Indifference is an attribute that cannot under any circumstances reflect acceptable behavior by political leaders. Even great leaders can fall prey to the seductive effect of indifference and perceive the physical existence and suffering of their own countrymen in acceptable terms. Not since the days of the second “intifada” when all of Israel become a battle ground for Palestinian Arab suicide bombers who implemented their bus terror at a rate of two buses per day murdering hundreds of Israelis, has the issue of national resiliency become once again a “litmus test” of how much suffering is acceptable to be borne by the Israeli public before the government decides to act, in this case, the recent war in the Gaza Strip “Operation Protective Edge.”
For the past 14 years since the first rocket was launched against a community surrounding the Gaza Strip in the south of Israel, the Israeli public in the south of Israel has been inundated by a resiliency network paid and funded in large part by American Jewish organizations who adopted a political agenda that empowered Israeli political leaders to abdicate their responsibility as leaders and at best act as very effective conflict managers. Understanding this fundamental difference between acting as a manager in contrast to acting as a leader is crucial. Managing is about coping and learning to live with an external threat; that is, learning to live with missiles that rain on our communities in the South without demanding to end this threat once and for all. Leadership requires political leaders to project a vision, political goals that motivates and creates a consensus among the majority of the population enabling for example military action; leadership means that resiliency is not confused with complacency.
This past month in which all of Israel was under missile attack, in which all of the Israeli public felt the threat of daily missile attacks, it became impossible for political leaders to operate under the assumption that the daily missile attacks can continue being “bearable” and politically acceptable by the Israeli public. The Israeli public, especially, those living in the South of Israel, who felt the immediate threat of terror tunnels just under their communities and missile attacks that left them less than 15 seconds of warning time to take cover, finally were able to differentiate between being strong and resilient yet not lapsing into a false sense of complacency, a kind of political numbness that lets our political leaders off the hook.
I would like to remind us all that during the mid-90’s up to the year 2003, in which suicide bombers were executing terror attacks at times at a rate of two terror attacks per day, every effort was made to enable the public to continue functioning and maintain a “normal routine”. Municipalities became disaster site clean-up experts, within hours after a terror attack clean up crews would erase any indication of what transpired only hours earlier. Population groups where encouraged to get up the following morning and go to work, under the banner of “we must continue on” or “we can’t let the terror win” and so forth. For a number of years this situation continued, leading to over 1000 Israeli deaths. Israeli’s were encouraged to adopt a pathological resiliency capability leading to complacency that did nothing more than enable and encourage politicians to be indifferent to the on-going and destructive suffering of whole population groups. Worst of all; it lead to a political culture that inhibited true political change that would have been mandated in a similar situation among other Western nations.
In comparison, the communities of “Gush Katif” prior to the 2003 disengagement, or for that matter, all of the current communities located in Judea and Samaria, have had to contend with Palestinian Arab terror on the roads, in their communities, and even in their homes, for the past 45 years. Yet despite this difficult reality, the communities of Judea and Samaria have blossomed and grown at an unprecedented rate, numbering today 750,000 residents and expected to approach One Million residents by the end of the decade. How can one explain this phenomenal growth in population despite so many years of wanton terror? How can one explain the industrial parks, the amazing agricultural, wine, and olive oil industries that have been reintroduced into these areas after 2000 years of the land being neglected and not sustaining such an immense agricultural industry that has emerged in recent years.
The paralyzing “resiliency syndrome” leading to complacency that typifies much of what the Israeli public has been inundated with, seems to stop at the green line. The communities of Judea and Samaria, and the communities that inhabited what was once “Gush Katif”, seem to have been overlooked and left on their own. Fortunately, this has been a blessing in disguise, empowering the people of these communities to respond normally, meaning, that the government of Israel is held responsible for their wellbeing and is expected to fully protect them, demanding that there should be an end to Palestinian Arab terror, expecting that the public doesn’t have to surrender into accepting terror as a “force de jour”, meaning that they have every right to demand of the national political leadership to provide peace and tranquility.
As we look back on the past decade and a half of unprecedented missile terror on the south of Israel and on the center of Israel during the recent military campaign, we must ask ourselves whether or not we want to continue and pay the price of being complacent by allowing our political leaders to use our national resiliency as an excuse to postpone ending the missile threat on Israel once and for all . Over the past month Hamas has been dealt a crushing blow, and so far has failed to extract any real gains, unwilling to be held accountable for their lack of accomplishments. They will continue to attack Israel, if not immediately then in the next round. This time around the public of Israel must overcome their learned response of complacency and demand of our political leadership to act like a sovereign power and protect all of the people of Israel fully before the next round is upon us again.