We aren’t in the midst of a conflict here in Israel.
You read that right. There’s no conflict.
A conflict is inherently an event where two parties are engaged in a fight, a battle, a struggle.
There’s no conflict in Israel right now.
There is terror. Period.
Out and out one-sided terror.
When I see the coverage that the international media offers to what’s happening here, I feel like I’m living inside The Onion, an American digital media company and news satire organization. The coverage is simply too far-fetched to be believed – and yet it’s being believed around the world.
Last week, a well-educated Arab woman walked into a bus station in Afula with a knife and tried to stab a soldier. The soldier got away but she refused to put the knife down, and eventually had to be shot in the legs. The Arab world, showing a picture of her and then a picture of her on the ground, reported that she was killed in cold blood with no justification.
Another day, two brothers aged 13 and 15 set out to stab Jews. After stabbing and critically injuring two people, they were stopped by our forces. The 15 year old was killed. Abbas himself has reported that we killed the 13 year old in cold blood with no justification. Not only did we not kill him, but he’s getting medical attention at this time in our hospital at Hadassah after ripping a 13 year old boy off of his bike and trying to kill him. In the Arab social media world, they have shown a picture of the Arab 13 year old boy who was “just on his way to the mall” and declared that we killed him in cold blood. And yet, this video (which I’ll warn you is very disturbing) shows exactly what those boys were doing that day and why they were out on the street.
There is no conflict here.
There is terror.
In another recent incident, an Arab Israeli, with the same rights and privileges that I experience in Israel (and probably a much higher salary), used his Bezeq company car to crash into a bus stop and savagely kill a 60 year old Rabbi standing there waiting for a bus.
The most stunning piece occurred when Mounir Kleibo, who heads the UN bureau of the International Labor Organization in the Palestinian Territories, was hurt Friday by rock throwing in East Jerusalem. While recovering in an Israeli hospital, he wrote that “Allah will forgive the rock throwers.”
Furthermore, a UN coordinator, Robert Piper, condemned the attack “on a clearly marked United Nations (UN) vehicle traveling on Route 50 in East Jerusalem, which seriously injured a senior UN official.” Meaning that if it hadn’t been a UN car it would have been all right, and justified, but that they shouldn’t have thrown rocks at a clearly marked UN car.
And then, of course, there is this video going around the world that shows Arabs exactly how to stab Jews.
The world has gone mad. And we feel it.
And as we feel it, this is what I know.
I know that I’m putting my purse high up so that my four year old doesn’t find the pepper spray that I’m now carrying around 24/7.
I know that my son is carrying pepper spray as well that I hope he never uses, and that they are giving them self-defense courses at his school.
I know that I’m spending two hours tomorrow in a self-defense course and many hours in the next few weeks becoming more comfortable with the gun that I absolutely do not want to carry.
I know that we are paying thousands of shekels next week to get one of our cars rock proofed (the other one already is) so that we can drive the roads that we live on; the roads that our ancestors have walked on for thousands of years.
I know that I check the news obsessively and check in with my family members even more.
I know that I have to tell my 13 year old that he’s only allowed to look at the news for a few minutes each afternoon and that he’s not allowed to look at videos. Gd only knows how he’s processing all of this.
And I know that my 7 and 9 year olds have been talking about how they would get away from a knife-wielding terrorist.
And I know that amazingly resourceful Israelis have been using everything at their disposal to stop terrorists, from selfie sticks and umbrellas to nunchucks. Really. Read it.
I know that all of this – all of this – would go away if they would just stop. The violence in this entire country would be over if the Arabs would stop being violent. Period.
We would still have a long way to go at that point, and many questions to answer. Again and again, Israel has asked the Arab population to come to the table. We have offered land; we have withdrawn from Gaza; we are willing to try. But the PA has created a situation by using Har Habayit/Al-Aksa as a spark to start the fire of their own making, while lying to their people the entire time. And while keeping their own people from building, creating and dreaming of a better future.
Because violence is so much easier.
This is not a conflict. We aren’t in conflict when I drive down the road praying not to get hit by a rock or a bullet aimed at me.
We aren’t in conflict when I walk the streets, looking behind me at every turn. And we aren’t in conflict when I go to the grocery store and manage to take products off the shelves behind my back so that I have a view of the aisle behind me. We aren’t in conflict when I have to think to myself “Never turn your back, even when you’re picking out tomatoes.”
We aren’t in conflict.
We are being murdered. Period.
And we are alone with this terror as the world evaluates if we are using “excessive force” and if we are “brutalizing” the Arabs murdering us.
And, unless you live here and walk the streets with me each day, you can’t imagine how that feels.
You are so on target. At least so it seems to someone sitting comfortably in the US. I'm going to do what I can, which is pray every day. And I want to do a bit more, so later this year I'm traveling to Israel with my wife. And so are my two older sons and their families. We'll spend some time there with a granddaughter who's there for a year. Unfortunately I'm too old to fight with the IDF, so we'll show our support for the Jewish homeland as best as we can.