Sorry, world

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz have apologized. So did the defense minister, and this even before an investigation was carried out, before the whole truth came to light. Because that's the way we are.

It is not my place to stand by their side at this time, but with your permission I would like to add a few apologies of my own, the day after the bombing.

Sorry, world. Sorry for again being bad, and barbaric, and pulverizing. Sorry for again realizing your wild anti-Semitic fantasy, to view us as a real thorn in the flesh of the Middle East, not to mention the entire world.

And all this so that next time there's a bloody terror attack in Spain, Britain, or anywhere else, you can self-righteously sigh and "understand" the motives, because after all the Israelis are at fault for everything.

"It's not us," you'll utter with glee, "it's them." They were the ones who actually also sent the Americans to Iraq, no? They have some group there of the Elders of Zion, which rules the world. We read it somewhere.

Gibson said what everyone thinks

Sorry, Mel Gibson. Sorry for getting upset at you because yesterday you told a police officer in Los Angeles that those damn Jews "are responsible for all the wars in the world," and then angrily asked whether the policeman was also Jewish.

After all, Mel, you only expressed in your drunk, Australian-accented voice what most of the Western world thinks at this time. Those cursed Jews, lousy Jews, damn zhids. In one second, the distance between a leading Hollywood actor and Iran's President Ahmadinejad was cut to zero.

Fortunately, Gibson's countryman, Prime Minister John Howard, salvaged the country's dignity after daring to say that Hizbullah is "not some kind of inspirational liberation organization, it's a terrorist organization" – before being attacked by protesters. There are some rays of light here and there, despite all. And we'll remember them all.

Sorry (late Israeli writer) Ephraim Kishon. Sorry for the years you were boycotted as a "crazy rightist" by those who saw themselves as the literary-cultural establishment in the country, for writing gems that only today do we start to realize were correct - such as the piece describing how the world really loves Israel in the role of the "Jew," the beaten and humiliated one, Tevya-the-Milkman-style.

The world really loves to see us like this, belittled and disparaged. The world really doesn't like the new Jew, the one with the tank. That's a dangerous Jew. It has power and it does what it wishes. In the old Jewish shtetls of eastern Europe there were no tanks. There, under the Polish landowner, we knew our place. You were so right, Ephraim. Sorry.

We don't whine

And sorry, Omer Pesachov. Sorry precious child, you will forever remain seven-years-old. The small body left in the arms of grandma Yehudit at the community of Meron, which nobody in the world remembers. In fact, nobody really reported it.

Sorry, Omer, sorry we did not drag all news agencies crews and foreign correspondents and al-Jazeera to the site and turned to the United Nations Security Council and organized around-the-clock protest rallies and screamed, the second that cursed rocket fell on your home and killed you and grandma.

We didn't do all this, because we're proud of ourselves and our strength. We don't rush to whine to the UN and to the media. We bite our lips and continue, because there's no choice.

So sorry, Omer, because we only need to apologize to you. And only then to the children of Qana.

Guy Benyovits is Ynet's News Editor