I had planned to write about my humourous trip home from New York on El Al with a middle-aged American dancer, a sheltered Haredi woman straight out of Muncie and moi, but thanks to the obstinate indifference to (Jewish) human life displayed by Hamas and Co., I am now forced to reconsider my original plan.
How the hell am I supposed to talk about the peculiarities of our ad hoc travelling trio under the circumstances? I had such a funny story planned. So now, I am more pissed at Hamas than I was when I heard that they had actually followed through on their long-standing promise to kidnap more Israelis.
Actually, I don't think that pissed off was what I felt at the moment I heard about the three teenage boys -- civilians -- captured while innocently hitch hiking home for Shabbat. I think it could be more accurately described as traumatized and worried sick about those boys and their families.
This incident has hit way too close to home. I also have a 16-year-old son and an 18-year-old son who .... hitchhikes from the Territories. He swears that he only gets rides from within the yeshuv (settlement) where he studies and then, once inside the Green Line, only from the official hitchhiking spot. Right now, I really don't see the difference. I want him to stop hitchhiking and he says it will take him hours to get home if he does not. Yes, I told him, it might take hours, but at least he would get here. I honestly thought he would agree with me but instead he said: "first of all, Ema (mom) things happen on buses too and second, how can we let "them" win? If we stop living our lives, then they automatically do."
The silence on my end was deafening.
In theory I agree with his points. The problem, particularly in the case of the second point, is that I agree ... IN THEORY. IN PRACTICE, I am not feeling so bold and cavalier right now. I am not talking in abstract concepts. I am talking about my son. You know, one of the people in any of our lives for whom a parent would throw themself in front of a bus without an ounce of hesitation?
I do, however, have a question for Abbas and Mashal -- or whoever is in charge in that madhouse. If you want your own country and you want the world to take you seriously as a potential country, then why do you continue to let the inmates run the prison? Or should I say the clowns run the circus? Or the wild animals run the zoo? Why don't you focus on building up your people and your infrastructure instead of constantly looking over the border at us?
Sadly, the answer doesn't really matter because we all know that no matter what the so-called Palestinians (SCP) do, the world is going to line up behind them and suppport their demands. They are going to argue that Israel is responsible for the tragedy it is experiencing yet again.
Yes, a few countries will register a diplomatic slap on the hand, but that's about it.
By the way, where's the Pope who was busy praying at the security wall just a few weeks ago? Was he only praying for the SCP children?
For fuck's sake, they are only boys.
The fact is that the SCP never have to grow up and learn how to behave like civilized people because absolutey no one on Earth (but Israel) demands that of them. The more barbaric they behave, the more likely they are to have their demands met. The western world seems to think it is better to humour them than to challenge them to act like human beings.
It makes me shake my head in utter bewilderment at how entrenched anti-Israel sentiment/anti-Semetism are in the world. I honestly don't get it.
So maybe you do have to keep hitch hiking to defend your sovereignty.
Too bad, my plane story was really good.
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