A funny thing happened on the way to the demolition of 32 terror tunnels in Hamastan: Israeli society experienced nearly a solid month of internal unity. This would not be worth mentioning if it weren’t so extraordinary. Indeed, in the 37 years that I have lived in the Jewish state, I have never witnessed anything like it, even during wartime.
One could argue that the reason public support for Operation Protective Edge reached a whopping 95 percent was the utter justice of its cause; that the incessant rocket-fire from Gaza, now hitting the center of country, was too much even for the peace utopians to bear.
One could assume that no matter what an Israeli’s personal political leanings, he would see the virtue in defeating an enemy that glorifies death; uses children as canon fodder; abuses women; tortures homosexuals and the disabled; and vows to annihilate the world’s Jews while converting or slaughtering its Christians.
Nevertheless, it is usually impossible to get even those Israelis with similar outlooks to agree on anything, including where to hang a communal clothesline, for more than five minutes. Hence the quip, “Two Jews, three opinions.”
As a result, when almost everyone across the ideological spectrum began to defend the government, it felt as though we were witnessing a miracle.
True, the far Left held demonstrations in which they waved placards calling Israeli Air Force pilots murderers, while the riffraff Right got violent and screamed for “death to the Arabs.” But neither of these expressions of extremism was representative of the general population. On the contrary, the overall sanity, rhetorical restraint and accord of the populace were as palpable as the international community’s condemnations of Israel were predictable.
To add wonderment to the mix, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were practically begging Israel to finish off Hamas. And since none of those regimes would give a hoot about civilian casualties in Gaza, it’s too bad they didn’t do the job themselves. In such an event, as is apparent from every conflict in the Middle East that involves Arabs killing Arabs, the United States, Europe and the United Nations would have looked the other way, at best, and assisted the wrong side at worst.