While Israel is being bombarded by Hamas and Islamic Jihad with rockets and burning kites, the poor Jews in the Diaspora are being bombarded with biased, anti-Israel news coverage. They are told that Israel is using “disproportionate force,” a phrase we also heard a lot during the last war, Operation Defensive Shield. They are told of the plight of the poor Palestinian refugees “peacefully” protesting their “right of return” – a parody of the term Israel uses to gather in its own Diaspora, chok hashvut, or “the law of return.”
Until 1967, Israel was the little David fighting the mighty Goliath of the Arab world. Today, after the “crime” of success in war and in economic and societal development, it’s the opposite. And so, the narrative is about “unarmed” Palestinians, including a 20-year-woman “medic,” whose “sole” purpose on the “battlefield” was to tend to victims when she was “cruelly” shot dead by an Israeli sniper. Unfortunately, a video of her lobbing a hand grenade toward the Israelis did not make the mainstream news and anyway came too late, after people had already made up their minds.
The news has been dumbed down to the supposed mediocrity of its viewers, going from objectivity to sensationalism to show business, all under the veneer of “journalism.” I wonder if it started with CBS News’ “Sixty Minutes.” I remember the bias of Mike Wallace, decades ago, who returned (twice!) from Syria and found no evidence of persecution of the Jews there. Good going, Mike!
But I stopped watching the news years ago. Even if I did, the version here is Israel, albeit with its own left-wing slant, is far closer to reality than what CNN and MSNBC have to offer. Nevertheless, ignorance is bliss. There are no rocket sirens heard in Jerusalem, no fires are raging (as of this writing), life goes on as usual – except for the usual Jew vs. Jew controversies that always erupt during the period of the Three Weeks, this time about the Eida Hachareidis’ refusal to recognize Ethiopians as Jews, especially with regards to being employed to handle wines without undergoing some sort of conversion ritual. (Barkan wines refused to accept their terms.) Always something.
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Although I am hours away from the “action” in the South, what the Arabs are doing is painful for me, as an avid enthusiast of nature spots in Israel. I’ve been down to the area many times, and the Palestinians have destroyed some pearls. (If they truly love “their” country, why are they burning it down?!)
I have driven many times down Route 232 that goes from Route 3 past religious Kibbutz Alumim and the town of Sderot to Kibbutz Beeri. On the 232, you pass rolling fields of wheat and alfalfa. It is such a quiet area, sparsely populated. Everything seems to slow down. Tension melts away. To paraphrase a blogger in the Times of Israel website, this area is like heaven. It just happens to be right on the verge of hell.
At the entrance of Kibbutz Beeri is a bike rental outfit and some of the most beautiful trails in Israel. Beeri borders the Beeri Nature Reserve, with its moon-like landscape, sulphur pits, and the Beeri Forest. In Beeri itself, you experience acres of wheat, the green stalks waving in the wind, and open blue skies with puffy white clouds, unobstructed by buildings for miles on end: “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain…,” literally.
This paradise – some of it man made, some of it natural, has been burned to the ground. I am afraid to go back.
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Only a few weeks ago, I watched Prime Minister Netanyahu reveal what Israel knew about Iran’s nuclear program. He pointed to a display case full of CDs detailing Iran’s secrets. I was astounded. You wouldn’t have dreamt that the Mossad could have gotten so far as it did. Shortly afterwards, an Iranian drone was shot down over the Golan Heights, and Israel walloped the Iranians, destroying multiple sites in one night of raids. It seemed as if the Iranians had been whipped and were in retreat.
And then the Palestinians, possibly with Iranian aid and support, started flying these cheap kites laden with petrol, and blackened Israel’s fields and forests – along with the black eye Israel received in the press. Hundreds of acres of wheat, fruit trees, and nature reserves were burned – using the cheapest of technologies. It reminded me of the Biblical character Balaam. He was hired by the king of Moab with this grandiose plan to curse the Jewish people. That was miserably foiled. But the enemies of the Jews don’t give up. Balaam came up with a ruse that eventually led to the death of 24,000 Israelites. We must never rest on our laurels.
I knew about the planned Palestinian “March of Return” even before it started. It was being publicized in the press. And I said to myself, the Israelis will blunder big time. They will not handle this properly. With all our advanced weapons systems, university think tanks, and world-class army, we don’t know how to keep the Palestinians from winning points in the media and in world opinion.
The people of the south have stated that by allowing the kite terrorists to do their arson and not killing them the government has abandoned its own citizens. While it is true that the Palestinians are devilishly adept at manipulating world opinion – and anti-Semites are only too happy to latch on to their false narrative – is it really impossible for one of the strongest military machines in the world to stop some cheap kites from burning down the country’s farms and forests?
Where are the calls from the Knesset to set up a commission to investigate this fiasco? Who is to blame here? Lieberman, the “no nonsense, Mr. Tough” politician? Netanyahu? Was there a turf war between the mishmar ha’gvul (border guard) and the army?
Who knows? We can only hope that, next time around, Israel will learn (from President Trump, perhaps?) to defend the land without handicapping itself with political correctness.
