I'm a bit of a "gymaholic" - I try to go to the gym every day (well, except Shabbat, of course). I was at the gym yesterday and I was on the treadmill. By the treadmills, there are three televisions. They are tuned to three different stations. Being that it was the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, all the stations were showing the same thing - a memorial service at Ground Zero in New York.
I was watching the very moving service, during which they showed the names and pictures of the victims of the World Trade Center bombing. This seemed to me to be very important, because it is a lot easier to dismiss large numbers of dead people as statistics, but it is a lot harder to dismiss them and forget what happened when we see faces and names.
The only problem with all this is the same thing that bothers me about all the pomp and fanfare over the Holocaust Memorial programs that seem to proliferate around Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). People keep saying "Never Again," but the governments of both Israel and the United States (let's not even discuss Europe or Canada) are doing absolutely nothing to ensure that these things will never happen again.
As a matter of fact, both holocausts and terrorist attacks are happening right before our very eyes. Genocide is a reality in parts of Africa, like the Darfur region of the Sudan. And terrorist attacks occur on a regular basis, whether it's a homicide bomber in London or Madrid or Katyusha attacks on Haifa launched from the puppet country of Lebanon.
Observers and analysts who truly see what is happening, and has happened, know exactly what needs to be done. Over the past 50 or so years, the pattern has repeated itself on numerous occasions. The terrorists attack in one way or another, and Israel or the US or some other country (though I can't seem to think of one at the moment) attacks in an effort to eradicate the terrorist threat. After these attacks, which generally do part of the job of uprooting the danger, there are no terrorist attacks for some time. But the enemy retools and rearms, and again we stand at the precipice of war, rarely looking it straight in the eye and dealing with it as though our existence and way of life depend on our vigilance.
The other pattern that has emerged over this period of time is the Neville Chamberlain school of thought. Terrorists attack and the government of the victim country can't get the message out fast enough that all they want to do is whatever it is the terrorists want, whether that entails releasing criminals from their correct "home" in prison, recalling their soldiers from the war front, or simply pressuring Israel to stop defending herself, her citizens and all Jews around the world. After this strategy, one would think peace would be guaranteed, but all the world gets from attempting to placate the Islamofascists is more violence, more deaths, more threats, more murders.
So, where does that leave us? I would hope that one day the majority of the people in the world would realize what needs to be done. Or, barring that, I would hope that at least the leaders of the free world would realize that sometimes there is a good war and a bad peace. Right now, I'd rather be engaged in a good war, one that totally extinguishes the menace that jeopardizes our world, our lives and our freedom.
I consider myself, with pride, an enemy of evil. The leaders of the free world need to stand up and be counted among us.
I was watching the very moving service, during which they showed the names and pictures of the victims of the World Trade Center bombing. This seemed to me to be very important, because it is a lot easier to dismiss large numbers of dead people as statistics, but it is a lot harder to dismiss them and forget what happened when we see faces and names.
The only problem with all this is the same thing that bothers me about all the pomp and fanfare over the Holocaust Memorial programs that seem to proliferate around Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day). People keep saying "Never Again," but the governments of both Israel and the United States (let's not even discuss Europe or Canada) are doing absolutely nothing to ensure that these things will never happen again.
As a matter of fact, both holocausts and terrorist attacks are happening right before our very eyes. Genocide is a reality in parts of Africa, like the Darfur region of the Sudan. And terrorist attacks occur on a regular basis, whether it's a homicide bomber in London or Madrid or Katyusha attacks on Haifa launched from the puppet country of Lebanon.
Observers and analysts who truly see what is happening, and has happened, know exactly what needs to be done. Over the past 50 or so years, the pattern has repeated itself on numerous occasions. The terrorists attack in one way or another, and Israel or the US or some other country (though I can't seem to think of one at the moment) attacks in an effort to eradicate the terrorist threat. After these attacks, which generally do part of the job of uprooting the danger, there are no terrorist attacks for some time. But the enemy retools and rearms, and again we stand at the precipice of war, rarely looking it straight in the eye and dealing with it as though our existence and way of life depend on our vigilance.
The other pattern that has emerged over this period of time is the Neville Chamberlain school of thought. Terrorists attack and the government of the victim country can't get the message out fast enough that all they want to do is whatever it is the terrorists want, whether that entails releasing criminals from their correct "home" in prison, recalling their soldiers from the war front, or simply pressuring Israel to stop defending herself, her citizens and all Jews around the world. After this strategy, one would think peace would be guaranteed, but all the world gets from attempting to placate the Islamofascists is more violence, more deaths, more threats, more murders.
So, where does that leave us? I would hope that one day the majority of the people in the world would realize what needs to be done. Or, barring that, I would hope that at least the leaders of the free world would realize that sometimes there is a good war and a bad peace. Right now, I'd rather be engaged in a good war, one that totally extinguishes the menace that jeopardizes our world, our lives and our freedom.
I consider myself, with pride, an enemy of evil. The leaders of the free world need to stand up and be counted among us.