Column One: Ilan Halimi and Israel, by Caroline Glick
Excerpts;
“…There is one more aspect of the case that bears note. That is Israel’s reaction to the atrocity. In short, there has been absolutely no official Israeli reaction to the abduction, torture and murder of a Jew in France by a predominantly Muslim terrorist gang that kidnapped, tortured and murdered him because he was a Jew.“
“No Israeli government minister, official or spokesman has condemned his murder. No Israeli official has demanded that the French authorities investigate why the police refused to take anti-Semitism into account during Ilan’s captivity. No Israeli official flew to Paris to participate in Ilan’s funeral or any other memorial or demonstration in his memory. The Foreign Ministry’s Web site makes no mention of his murder. The Israeli Embassy in Paris – which has been without an ambassador for the past several months – only publicly expressed its condolences to the Halimi family on February 23, 10 days after Ilan was found. This, when the French Jewish community considers Halimi’s murder to have been the greatest calamity to have befallen it in recent years; when aliya rates rose 25% last year; and when Ilan’s mother has told reporters that her son had planned to make aliya soon and was just staying in France to save money to finance his move to Israel. For its part, as Michelle Mazel pointed out in The Jerusalem Post yesterday, the French press has noted that the Israeli media has not given the story prominent coverage. Halimi’s murder has not appeared on the front pages of the papers or at the top of the television or radio broadcasts.”
“Although appalling, the absence of an official Israeli outcry against Halimi’s murder is not the least surprising. Today, the unelected Kadima interim government, like the Israeli media, is doing everything in its power to lull the Israeli people into complacency towards the storm of war raging around us. Against the daily barrages of Kassam rockets on southern Israel; nervous reports of al-Qaida setting up shop in Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the ascension of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority; and Iran’s threats of nuclear annihilation, Israel’s citizenry, under the spell of Kadima and the media, appears intent on ignoring the dangers and pretending that what happens to Jews in France has nothing to do with us.”
“Israel’s societal meekness accords well with Kadima’s ideology. Its creed was best expressed by Foreign Minister, Justice Minister and Immigration Minister Tzipi Livni last month at the Herzliya Conference and is best characterized as ‘conditional Zionism.’ In her speech, Livni explained that Israel’s international legitimacy is conditional. Unless a Palestinian state is established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, she warned, Israel will lose its legitimacy as a Jewish state.“
“Throughout the areas, the government, backed by the post-Zionist courts, prohibits Jews from building on land that Jews own. Today, as Moshe Rosenbaum, the mayor of Beit El explains, even receiving a permit to build an extension on a standing house or additional classrooms in a school is all but impossible.“
“While Olmert and Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra have repeatedly condemned Jews for allegedly cutting down trees owned by Arabs in Judea and Samaria, the government has said nothing and done nothing to stop the wholesale destruction of Jewish orchards and national forests in the areas by Palestinians. Over the past several months, in the vicinity of Gush Etzion alone, thousands of Jewish-owned trees have been chopped down by Arab vandals. Two national forests have been laid to waste. Busy directing their energies and attentions at delegitimizing the Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria, the government has ignored Israel’s enemies.“
Excerpts;
“Qassams continue to fall in the south nearly every day, but the media remains silent. Osher Omar, the baby who was wounded by a Qassam returned to his house in the Karmiye mobile home neighborhood, but members of other area kibbutzim are packing their belongings and moving to the center of the country.“
“Has anyone heard about this? How many people know, for example, that Sderot residents, who are also fed up with the Qassams, demonstrated in Jerusalem this week? To the ‘credit’ of the media, it can be said that they never made a big deal about the Qassams landing on Gush Katif. It’s the same old alienation, the same old apathy and indifference, the same old deliberate ignorance of what is far from you or could upset the prevailing wisdom – the ‘proper’ worldview.”
“Ehud Olmert, for example, thought immediately after the disengagement that, “what has changed for the better is that there are 10,000 fewer residents in an area with soldiers defending them with their bodies.” But that statement doesn’t even reach the status of a half-truth. After all, the disengagement brought the threat of Qassams to the threshold of tens of thousands of homes in the areas around Gaza, in the environs of Ashkelon, and soon, heaven forbid (although according to intelligence estimates), the Ashdod area.“
The Rise of Hamas and Decline of Israeli Determination
Excerpts;
“… In Israel’s early years, Israelis manifested the courage and valor of the Israelites of the Book of Joshua. Small militias of Jews defeated the combined military forces of the invading Arab armies in the 1948-9 War of Independence. Modern Israel fought terrorism with a policy of ‘Zero Tolerance’ and in the Sinai campaign of 1956 easily defeated Egyptian forces.”
“A decade later Israelis crushed the combined military might of the Arab world and liberated Jerusalem. They again defeated those same forces in 1973, despite being caught in a surprise attack on Yom Kippur. And Israelis continued to demonstrate courage and resourcefulness in the war against Arab terror, most dramatically with the dramatic rescue at Entebbe.”
“But some time between 1978 and 1992 a great transformation took place. Despite the long track record of military successes, the new generation of Israelis lost its willingness to fight and resist. It convinced itself that capitulation and appeasement are the only paths to peace. It decided that self-abasement is the key ingredient to good relations with its neighbors.”
“Israelis elected leaders who hectored the new generation over their selfishness and bigotry, who insisted that the only reason peace had not yet emerged was that Israelis did not desire it enough.”
Not Getting Along: Religious Students, Civics Lessons
Excerpt;
“‘Everthing that has happened over the past two years,’ Rabbi Gisser said, ‘especially the disengagement, the uprooting and expulsion, and most of all, what happened at Amona – all of this certainly leaves very heavy scars. The students were very involved in these events, and some of them were uprooted themselves, and when they have to learn about proper government in Israel, they simply are unable to really believe in it.‘”