5-Jul-06: Preventive Measures... Work

There are many aspects of the news coverage of this war that infuriate us. One of them is the dishonest and cowardly way some reporters and photographers distort the way the Israeli authorities carry out preventive security. Among the favorite cliches of agenda-driven reporters and photographers (see image at right, courtesy of one of many Israel-bashing sources) is the Israeli security check. Nothing captures quite so well their perception of an asymmetrical war. You can count on words like "forced to stand in the heat", "treated rudely by Israeli troops", "seething anger", "humiliation" and "demeaning" sprouting from each sentence. But never the unbearable truth that this is the strategy of last resort and it saves lives on both sides.

A classic of the genre is Robert Fiske's memorable article with the unmemorable title "How Pointless Checkpoints Humiliate the Lions of Palestine, Sending Them on the Road to Vengeance". If you click the link to read it, please keep in mind it was written several weeks before the murder by Hamas terrorists of our fifteen year-old daughter. Ponder also on the fact that Malki's killer hid his explosives inside a guitar case on his back. Under current Israeli security procedures (but not at that time), he would have been stopped and our daughter would be twenty and alive. (The death toll that day was 15, plus 130 injured, plus a young mother left unconscious and still unconscious today.) The appalling Fiske, and perhaps also his editors at Britain's Independent newspaper, would find it hard to see what that has to do with him and his writing. But for us the connection is clear.

For those of us not infected by the Fiskean approach to this war, the role of active, preventive security is probably better appreciated. Events today emphasize their usefulness.

A news blackout was lifted an hour ago, as a result of which we can write that the security forces succeeded this morning in finding and stopping the intended-perpetrators of yet another large-scale terror attack, this one set to be carried out in an Israeli city somewhere in Israel's centre. One of the terrorists was arrested in the Barkan industrial zone following some successful intelligence work. He was wearing an explosive belt, the kind often called a suicide belt. (A pity to use the word suicide, which places all the emphasis on the would-be murderer. We wish the word were avoided in settings like this.) Haaretz says the taxi driver who transported the man to the area was also detained.

Prior to the arrests, forces were deployed throughout the Sharon region (the cities and towns north of Tel-Aviv) as well as in a number of Judea and Samaria communities this morning. Unannounced roadblocks were set up at strategic locations on highways and suspicious vehicles were stopped for inspection. Though most Israelis pay scant attention to general security alert announcements and the local media rarely report them, a high alert had been declared for the Sharon region and then canceled at about 10 this morning - for the best possible reason (i.e. the terrorists were found and stopped).

Other details are still currently banned from being published. But we can report with a reasonable degree of confidence that no one died of humiliation, and the injury toll from being forced to sit in a car being searched by security forces was zero.