David Ben Horin
The writer works as a marketing manager in a hi-tech company in Hadera and loves Israel passionately. He can be found at https://www.proudlycandid.com/ andOne sentence by Prime Minister summed up perfectly why the Arabs will not win against us.
The Arab strategy for dealing with infidels was always simple. Wear them down and wait them out. The Greeks came in with Alexander the Great, and 200 years later, they disappeared. Then came the Romans. They stayed longer. Eventually, Islam brought Arab rule to the entire region.
The Crusaders came and went, but their uninterrupted rule lasted a paltry 96 years. They came back in the form of the British Empire, but didn't last half that time. It seems that Richard the Lionheart was better at holding the land 1,000 years ago than General Allenby or the much-famed modern British Navy.
The Arabs are a Desert People who have employed a desert strategy to successfully and consistently ward off their enemies.
The desert is an environment that shapes your mind. Among the endless sand dunes, time stands still. Once you turn off your phones, close the lights, and just listen, you can hear the whispers of eternity. At most, 25 days a year you have a sandstorm or a heavy rain. The rest of the 340 days of the year it's all the same – cold at night, hot in the day, and lots of sun.
Yesterday and today have little meaning. Salahdin conquered Jerusalem last week. Muhammad conquered everything the month before that.
They call their children Abdullah, Muhammad, and Omar, great warriors who left the stage over 1,500 years ago. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow blur into this picture with no beginning, no end, and no change.
The classic strategy for a people who live on the edge of eternity is to wait out their adversaries.
When those funny looking Jews came here in 1880, the initial Arab reaction was to laugh. They talked Communism, Socialism, and Zionism. They came in funny clothes. For the first 50 years, the Arabs didn't resist the Jews because there was nothing to resist. In their eyes, these European wannabes would last less than the Crusaders.
Their mistake is in forgetting who we are. Our mistake, to a certain extent, is also in forgetting our original and eternal identity.
We, the Jews, are also a desert people.
This desert is our eternity as well. The desert is where our forefathers found G-d. It is where we found freedom. It is where we, as a people, were born, and weaned. We are separated into tribes, the social unit of the desert. Our Torah is designed to guide a desert life, breaking up the monotony of life with a Shabbat every 7 days, a Rosh Chodesh every 30, and festivals for every season.
While there are those among us who fled Israel, more and more of us are willing to stay forever. It is not the Arabs who will wait out the Jews, but the Jews who will wait out Obama, Europe, the American State Department, and all else who would oppose us.
Bibi said it best. In a hot-mike moment, he was caught lamenting to his advisers that we will have to live by the sword for a thousand years.
Nobody wants to, but all of us are prepared to.
If the Arabs want to be our eternal enemies, we will fight them for our land for eternity. The British were never willing to make this commitment. Nor were the Greeks, or the Romans.
The Arabs have met their match. If they plan on waiting, they will have to invest all of their oil money in Timex watches.
Bibi and the Bedouin
Bibi: We are planning a major modernization of the Negev. I would like to extend that modernization to your town, what do you say?
Bedouin: Why would I want to be like you?
Bibi: I am powerful. I am wealthy.
Bedouin: That's my point. You are the most powerful man in the country, and yet you have just one wife. You own a huge mansion in Caesarea, yet you do whatever she tells you.
Bibi: What's your point?
Bedouin: I own a shack, yet I have 12 wives. My shack sits on a sand dune, and my 12 women do whatever I tell them.
Every week you can expect me, David Ben Horin, to be writing this column, Thank God for Israel. Writing and fighting to give my every morsel of wisdom to the good people who love my beloved country. Even to the not so good people who should love my country, it's never too late to see the light. Check out http://www.abetterlifeinisrael.com.