Three days later, in the pages of the New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman used Israel as an inspirational example of getting back to business as usual while leaving no reminders that an act of terror took place. Friedman wasn’t the only one to use Israel as an example, but it’s a very bad example. Israel’s peace process locked it into a cycle of terrorism. The threat of violence is constant and no one dwells on it.
A decade after the Hamas bombing that Friedman mentioned in his piece and after Hamas had shelled Jerusalem and Tel Aviv last year, Obama was able to pressure Israel into cutting a deal with Turkey that will help Hamas. That is the sort of terrible mistake that gets made when you don’t dwell on terror, but pick up the pieces and move on as quickly as you can.
Refusing to dwell on terror doesn’t defeat the terrorists. It makes it easier to make bad decisions in the moment. It locks you into an April 14 mentality where you strive to put April 15 out of your mind as fast as possible. To honestly move past April 15, September 11 and all the other dates like it, you must learn how to stop them from happening again; rather than forgetting that they ever happened.
A longer version of this article originally appeared at Sultan Knish.