I used to drive my car from Jerusalem all the way through Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin up to the Galilee. It didn't occur to me that an arab would throw a rock at my car. This was until the first intifada in 1987 when on its first day, a badly aimed rock did hit my car when going through an arab town.
As sometimes happened I had earlier misread the map (easy to do as the roads in and out of arab villages although clearly marked on the map, were not distinguishable on the ground). Normally after a friendly greeting (in english, although the car's number plates were Israeli) an arab man would direct me. That day I had noticed a strange look in the man's eyes.
Of course there had been the odd terror attack which claimed the lives of jews, but the everyday terror didn't occur, a terror whereby jews travelling in Judea and Samaria or even past certain arab villages in Israel can expect barrages of rocks to come their way.
In those days arabs and jews in Judea and Samaria could freely mix. I would even stop my car and do some shopping in an arab town. To be sure I didn't take risks as the threat of terror was always there, but this generalized fear by jews of falling victim to arab terror when coming into arab sights in Judea and Samaria had not yet come about.
In those days there was a fear amongst arabs that if a jew was attacked, there would be a price to pay. These were the days when Israel cared for its own citizens' human rights above those of an aggressive and murderous arab enemy.
This was when the Israeli government and the average Israeli still remembered arab threats to exterminate all jews, and its earlier fears that maybe Israel was not strong enough to defend itself, to survive the arab onslaught. When Israel did survive, and spectacularly, arabs knew that when they attacked jews, they would always pay a price.
But nowadays Israel is well and truly on the back foot. Arabs riot in Judea and Samaria, they disrupt israeli roads with constant rock attacks interspersed with occasional rifle fire, they knife jews at will, frustrate the IDF patrols (with the aid of hundreds of european and US youths spending their gap year baiting jews) and generally make life a misery for people living in the ancient jewish homelands.
Britain had an answer in the 1930's. When arab terrorists would shoot up cars and murder travellers, a warning would be given to the village head, that if the attacks reoccurred, the village would be blown up. A terrible thing nowadays, collective punishment, a War Crime, a Crime Against Humanity, yet the threats worked, and the brutal arab terror of 1936-39 was prevented.
Jewish settlements continued to be attacked because the Haganah mostly kept to a policy of 'havlaga', of restraint, of only defending jewish kibbutzim. Orde Wingate taught the jews the fallacy of this, instructing his jewish Special Night Patrols to wait outside arab villages to shoot up the armed terrorists as they left for their nightly attacks. The terror ceased, for a while, and then began again in 1947 for a while.
Now the terror is back because Israel is drunk on human rights, for its enemy. Instead of going into villages and making wholesale arrests of the leaders of these terror bands, of imprisoning the operatives and destroying their houses, the IDF is on full scale retreat. When firebombs and rocks are thrown at soldiers, they may only fire at the attackers if their lives are in certain and imminent danger. And many soldiers prefer to run away than fire their gun, for fear of causing an 'incident', of having to answer to their commander for an arab terrorist killed or wounded.
Where once orchards or houses being used to hide those who attacked jews would be bulldozed, the IDF will arrange convoys to pass them, or put armour plating on buses and cars.
This static defense policy is not just practised in Judea and Samaria but invades the minds of Israel's generals and policy makers. Israel must not do anything which will cause casualties amongst arabs, take away their 'human rights', or upset the world and its biased media.
So when attacked jews have to hunker down. Rather than take the war to the enemy and flush out the Hamas nests, Israel developed the Iron Dome, a system which although excellent, is also very expensive, and gives out the wrong message, the same one that jews in ghettos in Minsk and in Hebron in 1929 gave out, that to attack jews is a cost-free enterprise. You might not kill a jew today, might not have been able to batter down his door, but at least you can go home and rest, and then try it again tomorrow with your friends as you know exactly where the jew lives.
So now we have the idiocy of the IDF building a road so that jews in Judea and Samaria will be taken out of the range of stone throwers! Millions of dollars will be expended on a totally unnecessary road, because arab stone throwers use houses as cover to launch their attacks from.
Any sane mind would say such houses should be removed so that a clear zone can be created along the road, but no, Israeli tax payers must foot the bill for another act of appeasement. And arabs will find a new arena to attack jews from. And the jewish army will come up with another clever and expensive way to avoid any harm to arabs terrorizing jews.
Meanwhile the army and police crack down on jews who defend themselves, confiscating weapons and arresting those who fire in defense of their lives.
I sometimes wonder if Israel, fantastic country that it is, has a death wish or just wishes to have a fight for its very survival every few years.
When referring to arab states, Golda Meir once said that peace will come when arabs love their children more than they hate Israel.
Maybe this should be adapted to, peace with palestinian arabs will come when Israel loves its own people more than the exaggerated human rights those who commit terror against it.
And Kerry wants Israel to make concessions to the arabs. Let him solve the Iraqi and Syrian bloodletting first, and show Israel that arab countries can keep their word, can last more than a few years, can live in peace with each other, never mind Israel.
