The Lessons of the Eisner Affair
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Although watching a young Danish tourist getting whacked in the face by an M16 rifle is certainly not a pleasant site and tends to make one cringe, viewing the slightly extended video of the incident simply made my blood boil. For rather than being engaged in the normal activities that soldiers are engaged in, Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner and his comrades had to deal with what appeared to be an obviously planned provocation: crowds of people all around, large signs saying “Stop Ethnic Cleansing”, flashing cameras everywhere and sneering cyclists refusing to disperse. Thus, it came as no surprise that when one of these “innocent” young chaps decided to bump into a soldier with his bicycle and initiate the whole fracas, a very good soldier fell for the trap.
The whole incident is sickening for several reasons. For starters, these people take advantage of the fact that only in Israel – not in America, not in a European country and certainly not in an Arab country – can they get away with such nonsense. They know this and they flaunt it in our face. However, much more infuriating is the fact that we even let such people into our country in the first place. Don’t we have any self respect? Then on top of this, rather than having the police who are trained for such ordeals deal with the whole mess, we foolishly dump it on our soldiers. However the most irritating of all, especially in light of the above, is how several of our illustrious political and military leaders were quick to condemn Shalom Eisner. One can only wonder in cynicism if these same people, as well as the others who quickly denounced Eisner, lifted a voice in protest or shed a tear when viewing the events in Amona a few years back, a particularly gory affair that in comparison made the recent event with Shalom Eisner look like a Lassie episode.