When thousands of rockets are launched at Israel…this means war.
But when “only” hundreds of rockets go crashing into Israel…everybody relax. This means peace.
Or in the language of the Left – in either case, those would be “mostly peaceful” missiles, just as “mostly peaceful” protesters burned down American cities one after another.
In Portland and Seattle, the good folks won’t go near downtown for fear of the mostly peaceful mobs.
The mobs have set up their own country there and elsewhere for the sake of equality and diversity, the result being a state within a state.
Why then, here it is, in our own backyard, a “two-state solution.”
So how has that been working out? Violence, lawlessness, chaos and misery all around, which brings us to Gaza, and 2005, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon thought he had it figured out how best to achieve peace and security with the Palestinian Arabs. He’d give them Gaza. If things worked out, Gaza would be utopia.
To make it happen, first things first. The Jews living there, happy and prosperous, would have to be removed, by force, if necessary.
It was necessary.
“Why should we go anywhere?” asked the Israelis of Gush Katif/Gaza. “This is our home.”
Too bad, said Sharon. For reasons of equality and diversity, no Jews allowed…and on August 26, all Jews were removed from the region, resisters beaten.
The Palestinian Authority moved in, invited, guns blazing, and then destroyed everything of value the Israelis had left behind…miles of state-of-the-art agriculture, plus schools, hospitals and synagogues, of course…bulldozed. Dayan surrendered the Temple Mount, flashpoint number one since 1948, and Gaza, flashpoint number two, was Sharon’s doing.
In both cases, how the Palestinian Arabs say thank you.
The PA held on for a while, but were no match for Hamas, which moved in (2007) and took over Gaza with even bigger guns… and it’s been raining rockets on Israel ever since.
People notice Gaza Wars only when they are prime time. Previous to this one, 2021, there was 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014, all the result of Hamas firing thousands of rockets into Israel, and spiking worldwide anti-Semitism nearly as much as today. Hardly anyone gives a damn what happens before and after, when it is routine for Hamas to send in its rockets at a rate of, say, 200 a week.
Every week.
For 14 years.
Some people do notice. Those would be the million and a half Israelis who live on the border with Gaza…and live half their lives in bomb shelters.
That rates no coverage even below the fold.
To them, the media, it is tranquil.
Nor does the world pay attention when Fatah and the PA summon their people to commit murder; congratulates them, honors them, and pays them when they do.
That gets no mention from the bleeding-heart networks…and not a word from Bernie Sanders and the Squad.
Cleverly, when it gets too quiet, Mahmoud Abbas stirs things up on the Temple Mount. When Israeli police are called in to quell the rioting, Abbas gets his wish.
The nations perk up…and blame the police…and a new round of riots gets fueled.
We haven’t mentioned Hezbollah armed to the teeth, and Iran raring to go with genocidal intent.
Nor have we mentioned balloon and kite terrorism, another regular feature from Hamas, saved for the weekends.
From one place to another, Israel is at war every day.
But it only counts as news when Israel fights back.
Otherwise, it is peaceful in Israel. Except to the Jews who live there.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah.” For that and his 1960s epic “The Days of the Bitter End,” contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com
