Precious, precious souls. Their families will never be the same. I keep thinking about how our leaders made every mistake possible to ensure thatwe came to where we are today.
Yet again we have asked our finest young men to risk life and limb in Gaza in order to – well, what, exactly? It really is not very clear anymore. For another period of relative quiet until Hamas decides it’s time for another round?
I can just hear the haughty guarantees given us in 2005 when Ariel Sharon uprooted nine thousand brave Jewish patriots from Gush Katif. We were told we were buying peace and quiet with the expulsions and the surrender of Gaza.
And before Ariel Sharon pulled out of Gaza, it was the Yitzhak Rabin/Shimon Peres team guaranteeing us peace after Oslo. And not one of them ever admitted to any mistakes – not one. It’s maddening.
This afternoon, traffic was stopped on a main street for an hour as a major shopping mall was evacuated due to a bomb scare – a suspicious object was left in a shop. That is all it takes to ruin the day for thousands of Israelis. Another small “price of peace,” as Peres, the high priest of national delusion, coined it.
Interesting how in Ramallah they never pay these small prices for peace. There’s never a suspicious object in their stores.
As I was shopping in that same mall before we were all rushed out of the complex, I expressed to a salesperson the common wish exchanged by Israelis these days: “May our boys be safe and may the enemy be crushed.”
I could see she wanted so much to answer with a solid and robust “amen!” – but I noticed how she caught herself, looked over her shoulder at two Arab co-workers, and then muffled a tiny amen and lowered her head with a look that if captured by a camera would be the perfect cover for a book titled “The Price of Peace.”
Shalom Pollack
Jerusalem
Editor’s Note: The writer, an occasional contributor to The Jewish Press’s weekly Magazine, is a popular tour guide in Israel (www.shalompollacktours.co.il).