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July 2, 2006
A Lesson For America: 'Israel Will Either Defeat Is Enemies Or Be Defeated By Them'
Topics: War on TerrorIs the Israeli experience in appeasing terrorists and failing to continue to actively fight terrorism on all fronts, providing a critical lesson for America?
... THIRTY YEARS AGO this week, on July 4, 1976, Israel carried out one of the most spectacular rescue missions in history -- the raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda that freed more than 100 Jewish hostages being held by Arab and German terrorists. A team of commandos led by Yonatan Netanyahu secretly flew more than 2,000 miles, landing at Entebbe in the dead of night and taking the terrorists and the Ugandan soldiers guarding the airfield by surprise. In a whirlwind attack, the Israelis killed the terrorists, rescued the hostages, and destroyed 11 of Uganda's Soviet-supplied MiG fighters to prevent pursuit. Then, just 58 minutes after they had touched down, they lifted off for the eight-hour flight home. The only rescuer to die in the operation was Netanyahu, whose heroism would become the stuff of Israeli legend.... Israel's operation in Gaza comes less than a year after its unilateral retreat last summer, when more than 8,000 Jews were expelled from the homes and communities some of them had lived in for decades. This, Israelis were told, would mean ``disengagement" from their enemies -- the Palestinians would have all of Gaza to themselves and violence would be thwarted by the security fence separating them from Israel. ``If this will be done, then everything will be changed," Ehud Olmert, a key architect of the plan, promised in a speech last June. Israel would be better off without Gaza than it ever was with it. But the surrender of Gaza didn't appease Hamas and Fatah. Instead, it convinced them that Israelis were weak, that terrorism worked -- and that more terrorism would work even better.
... So more terrorism followed. ``In just the past two weeks," I wrote last September, ``a Palestinian knifed a Jewish student to death in Jerusalem's Old City, an Israeli policemen was stabbed in the throat by an Arab in Hebron, Kassam rockets were fired from Gaza into the southern Israeli town of Sderot, a suicide bomber blew himself up in Beersheba's crowded bus station, a Katyusha missile launched from Lebanon exploded in the Israeli village of Margaliot, a firebomb was thrown at an Israeli vehicle on a highway outside Jerusalem, and a 14-year-old boy from Nablus was caught with three bombs."Read more...... In the months since then, the Palestinian war against Israel has continued without letup. All that changed was the frontline -- with the Jewish settlements and soldiers gone, it moved right up to the border, making it easier than ever for attacks to penetrate Israeli territory. The Gaza security fence has been no panacea. Sderot and other towns in southern Israel have been bombarded by hundreds of rockets fired over the fence. The gunmen who abducted Shalit and killed two of his comrades entered Israel by tunneling under the fence.
... But Israel will either defeat its enemies or be defeated by them; ``disengaging" from them is not an option. In 1976, Israelis understood that in their bones. Thirty years later, do they still?
Here in America, we should be asking ourselves the very same question, as we think about what the Israelis are facing as a result of their falilure to recognize that the only answer to terrorists can be their complete defeat, without quarter. We may have not been attacked at home since 9/11, but our inactions and appeasements with terrorists in the name of "privacy rights" and verbal criticism and attacks on our military, such as has been encouraged by our media and liberal Democratic leaders, all but assures that we will be attacked in the future.
Posted by Richard at July 2, 2006 10:58 AM
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