If You Can’t Beat Them, Fear Them

The terror attack at a restaurant in downtown Tel-Aviv last Thursday evening killed three civilians and injured fourteen others. But terror attacks do much more than kill innocent people; they terrorize entire populations. The recent spate of terrorist attacks in Israel inundated emotional support call centers with people suffering from anxiety. The atmosphere is so tense that centers remain flooded with calls even on days when there are no attacks. So far, the terror seems to be winning. But it is not because terrorists are good at what they do; it is because we are not doing what we should.

We need to understand that Palestinians have no desire to cohabit with us, let alone live in peace with us. They want us out of here, and they will go to any length to get what they want.

If we cannot, or will not deal with terror and with terrorists the way such people should be dealt with, we should at least offer emotional help at every turn. Either we fight the terrorists, or we fight the consequences of terror, or both. At the moment, I see us doing neither.

We need to understand that Palestinians have no desire to cohabit with us, let alone live in peace with us. They want us out of here, and they will go to any length to get what they want.

We should not be so na?ve as to think that we can live like all other nations. We are not like other nations, and the rest of the nations will painfully remind us every time we forget that.

Our calling, which we have spurned for two thousand years, is to unite among us and set an example of unity above all the differences, divisions, disputes, and hatred. Our calling is not to unite with other nations, but among ourselves. If we forget this and offer them our hand in piece, they bite it to prove to us that we have nothing to expect from them.

When we present the world with such a resilient bond between us, the nations will support our presence here, and we will find peace and security, not only for us, but also for all our Arab neighbors.

Those who disrupt us from uniting among ourselves should be expelled from the country. However, if we try to hit back at those who attack us without working on our unity, we will not be able to repel our attackers. On the contrary, they will grow stronger, more brazen, and more determined, while we will grow weaker and more indecisive until we are driven out of Israel by fear. In fact, this process is already underway in Israel.

There is only one way to resolve the situation positively: to think and act confidently on the military level and on the spiritual level. On the military level, we must kill those who come to kill us, plain and simple. On the spiritual level, we must work with all our might to strengthen our unity. We will earn the world’s approval only when we approve of our being here for the sake of forging an unbreakable union. When we present the world with such a resilient bond between us, the nations will support our presence here, and we will find peace and security, not only for us, but also for all our Arab neighbors.

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The Folly of War

There has been a lot of talk lately about war crimes. The definition of war crimes is very broad, so there are many injustices that fall under the category of war crimes. What used to be customary for past conquerors is now often considered a war crime. To eradicate war crimes, we must abolish war. Since this is currently unrealistic, we should at least spare those who are truly uninvolved, namely children, women, and elderly men. That would be a first step in the right direction.

In ancient times, a victorious king would plunder and take for himself everything his rival king had. It was considered an inalienable right of the triumphant king, and a reward taken for granted.

As humanity’s morals evolved, it determined that such behavior was unacceptable. Since a large part of the population does not make any decisions or take part in the fighting, that part should be excluded from punishment. Particularly, this referred to children, who do not even understand what the war is about, women, who do not participate in the war, and elderly men, who cannot participate in the fighting. All in all, some 70-80 percent of the population should be exempt from punishment or retaliatory actions. This population is also the main focus of the rules that define war crimes, in order to protect those vulnerable and uninvolved populations.

In previous times, wars were largely over territory, since land meant crops, and crops meant provision and wealth. Today, however, territory does not have any role in determining a country’s wealth, so the only incentives left for war are prestige and self-glorification.

While it is understandable that someone would win renown for being a great commander on the battlefield, today’s wars are often fought in cities, in civilian areas, and the majority of casualties are precisely the populations that have nothing to do with the war: children, women, and elderly men. How will a rocket that demolishes an apartment building help the one who fired it win the war?

The self-centered mindset that paying soldiers to fight my wars and blowing my budget on high-tech weapons proves that my ideology is completely irrational. What connection is there between my ideology and killing other people, who may believe something else or believe in nothing at all and want only to live, have children, and lead their lives in peace?

If anything, such a mindset makes my ideology fundamentally flawed. After all, if the result of my ideology is the aspiration to annihilate all other schools of thought and wipe out the people who believe in them, then my ideology is inherently unjust.

The solution to the folly of war will come only when we overthrow our king: our own egoism. We are gradually approaching the realization that egoism is leading humanity to the edge of a cliff. The question is whether we will realize in time that if we let it keep ruling, it will destroy all of us, or wait until we see with our own eyes that there is no limit to what the ego can do. If we wait, the atrocities we have seen so far will be heaven compared to the hell that the ego will bring upon us.