Finally, an Israeli government that is not afraid to say, this land is our land.
Romancing the Muslim Brotherhood, as per Bennett/Lapid/Gantz, came to an end when Benjamin Netanyahu emerged triumphant and filled his Cabinet with tough guys who don’t dance with terrorists, nor share leadership with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, nor are apt to play Ring around the Rosie with the PA, Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
Jews on trembling knees. No thanks. It’s been tried. Never works. Oslo, for example.
That’s when, 1993, Israel caved to Leftist pressure from home and abroad and elevated a group of bums and cutthroats, the PLO, to the level of respectable diplomats.
File that too under the category of Never Again.
Do not, then, expect Israel’s newly installed security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to shake the blood-soaked hand of Mahmoud Abbas, duplicating Rabin’s mistake with Arafat.
Instead, Ben-Gvir took a step toward correcting Dayan’s mistake by paying a visit to the Temple Mount, but which Al-Jazeera termed “storming Al-Aqsa.”
They do know how to hyperventilate the language, don’t they? Nothing subtle.
Neither is Ben-Gvir.
From Ben-Gvir’s point of view, So sorry to hurt your feelings, but we are entitled to go wherever we want in our own country.
Next, he’s ordering the police to take down Palestinian Arab flags hoisted anywhere in public places. This after they celebrated the release of one of their own brother terrorists with cheers and flag-waving, a sight that has to be most disturbing to Israelis who have suffered so long from these same people…at home, in their own country.
Nothing says eyesore as a PLO flag waving somewhere in Israel.
Message…Israelis have feelings too and were thus hurt and terribly displeased when the Palestinian Authority, through the UN, summoned Israel to the World Court to be chastised for the “occupation.” No more Mr. Nice Guy, under this administration, the government retaliated with sanctions.
In other words, Abbas is stuck with no money, from Israel, to pay the electric bill…and for whatever it costs to incite adults and teach kids to hate Jews.
Obviously, he did not know that these new guys can’t be fiddled.
These guys play for keeps…and fat chance for a Palestinian Arab embassy in Jerusalem.
Poor Abbas…what happened to the good old days when he could make promises he’d never keep and still get the Israelis to pay up?
They were such an easy mark, such a soft touch, that he could foster his draconian pay to slay program without much consequence for Israelis being murdered at home and on the roads. The Israelis, the leadership that is, turned aside to avoid rocking the boat internationally…and shrugged it off as the price of doing business with an eventual “peace partner.”
Those delusions have expired.
This time, this Israeli government is diverting tax dollars for the PA to the victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism.
What took so long?
Abbas is moaning about the unfairness of it all, and says that drying up the funding for his terrorists and their families could put the Palestinian Authority out of business.
What’s his next move? The UN again? The World Court once more?
Let him try and see what happens now with new sheriffs in town.
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.” Email Jack here.
