By DOVID BEN-MEIRUpdated: JULY 12, 2016 11:54
The latest terrorist attacks against Jews – a very talented thirteen year old girl stabbed to death by an Arab teenager and an incredibly able father of ten shot and killed on the road by terrorists not yet apprehended – are so terrible and sad, that they temporarily take the wind out of you, causing you to sit down and ponder.No reasons or rationalizations can excuse such inhumanity. Quite sadly, just as it's said that it takes a village to raise a child, so too – it takes a warped society to raise such cold-blooded murderers. Because that's what they are: not freedom fighters, but sick individuals, urged on by a society that glorifies death and murder; a society that teaches its children to hate and hope to annihilate another people; a society that builds it self-awareness on a falsified history and a victimhood that in fact was – and still is – self-inflicted.The question is: what is to be done?Certainly everything should be done – within the guidelines of morality, legality and common sense – to defend against terror, rooting it out wherever possible, insuring proper, and productive lives for all peaceful, law-abiding people.Certainly Israel – and all that claim to be moral – should hold the political and educational leadership of the Palestinian Authority accountable for the incitement to violence and the spreading of absurd libels that can compete with the blood libels of the middle ages in their absurdity, malicious intent and destructive effect.Certainly Israel should not be pressured to accede to irredentist claims, based on immorality and falsehoods, of a section of a people who went to war to annihilate the Jewish people and state in 1947-1949 and again in 1967. Those wars resulted in the just restoration of the heartland of the Jewish homeland to Jewish control. That's true and just, without regard to the insidious and violent campaigns against the Jews these last 150 years.Certainly Jews should be allowed to build communities, on land not-owned by any individuals, in Judea and Samaria, where much Jewish history in the land took place. That should be accepted not in response to terrorism, but because it is true and just. Israel should build 1,000 – 10,000 – 100,000 homes in Judea and Samaria, because it's morally right, not as an answer to terrorism.Certainly the world should acknowledge that our neighbors' society, in general as a society, is unfit for any type of sovereignty. Despite there being many good and moral individuals – they aren't running the show.However – when asked what Israel should do in specific response, in this war against terror, I must say: nothing special! There is nothing special that we should do; we should just continue in our ordinary, routine life, a life that is really extraordinary and anything but routine and is always all very special.We have uniquely taken a land that had become a neglected wasteland – and have turned it into a garden, with blossoming agricultural techniques and water technologies that are a blessing to the entire world.We have taken a land with almost no industry – and have turned it into the "start-up" nation, a garden of innovation, in which flowers that uplift the world grow.We have taken an ancient language, that had become the language of literature but an unspoken language – and have turned it into an eloquent, vibrant language used widely in everyday life.We are winning the war against terror, because in spite of all the wars and terrorist attacks perpetrated against us, we have never wallowed in victimhood, never blamed others for our own mistakes, never allowed our suffering to encourage negative feelings that could only be channeled to sterile hate and lust for revenge.Instead: we love life: we love to create, to build, to produce, to progress, to contribute to building our society and bettering all humanity – and we have learned to be happy.Being a growing, progressing, successful and happy nation is our ongoing victory over terror, jealousy, immorality and inhumanity.May Hallel Yaffa Ariel and Rabbi Michael Mark always be remembered for the good they brought to the world. May the good they were prevented from bringing to the world – be completed in their name by all the rest of us.