Jews are famous for trying to avoid problems by paying for them. When Yitzchak Shamir was prime minister and the first “intifada” was in full swing, rather than simply shoot the hooligans and be done with the problem, he chose to avoid creating “bad publicity” by allowing the stoning to continue and arranging for the government to pay for all the damages and to equip cars with stone proof plastic windows. Not only did this very expensive decision fail to solve the problem, it only exacerbated it. It emboldened our enemies to upgrade their stoning attacks to bullets and bombs.

Again, rather than being done with the problem by destroying our enemies, bullet proof buses were purchased and most Jews stopped driving their cars! It seems that to purchase bullet proof cars would be more than the budget could handle.

Just as the plastic windows for our cars did not appease our enemies, the bullet proof buses may have made riding the roads a little safer, but still did not stop the attacks and the murders.

Again, rather than honestly face the problem and vanquish our enemies, our leaders continued to seek some kind of compromise to try to appease them and stop the terror. They ignored a fact which every child knows. When you appease bullies it only makes them bolder. Peres actually sat with Arafat and promised him a state. The State of Israel gave weapons and bases on Jewish soil to the PLO and was surprised when they used both to attack Jews.

Again, rather than learn from bitter experience, we continued efforts to pacify. Rather than take back the guns and the bases and throw our enemies out of our country, we permitted them to keep all that we gave them and built new roads so we could travel in relative safety. It cost a fortune and, in the end, really didn’t make travel much safer.

Today the government finally is beginning to understand that there is no compromise which will enable us to live in peace with our enemies. But, once again, they fail to muster the courage to throw them out. Instead a “brilliant” new idea has been conceived. We are going to build a huge wall around ourselves to protect us from our enemies! The cost of this wall is more expensive than anything we have tried before, but, aside from the many other reasons why it will not help, it fails to separate Jews from Israeli Arabs who hate us just as much as their brothers on the other side of the wall and who have participated in many of the suicide murders. So, after wasting billions more dollars we still will not have solved the problem.

If some Arabs wish to call themselves “Palestinians” that is their right. But we Jews are under no obligation either to recognize that contrived entity, or to find them a place to live. It is high time for our leaders to worry at least as much about the Jewish population of Israel as it does about our Arab enemies. Consistent terror is not something one learns to live with. It is something which our government is obligated to completely destroy. No normal government will sit down and negotiate anything with murderers. Let us, at long last, understand that we are at war with those whose only goal is to destroy us. Our only option is to destroy them first. So let’s stop fooling ourselves and stop wasting lives and money. We don’t need a wall. We need a quick and ruthless war.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2003 and is filed under opinion.