

It is not often that Arab and Israeli leaders agree on something, but the Obama administration’s dangerous pro-Iran policies have resulted in an unprecedented cooperation between moderate Sunni Arab states and Israel.

While most of the free world is celebrating the arrival of 2017, militant Islam is bent on turning back the clock to the Middle Ages. If the free world wants to preserve its way of life for future generations, it must finally recognize the identity of the common enemy and turn the hunter into the hunted.