JACK ENGELHARD: BREAKING BAD IN JERUSALEM
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15869#.VE4KrRauRIZ
Israel cannot expect to earn the world’s respect until it learns to respect itself.
This murder would be different. So we thought. There can be no justification. A 3-month-old Hebrew baby was slain in Jerusalem.
Her sweet name runs longer than the coffin in which she was buried, Chaya Zisel Braun.
Her sweet name runs longer than the coffin in which she was buried, Chaya Zisel Braun.
Her killer was a Palestinian Arab who answered the call from his leader, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, a man who provokes a new blood libel each day with cries that grow increasingly shrill and hysterical as if coming from a raving lunatic who needs to be locked up.
This time Abbas shrieked about “Jewish encroachment” on the Temple Mount, referred to Jews as a “herd of cattle” and demanded vengeance “by any means.”
Chaya Zissel paid the price. (Most unbearable is to think of the parents and grandparents who waited and prayed for this precious child.)
Someone else drove the car that purposely bulldozed into a crowd, but Abbas needs to be arrested.
Given the call to violence and the infanticide that came as a result, this time perhaps the world would sober up. All the world loves a baby. This time there would be tears for the victim, sympathy for the Jewish State, an understanding of what Israel is up against, denunciations and unbridled outrage against the bloodlust that motivates Israel’s enemies.
Fat chance. Never can Israel count on winning the world’s sympathy vote.
Instead, the AP ran this howler of a headline: “Israeli police shoot man [the terrorist] in east Jerusalem.” The State Department came up with a boilerplate condolence, at the same time urging “both sides” to get back to the bargaining table – and indeed Israel’s leaders scurried right back to Cairo for further concessions to Hamas.
Contrast that with a terrorist killing in Ottawa, where a sentry was murdered at Canada’s national war memorial. An entire nation came to a stop. This was an assault to Canada’s glorious past — and Chaya Zissel Braun, did she not testify to Israel’s glorious future?
So why the global weeping for Canada and not a tear for Israel?
Part of the reason, we know. Yes, the world loves a baby, but not so much a Jewish baby.
But there is another reason, and Israel itself is to blame. Prime Minister Stephen Harper went straight to the airwaves to galvanize his grieving people.
They needed words of comfort, a message of reassurance, a promise that the government was on the job to protect Canada. Harper delivered. The world noticed Canada’s refusal to be intimidated. Something terrible had happened, a line was crossed and nothing would ever be the same. Do not trifle with my people. Thus spoke the prime minister of Canada.
The prime minister of Israel – did Benjamin Netanyahu bring his nation to a standstill over so terrible a killing?
Except for comments a day later at a memorial service for Gandhi — did he address the nation with words of comfort and rage? Did he warn Israel’s enemies that they would rue the day? Did he swear that a line had been crossed and did he declare that never again means never again? Did he crack down on the Arab riots that continue to terrorize Jerusalem? This was the moment to do so. The world would have no choice but to approve.
Instead there was bickering between the prime minister and the mayor of Jerusalem as to who needs to do more to stop the enemy within.
The rioting continues as if nothing happened.
Another member of Israel’s leadership swore that from now on Israel’s hospitals will stop providing tender love and care to Arab terrorists. Brave words.
Nothing changed. Harper signaled that Canada will never get used to this. Israel signaled that it was just another bad day in the streets of Jerusalem.
Israel cannot expect to earn the world’s respect until it learns to respect itself.
As a first step, Mahmoud Abbas needs to be arrested, charged with incitement to commit infanticide.
This “peace partner” needs to be in jail… and let the world explain why not.
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist, the Middle East/media thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller “Indecent Proposal” that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
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