Since reading this Aussie Dave post yesterday, I’ve had the following thought rattling around in my head:
Israeli soldiers are our children…
Palestinian children are often brainwashed into becoming soldiers …
So what does that make Israeli children? What does that make Israeli teenagers?
The answer should be that as innocent non-combatants, they are off-limits, allowed to stand safely one step further removed from danger. This should be true of Palestinian Arab children as well.
The answer is that to our enemies, it makes them no less legitimate a target. Just as Hamas & Islamic Jihad call civilian Israeli towns like Sderot and Ofakim “military bases” in order to justify firing missiles into our midst, so too, our enemies see any Israeli civilian (or, say, a family sleeping peacefully in their beds) as a legitimate military target.
The starkness of the contrast is striking.
Just as Israeli Jews have raised multiple generations to value and protect not only our own lives, but also the life of the Palestinian Arab who defines the Jew as subhuman, just as we have safeguarded the Muslim holy sites and their right to worship, just as we have done more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare…
Palestinian Arabs have raised multiple generations to value and strive for the glorious sanctified deaths not only of the Jew they so revel in demonizing as sons of apes & pigs, but also of their very own children (in the process, they’ve ‘elevated’ waving the bloody shirt and parading the dead baby that they are responsible for killing, into a ghoulish art form). They have set aflame our holy sites and threatened (or been allowed to threaten by successive Israeli governments) our right to worship at The Temple Mount – our very holiest site.
This is the rotten core which motivates and rationalizes the ongoing double war crime of firing missiles at civilians from among civilians. It isn’t that they don’t follow Israel’s noble example of exhausting all avenues to avoid heartbreaking collateral damage. No damage is collateral when they specifically target schools and shopping malls as prime bombing targets, when they specifically target teenage civilians as prime kidnapping targets.
NO ISRAELI, NO JEW, IS OFF LIMITS. EVER.
NOT BY ACCIDENT.
BUT BY DESIGN.
Shouldn’t we stop being surprised by now?
Shouldn’t we deal with things as they are, instead of wishing upon a star that things already are as we fruitlessly wish them to be? For decades now, the Palestinian emperor has proven to be morally bare, as his new clothes have consisted of but a single item – a suicide terrorist’s bomb belt.
Shouldn’t it be enough to clarify the difference between right and wrong that while we never celebrate the deaths of their innocents, the murder and endangering of ours invariably signals the Pavlovian Palestinian clarion call for savage celebration, for another wild, free candy and baklava-filled rumpus to start?
As the children of Palestinian Arabs and their supporters/enablers unite in vile celebration of the craven kidnapping of 3 innocent Israeli teenagers (with precious few notable exceptions), most of Israel and world Jewry have united in prayer and deep, heart-wrenching anxiety, though the J Street/Haaretz/DickieSilvershmuck crowd has all-too-predictably reverted to their hackneyed, morally narcissistic, Israel-bashing form.
While many IDF soldiers are still themselves teenagers only slightly older than Eyal, Gilad & Naftali, at least some of them have some form of training and/or armament to aid in their defense. Of course, the olive green cotton armor of their IDF uniform is all but mere gossamer, since we know that underneath, they are still just kids sleeping on the bus. But at least we can imagine them protecting themselves to some degree, as they watch over their people and their land. At least they have something… anything… as a barrier between them and all that is evil.
But what of our teenagers?
What about Eyal?
What about Gilad?
What about Naftali?
What armor can they put on?
What weapon do they wield?
What barrier do they possess?
Although our teens know that they will soon take their place in assuming the national honor and burden of neither sleeping nor slumbering as they assume the sacred role of Guardian of Israel, until they receive their bible and their rifle, they are Still. Just. Children.
So as the world endeavors to conjure up the warped logic that will allow it to maintain the all-powerful framework of simpletons, in which Israel is perversely typecast in the ill-fitting role of perma-villain…
As those who do speak out can manage little more than the circumspect, mealy-mouthed, morally relativist utterances like those of B’tselem, UN Sec. Gen. Ban Ki Moon, EU’s execrable Catherine Ashton, and ‘Human Rights’ Watch’s Ken Roth…
As there are even those who object to the use of the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag, because while everyone agrees that Christian Nigerian schoolgirls are innocent and undeserving of being kidnapped (they are), many are on the fence as to whether just maybe them settler kids had it coming…
As even an administration that purports to be our bestest buddy remains silent (still not a peep from Barack Obama, though the White House’s social media flack finally put out this milquetoast tweet a few hours ago)…
We learn once again the oft-repeated lesson that we must not rely on anyone else who keeps writing checks that their body can but won’t cash, who says they will help, yet never seems to stick around when they are called upon to fulfill their commitments (*cough!* UNIFIL *cough!*).
So once again, the IDF will neither sleep nor slumber, we will neither concede nor capitulate, neither cease nor desist, until we bring…
Our brothers,
Our sons,
Our children,
Our boys,
HOME.
