But if we continue being honest, we need also to recognize that the blame for those riots must fall primarily on the past 50 years of Israeli governments who have failed to provide adequate security to the Jewish residents of Samaria and Judea. And, because there is little value in blaming the dead prime ministers and defense ministers who have been at fault, the focus of blame falls on the living who can rectify their failures, including but not limited to the longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Likud party that falls into lockstep behind him.
We cannot and could never have expected much from Labor, Meretz, Gantz, Lapid, Sa’ar, and the Bennett who sold out his voters. The focus and blame must fall squarely on Bibi.
Fair people cannot sit in judgment of Jews who are sitting ducks, getting shot down on Samarian and Judean roads like at a carnival, while the Likud governments issue statements that they will not stand for it anymore — “and this time we mean business . . . or else”
Gimme a break.
Arabs are not idiots. They know what’s what. The more evil they are, the better they gauge what they can get away with. They have watched prisoner exchanges of 1,150 Arab murderers for three deceased Israelis. They see and hear that they get paid by the illegitimate Abu Mazen entity for murdering Jews, or even just for trying. They hear that Arabs in Israeli prisons get good food, a free degree education, excellent television choices (internet?), free gym membership, and even get to have intercourse with Israeli women who practically have gotten pimped-out by security superiors.
Who in fairness can condemn Israeli Huwara rioters unless he has been in their shoes, driven the same road every day and night where Huwaran Arabs wait to shoot Jews dead? It is so easy to sit comfortably in Tel Aviv or the Knesset or Washington, D.C., or in other international cities and condemn Jewish rioters who are beyond exasperated and desperate — and for darned good reason.
If someone believes that Jews do not belong in Judea and Samaria in the first place, OK. That person has laid his cards on the table. Such a person will condemn Jews for acting — even legally — to defend themselves because, under their world view, Jews have no one to blame for the anti-Jewosh murders except themselves.
And it makes sense, if you think about it. German Jews had no one to blame in the 1940’s but themselves for being in Germany. Polish Jews for being in Poland. Hungarian Jews for being in Hungary. Jews in 17th Century Chmielnitzki Poland for being there. Jews in 15th Century Spain had no one but themselves to blame for being in the country of the Spanish Inquisition.
That is one perspective. Indeed, under that paradigm, Jews have no one to blame but themselves for living as Jews. That was indeed the simple message of the Crusaders.
But to the degree that Jews arguably have a right to live somewhere, it is in Israel. And “Israel” includes Judea and Samaria, as it always has since the Patriarchs of Judaism brought our religion to life in cities like Bethel, Shiloh, Hevron, Bethlehem, Shechem, and other cities up and down Judea and Samaria.
Jews have waited for Bibi and the Likud, through his and their years and years and years of governance to do their part to crush domestic Arab terror. That is the first purpose of government: to provide security against enemies domestic and foreign. Iran and Syria and those are foreign. Arabs like those in Huwara and Jenin are domestic. It is impossible to condemn Jewish rioters in Huwara without condemning with even more intensity the governments of Likud that have failed repeatedly to crush Arab terror and that have left Jdews there as sitting ducks, failing even to build the bypass highway on the drawing board.
I do not join with those who take potshots at Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, cynically asking “Nu? What about your promises?” For goodness’ sake, they just got elected. They are doing their fabulous best to jolt the Likud out of paralysis. They are great. But it is time to intensify the demands on Bibi and Likud:
1. Implement the death penalty for Arab terror. Don’t just pass it in Knesset; start terminating them.
2. If the terrorist gets neutralized before trial, and certainly if he has been executed, hold the corpse in custody until all Israeli prisoners of Hamas are freed. Include a pig in each terminated terrorist’s morgue drawer. Publicize to prospective Arab murderers that each of their bodies will lie with a pig corpse, perhaps for years, perhaps forever, depending on Hamas.
3. Arab illegally built houses and villages must be torn down — more and faster — even whole communities if constructed without permits.
4. For every terror attack resulting in a death, a new Jewish community should be legally established in Judea or Samaria. If Blinken, Biden, the European Union, Russia, the Arab world, the United Nations, or Ben & Jerry’s protests, let them protest. They won’t do anything.
Read that and grasp that: They . . . Will . . . Not . . . Do . . . Anything.They do not care enough. They have enough of their own problems to deal with. Biden, for example, has absolutely no time to deal with Israel. America’s budget is stretched to shreds. The U.S. is funding a Ukraine defense against Russia that has no end in sight. Millions of illegals are teeming across America’s southern border. There are days of thousands of airline cancellations. Crime is out of control in major cities. Inflation is out of whack. For a year, mothers could not get baby formula in America. People are going crazy over first-graders being taught transgender identity at library reading time. China sends spy balloons in the American sky, and plants female spies like Fang Fang in the beds of the likes of House Intelligence Committee member Eric Swalwell. The Transportation Secretary was the last person to visit the scene of yet another toxic train crash, in a small town named — appropriately enough, but not for the Palestine you hear about from Arabs — East Palestine, Ohio.
If anyone in Israel thinks Blinken and Biden are going to do anything about Israel building more Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria, or destroying ten times more illegal Arab homes, that person simply does not grasp what is going on in America right now.
5. For every terror attack — death or no death resulting, like these things where a teenager stabs someone — all Identity Certificates (teudot zehut) should be confiscated permanently from all the attacker’s family members. For the purpose of this rule, a “family member” should include the terrorist’s parents, grandparents, great-grandparents if still in circulation, brothers and sisters (if married, with their respective spouses and offspring), all uncles, all aunts, and all cousins (if married, with their respective spouses and offspring).
The Government further should cut off all social welfare benefits from all those decertified relatives. Thus, they would lose stipends for children, health care benefits, maternity benefits, old-age pensions, disability pensions, unemployment benefits, and low-income support.
And then they all should be expelled from Israel as soon as practicable. Ideally, they should be dropped off across the border in Syria or in Qatar. Gaza will also do. And what will Biden and Blinken do? See Paragraph 4.
There is more, but this is where it must start.
Rioters in Huwara must be brought to trial. Justice requires it, for Zion shall be redeemed with justice. If convicted, they must be given suspended sentences with strict warnings that they better not do it again — or else. Just as Ehud Barak used to warn Arafat during that First Intifada that he better stop it — or else.
The ones who must do a severe cheshbon hanefesh — introspection — are those in Likud. The Left is irrelevant, to the degree that some of them even have a nefesh to cheshbon. Bennett defined himself out of the picture. Gideon Sa’ar, the sore loser who sought the Likud leadership in a primary and was whupped fair-and-square, so he started a leftist party of fellow sore losers — is irrelevant. Liberman is expanding his empire with tens of thousands of imported non-Jews from his Mother Russia. Zev Elkin, who loves to jump in with tweets mocking the Government whenever something happens that disappoints the right wing, is irrelevant and should be told: “You no play-a the game; you no make-a the rules.”
But the Likud must act. Or else. Give the residents of Samaria and Judea reason to believe the army will provide security on earth, even as G-d provides Ultimate Security for the Nation from above. Re-plant that olive orchard that Gallant evilly uprooted — and double it. Name it for that power-crazy nut job who Gideon Sa’ar installed as the so-called “Attorney-General.” Better yet: fire her already.
But remember: the rioters did the wrong thing. They all should be given fair trials and, if convicted, should be given suspended sentences and promise not to do it again.
And if the Likud and Netanyahu keep doing the wrong thing by continued inaction and non-feasance, then people who voted for Likud should promise not to do that again.
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