Today’s attack reinforces a feeling that permeates Israeli society: the country and the Jewish people are one mistake away from total destruction.
I took a class at Harvard on Modern Jewish History in 1986. The class was sparsely populated with all Jewish guys except for one woman who was in the process of converting to Judaism. On the first day of class, Professor Cooperman asked out of the blue, “How many of you think that it could happen here?” Being Harvard-types, we asked what “it” was. He refused to define it but asked the question again. Every hand went up. He was shocked. These were American Jews forty years after the Holocaust in the most Jewish-tolerant country in history. Yet, every hand went up. A sunny day today does not mean that there won't be thunderstorms tomorrow.
Today’s Hamas attack against southern Israel was a shocker, apparently to the intelligence and military leaders of Israel as well. I was at prayers with my sons this morning. We started around 6 in the morning, and around 8, just before finishing up, there was an air raid siren. I remember the air raid siren back in Wilmette, Illinois—every Wednesday at noon it would go off, so as to make sure that we were prepared for some future Soviet attack. My wife, who had served in the IDF, taught me that an “up and down” air raid siren was a sign of war. And this was an up and down siren that went on for some time. Before the Sabbath/Holiday, there had been no suggestion of an attack, or escalating violence around Gaza. But after the first siren, warning sirens went off that meant that rockets were on their way to Jerusalem. A few minutes after each siren, one heard the explosions of the Iron Dome missiles sent to take out the attacking projectile. These warning sirens went off all morning and there were not many people in the street. As of this writing, missiles continue to fall on all parts of Israel.
Thirty years ago, Secretary of State James Baker had the gall to tell Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir that when Israel would get serious about peace, he should call the State Department switchboard, kindly providing the telephone number in a televised speech before Congress. Before Baker, Henry Kissinger famously slowed down weapons deliveries during the Yom Kippur War until Golda Meir threatened use of nuclear weapons, to which Richard Nixon responded by sending loaded C130 planes to Israel every half hour. Barack Obama liked to talk about Israel taking “risks for peace” and notably stopping the flow of Hellfire missiles in the middle of a flare-up between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Israelis were horrified by this move, but Obama tended to see Israel as a very strong military power and thus felt he could tweak its weapons inventory.
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So why have august American leaders seen Israel as being slow to take risks or unwilling to make peace? The short answer is that Israelis are paranoid and rightly so. When little Hamas men started popping up in Israeli wheat fields in the 2014 war, Israelis were suddenly introduced to cross-border terror tunnels that no one had ever discussed before. Israelis are not interested in mass-suicide and Abba Eben described the 1948 borders to which a peace deal was supposed to require as “the Auschwitz borders.” Israelis fear for attacks like the one performed by Hamas today. At the time of writing, there are 150 dead, 1,000 wounded and tens of Israelis held prisoner in Gaza. What good are F-35’s, probable nuclear weapons, advanced submarines, tanks and the like when such an attack can take place? Where was the intelligence? Israel has hundreds or maybe thousands of Palestinians on the payroll in Gaza. When a terror leader is killed in his apartment, this generally happens after someone has informed the Israelis of his location. Why was there no intelligence on a coordinated attack involving dozens or hundreds of armed terrorists?
The situation in Gaza is enough to justify Kafka’s collected writings being kept in Israel. I remember when Hamas won the local elections nearly 20 years ago. Trucks filled with Israeli produce stood idle outside of Gaza’s gates. The head of the Kibbutz organization was terribly concerned with fruit spoiling by not being let into the strip. Israeli companies provide gasoline as well as heating oil to the residents of Gaza, including its terrorists. Israel provides water and electricity. My lawyers once sued Israel to stop the Israeli post office from exchanging bills from Gaza: when the Israeli shekel-denominated bills became worn out, Israel would send a Brinks-type truck filled with new bills to replace the old ones. Israeli companies and the state are making billions of dollars on Gaza. Do you know of any other country in the world that allows rockets to be shot at its citizens and does not wipe out the threat? Israel is a country of geniuses but does not have a clue on how to deal with an enemy as those before us did. General Curtis LeMay tried daylight target-specific bombing in Japan and quickly learned that it did not work. He moved to nighttime area destruction and brought Japan to its knees. If Israel cannot muster the will to crush and destroy the terrorists in Gaza, firstly they will act again as soon as they are back up to strength and Hezbollah and other organizations will learn that Israel can be attacked.
So please understand why Israel does not jump head-first into some peace agreement with the Palestinians. The latter were offered twice peace deals that they rejected. Israelis are paranoid that the army and the leadership will screw up, and today proves that they are not wrong. We should know real peace and G-d willing, soon.
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