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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 30, 2008 /3 Teves 5769

It's time once more to blame the Jews

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Israelis finally get enough of the constant rain of rockets on their border towns and villages, fired by Hamas thugs recognized by nearly everybody as international jackals, and strike back to stop it. Guess who the villains are.


Those international thugs have become expert at retail death, killing one or two Jews one day, occasionally three or four on another, but rarely enough to make the front pages in London or Paris, Washington or New York. Death-by-rocket in Ashkelon and other cities, towns and villages in southern Israel is bad, but like other urban inconveniences not something to "overreact" to. This is the inevitable message to Israel. The grim and unrelenting war in the Middle East can be relieved in the soft salons of the West by turning to the inside pages of the morning newspaper to read about a new restaurant or a review of the latest movie, or by changing the channel to watch a chef demonstrate how to make a fluffy souffle. The Israelis have no such luxury.


Life is not so nice and easy on the ground where "the peace process" is played out with death from the sky. Because the Hamas terrorists have perfected provocation as an art of war, the blame is attached to Israel by those always eager to "blame it on the Jews," and by a media unable to make distinctions and eager to draw moral equivalence between provocateur and the provoked.


"There was a shocking quality to Saturday's attacks," the New York Times observed of Israel's emphatic response to the incessant rocket attacks, which began in broad daylight as police cadets were graduating, women were shopping at the outdoor market, and children were emerging from school. The "overreaction" of the Israelis soon ruined this happy scene of domestic tranquility, turning it into "a scene of chaotic horror, with rubble everywhere, sirens wailing, and women shrieking as dozens of mutiliated bodies were laid out on the pavement ... so that family could identify them."


"War is hell," said old Tecumseh Sherman, the firebug of Atlanta, but only a brute is untouched by the suffering of innocents, including Palestinian women and children. But much of the rest of the world long ago decided that it would no longer be moved by the suffering of the Israelis, nor impressed by their patience in the face of extreme provocation. The Israelis are friends of the Great Satan, after all, and so deserve whatever retail death their enemies can deal. We must give the provocateur a pass.


The provocation is so unrelenting that it has become a bit boring to read about and tedious to talk about. The accounts of the Israeli response take ritual notice of the provocation, but only with statistics, dry to anyone not on the receiving end of the rockets: " ... the highest one-day toll in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades ... ." There are few dispatches telling of a Jewish mother embracing her dead child in the hideous glare of a rocket, of wailing sirens, of the rubble of a Jewish village with tendrils of acrid smoke climbing to heaven in protest. Just the impersonal statistics.


Nevertheless, there is another reality on the ground available to anyone who looks. One place to look is Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, hard by the border with Gaza. The doctors have moved the most essential wards underground. So many rockets have targeted the hospital and the neighborhood that the hospital now takes only emergency cases. Jewish and Palestinian children lie side by side in an underground ward. "We treat whoever needs to be treated," says Dr. Ron Lobel, the deputy director of the hospital.


Precision bombing is a modern science, actually more art than science. The Palestinians typically station their missile-launching sites in residential neighborhoods, close to schools and hospitals, counting on the Israelis to avoid them. A video posted on the Internet, offering a pilot's view of his bombing run, depicts a perfect hit, taking out a rocket site in such a residential neighborhood with little "collateral damage." Not every hit is a perfect score, but civilized men try.


The tragedy is that none of this is necessary. The Palestinians could have a two-state solution if they would only take it. But they are determined to win a one-state solution bought at the price of a second Holocaust. This is the reality that Israel's critics in the West willfully refuse to acknowledge. The Jews can expect to be made the villains of the piece - again.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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