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Eitan Ronel, a
retired lieutenant colonel, returned his rank insignia to the chief of
staff this week, along with a letter full of bitterness. "Human life has
lost its worth and values we were raised on, such as purity of arms, have
become a bad joke," he wrote (Haaretz, January 4).
Ronel's protest over the IDF's conduct in the territories is not the first
and won't be the last. The reserve pilots, the Sayeret Matkal commandos
and the 12th graders got there before him. Before them, there were the
four Shin Bet chiefs and the former head of the Mossad. On top of that,
we've got B'Tselem and Gush Shalom, plus the Beilins and the Sarids and
the Burgs, who are big on peace with the Palestinians and feel their pain.
We have committees of inquiry investigating how and why Palestinian women
and children were killed in this or that operation. We have a High Court
to which every Palestinian can appeal. We have a media that will not allow
the least injustice or wrong to slip by. We have columnists whose hearts
ache along with the Palestinians.
What I would like to know is why there is no one on the other side crying
out against the Palestinian Authority's policy of hatred and bloodshed.
Where is their B'Tselem? Where are the Palestinian refuseniks who object
to the murder of women and children?
How come, when civilians are accidentally killed in one of our military
operations, everyone clamors right away for an investigation, while their
suicide bombers have no qualms about boarding a bus packed with children
or entering a crowded restaurant and blowing themselves up, fully aware of
who they are taking with them? Not only are they not denounced, but their
families are treated with respect and showered with perks and pensions.
While we quarrel bitterly over ways to solve the conflict, the Palestinian
government has only one way, and it begins and ends with violence. The
Palestinians imbibe hatred of Israel with their mothers' milk. From
childhood, they are taught that the Jews must die.
In their textbooks, it doesn't say, of course, that the ones who stole
their rights were the Arab countries, who invaded the land earmarked for
them in the UN partition plan when they attacked in 1948. It doesn't say
that they were liberated from Arab occupation only in 1967 - by Israel.
Actually, it's been easier for them to push for an independent state under
Israeli control than it would ever have been under Jordanian-Egyptian
rule.
Whenever a truly historical moment arises - the Oslo Accords, the Clinton-Barak
initiative - that's when they go on a spree of suicide bombings in the
heart of Israeli population centers. The Palestinians have crossed all the
red lines. They have turned Israeli peaceniks into radicals, rousing them
into angry rebellion against what is happening around them. But while we
respond, while we torture ourselves, while we keep asking ourselves every
second if we haven't gone overboard and maybe it's time to stop, the
Palestinians have never shown the slightest regret over any attack, no
matter how massive, no matter how cruel.
Instead of the Palestinian Authority keeping Hamas in check, it is Hamas
that sets the tone. Even in times of grief and pain, the two peoples are
poles apart. When we bury our dead, we weep quietly at the graveside. For
them, every funeral becomes a raucous demonstration of hatred and
incitement against Israel.
Israeli society is plunged in gritty debate. The government is being
criticized for not doing enough to end the conflict. Before the intifadas,
there were signs that coexistence was possible. Tens of thousands of
Israelis flocked to the territories - to have their teeth fixed, to have
their cars repaired, to do their food shopping. Hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians worked in Israel proper.
Today, the only contact is via the barrel of a gun, the army checkpoint,
the helicopter gunship, the Qassam rocket and the explosive belt. The IDF
reprisal attacks in the territories may be brutal, but there are also
people who feel sorry for the Palestinians' bitter lot.
Here one finds anger mixed with compassion; there, one finds anger mixed
with loathing. Below the surface in Israel, hopes for peace continue to
rumble. For them, hatred is total and blinding. Here they are with
President Bush's road map staring them in the face, giving them a state of
their own. And yet they won't do the one thing that will open the gate for
them: dismantle terrorist infrastructure. Abu Mazen was ousted and Abu Ala
will follow the orders of Arafat, who knows no other way but terror.
It is not a fence that will change things but tearing down the wall of
hatred that the Palestinians have built between the two peoples.
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