Maybe she truly was searching for her medicine bottle in the rubble of Gaza. That may well be the case.
Or maybe she was searching for the missing head of an Israeli soldier so that her grandchildren can continue to play football. After all, those are their Olympics, which they learned to play when they tortured and then played with the remains of two Israeli soldiers who lost their way in Ramallah.
Sorry to be so graphic, but by now, Justice Minister Yosef (Tommy) Lapid's comments are well known, and some of us wonder where his heart is.
Of Israel's actions in Gaza (Operation Rainbow) that have caused homelessness to many terrorists and their bomb-making factories, Minister Lapid focused not on the Israeli soldiers fighting and dying, but on a TV image of an elderly black-robed Arab woman disoriented amid the crossfire.
We all saw that photo, but some of us are still weeping for Danielle Shefi and the Hatuels and we are simply out of tears for the killers and those who make them.
In his generosity for this Palestinian grandmother, Minister Lapid should have first asked himself this question: How many suicide bombers has she produced? Just a guess, but the answer might be "plenty", given the numbers going off the assembly line.
There is hardly anything as ignoble and dangerous as misplaced compassion.
As a Holocaust survivor, Minister Lapid should remember that in his youth, the nations offered not even one element of the 13 Attributes of Mercy that characterize the Jewish people to this day; as, for instance, when Israel has the right and the might to do a Dresden, but chooses, instead, to risk its own soldiers on foot to spare "collateral damage."
As a member of Israeli leadership, Minister Lapid should remember that wrong-headed mercy backfires. "We must be humane and Jewish," said Minister Lapid.
In Rafiah, an Israeli soldier was being just that, Jewish, when he handed food to yet another Palestinian Arab grandmother. His reward? Palestinian terrorists shot him as he was performing his act of charity, his act of being Jewish. Of the troops that ran to his rescue, two were killed.
King Saul's behavior (mercy for the King of Amalek, merciless to his own Jewish High Priests at Nob, whom he executed) is a lesson that one who is merciful to the wicked will ultimately be cruel to the righteous. This is already happening. The news media are using Minister Lapid's ill-chosen remarks to smear the righteous men and women of the IDF, and it's quite a party they're having to the demerit of Israel as a nation, all thanks to Lapid and his Operation Pity The Enemy.
"I am talking about an old woman on all fours looking for her medicine in the rubble of her home and I thought of my grandmother."
That is pretty much the quote that's making the rounds, and making terrorism look good and the fight against it look bad.
Do Israeli leaders know that when they speak badly of the Land and its People it is not private? The world is listening.
The news media pick what is most delicious; and what a delicacy this was from Minister Lapid.
Forgotten in all this tempest is that the Palestinian Arabs have their own roadblocks -- women, children, and grandmothers. That's who they surround themselves with when they go out to do Jihad. They use grandmothers, just like that one, to hide behind and then to photograph.
There was another set-up just like this. The Mohammed Al-Dura incident at Netzarim Junction, which helped set off the Intifada killing spree since September 30, 2000, has since been exposed as a fraud. Sources within Israel's military, plus outside scientific sources, as assembled by the Atlantic Monthly, have proven that 12-year-old Mohammed was not the victim of Israeli fire, but "rather the victim of a cruel plot staged by Palestinian sharpshooters and a Palestinian television cameraman."
We can't be sure whether the Grandma incident was likewise staged. But we can have our doubts as to whether seeing is believing.
About mercy to the wicked, is it permitted to quote the Bible in this age when the Bible is out and the Koran is in? Well, here's a try, from Deuteronomy:
"You shall make no covenant with them [the wicked], nor show mercy unto them." (Lest, it also says, they become a "snare"? and how's that for prophecy come true?)
But if you happen to be a member of Shinui and Scripture is not your thing, the Fourth Geneva Convention makes it clear that "protected persons" may not be used as shields.
Protected persons. That includes Grandma.
Minister Lapid reminds us, inadvertently, that not every grandmother is fit for sainthood, and that not every lawmaker is fit for statecraft.
