On a war with no name
Give peace a chance? Maybe another time, another place
The center of the country, for now, is deceptively serene. An eerie blanket of routine preoccupies us all.
The Jerusalem Beer Festival opened this week. The annual street basketball tournament took place in city hall square.
Along the Tel Aviv Jerusalem route, security forces are catching the odd Palestinian terrorist here and there. Business as usual. Ours is a reality of tsk tsk and let's open our homes to people from the north
because that is about all we can do.
However, as one Israeli more veteran than I pointed out as we dried off after doing laps in the pool at the nearby kibbutz fitness center, today its the north and the south, in '67 it was Jerusalem under siege as well as the two intifadas we've survived.
Thanks - that sure puts it in perspective.
No end in sight
Many of us have children in the war and for them we all pray that these excruciating hours and days will end soon. We jump every time the phone rings and worry even more when it doesn't.
We know that the end of this is not near. Think we need an international force? Tried it, it failed. The Lebanese army? Scared of its own shadow. The war of no name is a result of the fact that one country in the world has the balls and the brains to root out the terror and won't stop until it’s gone - and that is us.
I'm no fan of George Bush but I give kudos to his administration for being the first to defend our right to do what we need to do. How would you feel if Mexico was lobbing missiles into Texas or Windsor into Detroit? Or if French nationalists in Quebec fired on Ottawa? You'd do what we are doing and probably even more so.
Not about 'occupation'
This is not about the occupation. This is about two terror organizations, Hizbullah and Hamas and their Iranian and Syrian patrons Iran and Syria who want to push Israel into the sea. This is keeping Palestinians in poverty and despair so they'll lose hope and join the extremists.
Where is the moderate voice of Islam to appeal to these groups, to say loudly and clearly that this is not the Moslem way? Only Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, each with its own political agenda, has
denounced the Hizbullah aggression.
Anyway, the French are arrogant about their food and their fashion, the Germans and the British about their soccer and their beer. So we get to be arrogant too, even if it annoys people. Look at all we've achieved in science and technology, the arts, economics, and all while fighting how many wars now? Six? Seven?
How many wars?
We've fought so many wars we're running out of names for them, to say nothing of the terror attacks. Think of what a terrible loss, not only to their families, but to the world. What might these mostly young people have contributed?
So we have to be arrogant about the fact too that the Jewish state has one of the tightest most skilled and courageous militaries in the world. The future of this tiny, beleaguered country rests on the broad shoulders of 18-to-21 year olds who are fighting other 18-to-21 year olds on the other side. Yeah, kids, with guns and uniforms but that's a different story.
Give peace a chance? Wouldn't we love to. Maybe another time, another place.
Idele Ross is a Jerusalem-based writer
