Several days have passed since a picture-perfect Gush Etzion day was shattered, when an Arab terrorist brutally

Picture, if you will, a man attacking a seven-year-old child, swinging an axe.

murdered a beautiful 13-year-old boy from Bat Ayin with a pickaxe. A seven-year-old boy was also severely injured, with multiple wounds to his head, and was in the hospital undergoing surgery when I wrote this.

Typically, the media didn't elaborate on the gory details - one headline said only that a boy "died" in an "attack"; but picture, if you will, a man attacking a seven-year-old child, swinging an axe blade at his small skull. Picture a 13-year-old child being repeatedly bludgeoned by an axe-wielding terrorist. The media may inform us that a "Jewish boy dies in terrorist attack", or maybe of an "attack by militant at Jewish settlement."

It is important to get past those typically-bland mediaspeak headlines and acknowledge the truth: the level of raw cruelty involved in such a murder (or "act of terror" in mediaspeak) is beyond the imagination of most of us.

"How could someone do such a thing?" people ask. "It is beyond belief," people say. Normal people just cannot comprehend such a barbaric attack.

Normal people also cannot comprehend how a terrorist could walk into a yeshiva study hall in Jerusalem last year with a machine gun and open fire, murdering eight young men as they sat at their desks learning Torah. Nor can they comprehend how a terrorist could walk into a crowded pizzeria and detonate a bomb, knowing that the smiling families all around him enjoying their lunch would soon be blown to bits. They cannot fathom how two boys exploring a cave near their home could be bludgeoned to death by rocks that terrorists threw at them.

"How awful," people say; and then the people - you, me - go about our lives as if terrorist attacks are just random events that sprout up once in a while, shock us, and then melt into the news after a couple of days, as we resume "normal life". I could go on and on - unfortunately, there are no lack of examples here to choose from. Do we not see a pattern here?

Let us ask ourselves how many more innocent people must die before we accept the truth? How many more terrorist attacks must we suffer? Yet another family is ripped apart, as we do what? Continue removing roadblocks as "goodwill gestures" to the Palestinians? Continue making "concessions for peace"? Continue to naively believe that we must give and give some more of our Divine homeland away for the sake of "peace", to to a people whose clearly stated goal is nothing short of our complete and utter destruction?

The message of Thursday's attack, and all the above-mentioned attacks, must be clear first and foremost to each and every member of Israeli society. These attacks are not "random" incidents. They are premeditated acts and they are carefully planned. They are not random "flukes" that occur when unstable people suddenly go berserk. And while we're on it, let us be clear that they are not few in number - for each "successful" murder attack, there are countless more that have, by the grace of G-d, been averted, which we never even hear about as they are

These terrorist attacks are products of a society that glorifies death.

rarely reported.

All of these terrorist attacks are products of a society that glorifies death, a culture that hangs posters of suicide bombers in the rooms of their children. A society where four-year-olds are taught that Jews are evil and must be killed, and that Israel must be destroyed, on their children's TV programs and in their kindergartens. This is who we are dealing with - and the minds of decent people just refuse to "get it". But until we do "get it", we shall unfortunately see only more of the same barbarism that we are reeling from today.

I am still angry, and I want to write more, but I need to go finish cleaning my kitchen for Pesach before the kids get home. The family of Shlomo Nativ, H.y.d., should be doing the same now, but instead they sitting shiv'a for their dear son. Shlomo is buried in the same cemetery in which Avraham David Mozes (a 15-year-old Efrat resident murdered in the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva attack last year) is buried.

Dear Jews, when will we wake up and realize that it doesn't have to be this way?