Once the Boston Marathon bomber is caught, can you imagine President Obama, Massachusetts Governor Patrick Duval — or any other American citizen — sitting down with the bomber to negotiate over his demands?
Yet, this is exactly what successive American administrations have asked Israel to do — to sit down and negotiate over the demands of people who bomb Israel’s citizens.
Not once.
Not twice.
And not a hundred times.
But countless times — countless bombs — in the middle of cities — targeting civilians. Bombs just like the one in Boston: crude but effective instruments designed to impose maximum human suffering.
The Palestinian Authority is bent out of shape that President Obama did not pay homage at the grave of Yasir Arafat during the president’s recent visit to Israel. Arafat is the man who devised and carried out numerous bombings of exactly the same type as this week’s bomb in Boston. The PA doesn’t get that Obama does get that a terrorist like Arafat is not to be honored.
Boston is shaken up. So is every Marathon organizer. So is everyone else. One bomb and life changes forever. Multiply that by hundreds of such bombs to understand life in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, on Israeli highways and beaches, in Israeli schools and parks.
The heroism demonstrated in Boston, the shock, the mad scramble for cell phone circuits or text messages, the sirens, the shudder running up and down countless families, the horror that friends feel over their friends’ death, and over the suffering of their friends’ families who lost a loved one, the sense of outrage, of determination, of helplessness — welcome to the Israeli scene. Alas, it has come to America. We wish it were otherwise.
We wish there was another way to perceive how outrageous is the suggestion that Israel is intransigent for not wanting to sit down with perpetrators or celebrators of all these bombings.
Take note: 110 Jordanian lawmakers signed a petition to rescind Jordan’s apology for the murder of seven Israeli school girls years ago by a Jordanian. At the time, King Hussein of Jordan apologized profusely. Not so his country’s legislators in 2013. A terrorist attack just like the one in Boston — with the same object, except that the targets were Israelis —and what do Jordan’s lawmakers say? It’s not only all right, but admirable!
That’s who you’re dealing with in the Middle East.
“Sacrifices for peace.” That is what is urged on Israel. The Boston bombing shows exactly what that means: Sacrifice one’s citizens, sacrifice one’s security, sacrifice one’s morality, sacrifice one’s common sense, by sitting down with the perpetrators of, or the defenders of, or the glorifiers of, the murder and the maining of innocent people.
Not to mention, no peace will transpire, no matter what is decided in negotiations, if one side in the negotiations has killed, or approved of the killing of, civilians.
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
