Today, with the death of 19 Israelis, and over 50 hospitalized; with body parts strewn over the pavement of Jerusalem — the city all people agree is holy — I realized why Israel’s enemies are winning.
We Israelis are simply too conflicted. We wake up in the morning, and we have to deal with our health system, with unemployment, with caring for our elderly and crippled and deaf. We have to find funding for abused children, and deal with our educational system. We have to worry about our economy, and try to encourage tourism. We worry about appearing well on CNN and BBC, and we worry, sincerely, about hurting innocent people, or even saying untrue or unkind things about the Muslims that live within our borders.
But our enemies have no such conflicts. They don’t think about how to feed their people, or get them jobs. They couldn’t care less about educating their children to live productive lives, or finding shelters for their abused women (since 99% are abused, there is no point).
No, all the our enemies do all day, every day, is figure out how to kill. They work on better bombs. On convincing the gullible to carry them. On transferring funds from Iran and Europe to buy the materials, and securing fax numbers to disseminate the latest baby-killing plan to their numerous cells in Gaza and the West Bank.
They don’t worry about bad press. Why should they? They can and have done anything, crossed every red line, broken every rule of civilized behavior without consequence: they’ve used Red Cross ambulances to ferry suicide bombers and grenades, blown up babies in their carriages, have snipers target the foreheads of 10 month olds in their mothers’ arms, blown up schoolbusses, pizza parlors, hotels full of elderly survivors about to celebrate Passover….
Why should they worry? They have their PR plan in place: Saeb Erekat will simply repeat that they are not responsible. They don’t have the weapons, the manpower, the you-name it, and CNN and Sky and the BBC will broadcast it like it’s news, instead of outdated propaganda. They will broadcast it without questioning a word, as if the PLO didn’t use the arms Israel gave them for terrorist attacks, as if they were never aware of the Karin A, as if they never saw the documents with Arafat’s signature authorizing suicide bomber payments.
So, with no concern for their people’s health care, or education or their economy; with no conscience, no morals, no pressure from a so-called civilized world or an inquiring and independent press, they have the luxury of single-mindedness. All day, every day they are Murder, Inc. supported by the world press, financed by the Saudis and Iranians and Iraqis, who also have nothing better to do with their time. And each day we see the results. More dead. More nails per lung and heart and skull.
More success breeds more money. After all, that’s the business they are in. A bloodless day, is a day they don’t get paid by their devout Muslim employers. And so, up the corporate ladder they go: thinking up better ways to kill, more effective bombs, more outrageous targets. And doing it full-time.
We Israelis don’t have the luxury of ignoring our people’s needs. But unless we get rid of some of our complexes, and begin fighting back full-time, we simply can’t win.