17-Jul-07: The Joke's On Us

The deadly turmoil in Hamas-occupied Palestine during the past month has had some bizarre and dangerous outcomes for us Israelis.

As usually happens, the news coverage is dominated by spin and nonsense. The authentic goings-on away from the flash cameras and press conferences are very different – the mirror opposite – of the way the mainstream media tell it.

A few horrifying examples from Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post.

• 178 gunmen from the routed Al-Aksa Brigades of the Fatah terror organization have agreed to hand in their weapons and pledged to stop being terrorists. Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the powerless Palestinian Authority, has very publicly undertaken to pay them thousands of dollars. It's a joke right? No. Instead of laughing into his poker-player's face, the government of Israel has unbelievably pledged to take these murderers off of its wanted list. They're getting an amnesty for (as Glick so insightfully puts it) participating in a satire. They get to walk without fear for the first time in years.
• Next: "From now on the only Palestinians in Judea and Samaria who will bear arms will be members of Abbas's "official" security forces. But since most of these men are already members of those official militias, and the rest are set to be commissioned in short order, the deal has no impact on any of them." It's like when we played cowboys and Indians as children. You got shot, you fell down, you got up and you said "Now I'm not a cowboy any more. I'm an Indian". Only this is not kindergarten.
• The IDF has been told to end its nightly raids in Judea and Samaria. For five years, those raids resulted in the apprehension of thousands of terrorists, and the disruption of their networks. The murders can now sleep tight. Caroline Glick points out that "it is these raids, rather than Abbas's vaunted efforts to strengthen the so-called peace camp in Palestinian society or the security fence that have prevented suicide bombers from entering Israeli cities with any frequency."
• The 178 terrorists who Olmert just took off the wanted list are themselves the IDF's main targets.
• Zacharia Zudbeidi (pictured above), the Aksa Brigades commander in Jenin and the darling of Israel's Left (due to his well-developed propaganda skills and gutter Hebrew) directed at least two suicide bombings and has so far overseen scores of shooting attacks that cost the lives of dozens of Israeli civilians and soldiers. He's been given immunity. Not this is not a joke. He's free to go about his business in the open, along with hundreds of other murderers and unrepentant practitioners of terror.

Caroline Glick's article starts with this sentence: 'It's all a joke. It's just a joke." That's how the Palestinian terror commanders in Judea and Samaria explained the show they made of handing in their weapons to Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas's official militias over the weekend.

We're sometimes asked why, as victims of terror, we don't reach closure, move on, get a life etc. Developments like these are the reason why. Our experience has turned us into deeply worried observers who no longer get the joke. That's because nothing about this is funny. Not at all.