Our country’s masochistic nature

The vegetable story is just one example in a pattern of behavior bordering on a mental disorder. Take, for example, the hospital affair. We still have “the old woman in the corridor” and long queues, yet in 2015 Israeli hospitals treated more than 97,000 Arab patients from Judea and Samaria and 31,787 from the Gaza Strip, including relatives of terror leaders—like Ismail Haniyeh, for example.

Instead of being grateful for the electricity it is receiving for free, the Palestinian Authority pays salaries to murderers and undermines Israel at the UN (Photo: AP)

A normal country that repays its enemies that way would have demanded a diplomatic return, or at least public gratitude. That’s not how Palestinian logic works. In return, it denounces the Israelis as “the new Nazis” and their country—where Palestinian patients and Jewish citizens lie side-by-side, bed-by-bed, receiving equal, loyal and devoted treatment from Jewish and Arab doctors—as an apartheid state. Biting the hand that feeds you is evil, but how would you call those who willingly extend their hand to be bitten?

Yiftah Ron-Tal, the director of the Israel Electric Corporation, shared the following complaint about the Palestinians: “An entire public is enjoying electricity in its home without paying for it… If these were Israeli citizens, we would have cut off their power.” The Palestinian Authority owes us NIS 1 billion—the value of the free electricity it has consumed—yet it’s unclear why Ron-Tal is complaining about the Palestinian consumer and has not said a single word of criticism against his own government, which is responsible for this scandal. And the financial aspect is not the main point here, but rather the political and diplomatic insanity.

After all, this is the same Palestinian Authority that instead of being grateful for the help and aid it receives from Israel in every area, pays salaries and pensions to terrorist murderers, spreads anti-Semitic propaganda around the world, undermines us at the United Nations and preaches jihad. This anomaly is something Ron-Tal isn’t dealing with.

Here’s a recent headline: “After the PA dragged us to the UN—it is now receiving 97 new projects in Area C.” In addition, a reinforced autonomy in the areas of electricity, telecommunications and postal services, and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beytenu) has added another approval of 11 construction projects in Area C (while the construction for Jews is frozen). If Dostoyevsky were alive right now, he would name his famous novel “Crime and Salary.”

This syndrome, of “crime and salary,” also characterizes the new toy our prime minister won’t stop talking about with misty eyes: “The regional summit.” What makes the Saudis, the Gulf emirates, the Egyptians and the Jordanians exchange secrets with Israel and receive discreet help from us in the fields of security and high-tech? The details are unknown, but the reason is: All these regimes are shaky on the inside and need Israel as a shield against the threat of Iran and ISIS.

The familiar pattern repeats itself here: They desperately need our help and receive it, and “in return” for our help—we pay them! A normative country would only help Saudi Arabia defend its capital against Iranian missiles under the condition that, for example, it supports Jerusalem’s unity. And it would present similar demands to the rest of its new partners, like refraining from undermining Israel at the UN.

But Israel is doing the opposite: “In return” for the services it gives them, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is delaying the American Embassy’s move to Jerusalem, abandoning Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria and in Jerusalem to an American veto, adopting the Saudi initiative (“with rectifications”) and reciting a formula of “two states minus."

And all this so as not to ruin, God forbid, the chances of the “regional summit,” in which we will be stripped of our assets.

What’s the conclusion? Politicians won’t help this country. It needs a shrink.