Or maybe she was searching for the missing head of an Israeli soldier so that her grandchildren can continue to play football. After all, those are their Olympics, which they learned to play when they tortured and then played with the remains of two Israeli soldiers who lost their way in Ramallah.
Sorry to be so graphic, but by now, Justice Minister Yosef (Tommy) Lapid's comments are well known, and some of us wonder where his heart is.
Of Israel's actions in Gaza (Operation Rainbow) that have caused homelessness to many terrorists and their bomb-making factories, Minister Lapid focused not on the Israeli soldiers fighting and dying, but on a TV image of an elderly black-robed Arab woman disoriented amid the crossfire.
We all saw that photo, but some of us are still weeping for Danielle Shefi and the Hatuels and we are simply out of tears for the killers and those who make them.
In his generosity for this Palestinian grandmother, Minister Lapid should have first asked himself this question: How many suicide bombers has she produced? Just a guess, but the answer might be "plenty", given the numbers going off the assembly line.
There is hardly anything as ignoble and dangerous as misplaced compassion.
As a Holocaust survivor, Minister Lapid should remember that in his youth, the nations offered not even one element of the 13 Attributes of Mercy that characterize the Jewish people to this day; as, for instance, when Israel has the right and the might to do a Dresden, but chooses, instead, to risk its own soldiers on foot to spare "collateral damage."
As a member of Israeli leadership, Minister Lapid should remember that wrong-headed mercy backfires. "We must be humane and Jewish," said Minister Lapid.
In Rafiah, an Israeli soldier was being just that, Jewish, when he handed food to yet another Palestinian Arab grandmother. His reward? Palestinian terrorists shot him as he was performing his act of charity, his act of being Jewish. Of the troops that ran to his rescue, two were killed.
King Saul's behavior (mercy for the King of Amalek, merciless to his own Jewish High Priests at Nob, whom he executed) is a lesson that one who is merciful to the wicked will ultimately be cruel to the righteous. This is already happening. The news media are using Minister Lapid's ill-chosen remarks to smear the righteous men and women of the IDF, and it's quite a party they're having to the demerit of Israel as a nation, all thanks to Lapid and his Operation Pity The Enemy.
"I am talking about an old woman on all fours looking for her medicine in the rubble of her home and I thought of my grandmother."
That is pretty much the quote that's making the rounds, and making terrorism look good and the fight against it look bad.
Do Israeli leaders know that when they speak badly of the Land and its People it is not private? The world is listening.
The news media pick what is most delicious; and what a delicacy this was from Minister Lapid.
Forgotten in all this tempest is that the Palestinian Arabs have their own roadblocks -- women, children, and grandmothers. That's who they surround themselves with when they go out to do Jihad. They use grandmothers, just like that one, to hide behind and then to photograph.
There was another set-up just like this. The Mohammed Al-Dura incident at Netzarim Junction, which helped set off the Intifada killing spree since September 30, 2000, has since been exposed as a fraud. Sources within Israel's military, plus outside scientific sources, as assembled by the Atlantic Monthly, have proven that 12-year-old Mohammed was not the victim of Israeli fire, but "rather the victim of a cruel plot staged by Palestinian sharpshooters and a Palestinian television cameraman."
We can't be sure whether the Grandma incident was likewise staged. But we can have our doubts as to whether seeing is believing.
About mercy to the wicked, is it permitted to quote the Bible in this age when the Bible is out and the Koran is in? Well, here's a try, from Deuteronomy:
"You shall make no covenant with them [the wicked], nor show mercy unto them." (Lest, it also says, they become a "snare"? and how's that for prophecy come true?)
But if you happen to be a member of Shinui and Scripture is not your thing, the Fourth Geneva Convention makes it clear that "protected persons" may not be used as shields.
Protected persons. That includes Grandma.
Minister Lapid reminds us, inadvertently, that not every grandmother is fit for sainthood, and that not every lawmaker is fit for statecraft.