As sometimes happened I had earlier misread the map (easy to do as the roads in and out of arab villages although clearly marked on the map, were not distinguishable on the ground). Normally after a friendly greeting (in english, although the car's number plates were Israeli) an arab man would direct me. That day I had noticed a strange look in the man's eyes.
Of course there had been the odd terror attack which claimed the lives of jews, but the everyday terror didn't occur, a terror whereby jews travelling in Judea and Samaria or even past certain arab villages in Israel can expect barrages of rocks to come their way.
In those days arabs and jews in Judea and Samaria could freely mix. I would even stop my car and do some shopping in an arab town. To be sure I didn't take risks as the threat of terror was always there, but this generalized fear by jews of falling victim to arab terror when coming into arab sights in Judea and Samaria had not yet come about.
In those days there was a fear amongst arabs that if a jew was attacked, there would be a price to pay. These were the days when Israel cared for its own citizens' human rights above those of an aggressive and murderous arab enemy.
This was when the Israeli government and the average Israeli still remembered arab threats to exterminate all jews, and its earlier fears that maybe Israel was not strong enough to defend itself, to survive the arab onslaught. When Israel did survive, and spectacularly, arabs knew that when they attacked jews, they would always pay a price.
But nowadays Israel is well and truly on the back foot. Arabs riot in Judea and Samaria, they disrupt israeli roads with constant rock attacks interspersed with occasional rifle fire, they knife jews at will, frustrate the IDF patrols (with the aid of hundreds of european and US youths spending their gap year baiting jews) and generally make life a misery for people living in the ancient jewish homelands.
Britain had an answer in the 1930's. When arab terrorists would shoot up cars and murder travellers, a warning would be given to the village head, that if the attacks reoccurred, the village would be blown up. A terrible thing nowadays, collective punishment, a War Crime, a Crime Against Humanity, yet the threats worked, and the brutal arab terror of 1936-39 was prevented.
Jewish settlements continued to be attacked because the Haganah mostly kept to a policy of 'havlaga', of restraint, of only defending jewish kibbutzim. Orde Wingate taught the jews the fallacy of this, instructing his jewish Special Night Patrols to wait outside arab villages to shoot up the armed terrorists as they left for their nightly attacks. The terror ceased, for a while, and then began again in 1947 for a while.
Now the terror is back because Israel is drunk on human rights, for its enemy. Instead of going into villages and making wholesale arrests of the leaders of these terror bands, of imprisoning the operatives and destroying their houses, the IDF is on full scale retreat. When firebombs and rocks are thrown at soldiers, they may only fire at the attackers if their lives are in certain and imminent danger. And many soldiers prefer to run away than fire their gun, for fear of causing an 'incident', of having to answer to their commander for an arab terrorist killed or wounded.
Where once orchards or houses being used to hide those who attacked jews would be bulldozed, the IDF will arrange convoys to pass them, or put armour plating on buses and cars.
This static defense policy is not just practised in Judea and Samaria but invades the minds of Israel's generals and policy makers. Israel must not do anything which will cause casualties amongst arabs, take away their 'human rights', or upset the world and its biased media.
So when attacked jews have to hunker down. Rather than take the war to the enemy and flush out the Hamas nests, Israel developed the Iron Dome, a system which although excellent, is also very expensive, and gives out the wrong message, the same one that jews in ghettos in Minsk and in Hebron in 1929 gave out, that to attack jews is a cost-free enterprise. You might not kill a jew today, might not have been able to batter down his door, but at least you can go home and rest, and then try it again tomorrow with your friends as you know exactly where the jew lives.
So now we have the idiocy of the IDF building a road so that jews in Judea and Samaria will be taken out of the range of stone throwers! Millions of dollars will be expended on a totally unnecessary road, because arab stone throwers use houses as cover to launch their attacks from.
Any sane mind would say such houses should be removed so that a clear zone can be created along the road, but no, Israeli tax payers must foot the bill for another act of appeasement. And arabs will find a new arena to attack jews from. And the jewish army will come up with another clever and expensive way to avoid any harm to arabs terrorizing jews.
Meanwhile the army and police crack down on jews who defend themselves, confiscating weapons and arresting those who fire in defense of their lives.
I sometimes wonder if Israel, fantastic country that it is, has a death wish or just wishes to have a fight for its very survival every few years.
When referring to arab states, Golda Meir once said that peace will come when arabs love their children more than they hate Israel.
Maybe this should be adapted to, peace with palestinian arabs will come when Israel loves its own people more than the exaggerated human rights those who commit terror against it.
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By the way, Hamas asked Egypt to cancel its peace treaty with Israel. Morsy would if his country wasn't in such dire straights. He called for jihad just before his election. And Kerry wants Israel to make concessions to the arabs. Let him solve the Iraqi and Syrian bloodletting first, and show Israel that arab countries can keep their word, can last more than a few years, can live in peace with each other, never mind Israel.
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