Excerpts:
“You can take the Jew out of the ghetto, but apparently, you can’t take the ghetto out of the Jew. This is the sad lesson we have learned repeatedly in the last few months.”
“Thinking about this, I was reminded of Menachem Begin’s account of the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland after 2,000 years in exile: ‘Out of blood and fire and tears and ashes a new specimen of human being was born, a specimen completely unknown to the world for over eighteen hundred years, the Fighting Jew. That Jew, whom the world considered dead and buried never to rise again, has arisen. For he has learned that ‘simple truth’ of life and death, and he will never again go down to the sides of the pit and vanish from off the earth.’”
“And yet, almost daily, the spirit of the beaten Jew becomes more in evidence and the fighting Jew fades.”
“Compare Begin’s strong words to the weak and self-serving words of Kadima’s Ehud Olmert: ‘We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies.'”
“We must answer Olmert and the like. More than our being tired of fighting, we must ensure that our enemies become tired of fighting. And we cannot afford to be tired of being courageous. We have no choice but to fight and to win. Though we’d like to make peace with our enemies, until such time as they are willing to make peace with us, we must continue to defeat them.”
Commentary:
Paula Stern has nailed the Israeli mindset right-on-the-button once again. This commentary goes hand-in-hand with this author’s earlier post, “Israelis Sleeping Through Political Campaign”. MB