The rise of Islamic fundamentalism cannot be prevented in Afghanistan. Very poor people who strive to survive have no time for excessive religiosity. Affluent people have no need for it. The danger of fundamentalism arises when a society is in transition: people need firm values to cling to and can afford them. With American aid, urban Afghanis came to this stage, just like the Palestinians.

Americans dislike the Taliban, but Afghanis felt gratitude to the bearded fellows who brought order to their land. After decades of civil war—sponsored by Russia and the United States—Afghanistan became a lawless territory roamed by murderous gangs. America and Russia shed fake tears over Israel killing a few Palestinians, but close to two million Afghanis died in the war they fanned for thirty years. The Taliban brought a welcome respite from the murder at the low cost of fundamentalist Islamic observance. For the West to condemn their oppression of women is hypocritical: it was only recently that women were allowed to vote in America and France. Afghani society, centuries behind the West, can be allowed a few more restrictions. The Taliban restricted female access to higher education, an avenue pursued by a tiny minority in any case, but at least it shielded the women from rampaging rape by mujahedeen, which is now widespread again. The ubiquity of rape by Islamic fighters confirms that unrealized sexual drive is a major force behind militant Islam, and the West can channel the Muslims’ energies more cheaply and efficiently by distributing pornography.

There is little doubt that Afghanis would welcome the Taliban back, either in free elections or a military campaign after the Americans finally leave. The Taliban’s hold on Pakistan’s border regions provides it with cash.: As the anarchy increases in Afghanistan, the Taliban return to their old business of convoy protection. Remarkably honest and willing to risk their lives for their clients’ cargo, the Taliban push the convoys through numerous illegal checkpoints erected by local mujahedeen for racketeering. It is curious that the United States objects so vehemently to Israeli anti-terrorist checkpoints in the West Bank, but has basically accepted the numerous checkpoints dotting Afghani roads. Reportedly the Taliban also receives significant income from local levies and poppy trade. When the Americans leave, the Taliban is fully capable of recapturing Afghanistan. Pakistan would also prefer them in Afghanistan rather than on its own border areas. The reasoning goes that once the Taliban gets its own state, Islamic fundamentalists will be less inclined to capture the Pakistani regions; or at least they will be easier to fight: Pakistan can then retaliate against Afghanistan rather than its own population centers. Pakistan also prefers an Islamic rather than a Pashtun nationalistic government in Kabul because the Pashtuns would claim the Pakistani Northwestern Frontier settled by their kinsmen. Pakistan is not yet ready to recognize the wisdom of relinquishing their unruly border area to Afghanistan.

The American crackdown on the Taliban was senseless. They are an orderly bunch, which is a major advantage in a lawless territory. Unlike the Northern Alliance gangsters, the Taliban keep their word, don’t switch alliances easily, and are fairly predictable. Never did they engage in the mass murder or tortures typical of the Alliance gangs. Answering to the West’s call to curb opium production, the Taliban quickly eradicated poppy plantations in Afghanistan; at the same time, the size of the plantations tripled in the territory held by the Alliance. Still, America sided with known thugs and drug lords against decent Islamists.

Sure, everyone would prefer a liberal government in Kabul, but in practice, there can be no government at all. Afghanistan is a tribal area unsuitable for central rule. Monarchy is no longer an option: saturated with weapons, Afghanistan is no longer a patriarchal society based on mutual respect. The real choice is between uniting the country under the banner of Islam and breaking it into independent areas ruled by feudal warlords. As Islamists take over the border areas of Pakistan, it would be natural for them to demand a Pashtun state which carves its territory from Pakistan and Afghanistan. The balance of Afghanistan falls into Tajikistan’s sphere of influence.

There is not a chance for democracy to work in Afghanistan, a country grossly fragmented ethnically. Though Pashtuns are by far the largest group, a number of smaller ethnic groups together constitute the majority. In district (majoritarian) elections Pashtuns assuredly take hold of the country and push other groups out of the government. In nationwide (proportional) elections Pashtuns always lose and turn to fighting. A parliament based on ethnic quotas has little to do with democracy, and in any case ignores the smaller groups.

As Machiavelli noted, nations which do not learn to live under state control are inherently ungovernable. An occupier can exterminate them but not rule over them. The Taliban were sensible enough to enforce their order in major cities but leave the rural areas alone. They did not try to defeat other groups, but merely pushed them out of sight. The Russians, and later the Americans, were bent on bringing their order into every last village, a strategy which is certain to fail.

Democracy, a good order for homogeneous states, is destructive in tribal societies. In Iraq, democracy brought the Shiites to dominance over the Sunnis. In Afghanistan, democracy means suppressing smaller tribes. As often happens, small tribes are the most militant, and they dominate the state; they won’t accept being made to relinquish their power in the democratic process. To that problem the American planners reacted with a parliament in which every ethnic group has its quota. Not has only this little to do with democracy, but such an arrangement simply brings the suppression of dominant groups one step forward: they are suppressed in parliamentary voting rather than in elections.

The planners of something like 9/11 do not need training camps in remote mountains; an apartment will do. Destroying Al Qaeda camps was senseless in terms of global security, especially as the camps provided neither sophisticated terrorist training of the PFLP type nor guerrilla training like Hezbollah’s camps. Al Qaeda camps were the perfect place for foreign intelligence services to spot would-be international terrorists in one place and track them back to their home countries. Al Qaeda camps doomed the terrorist enterprise to massive infiltration.

The American invasion of Afghanistan stemmed from the rationalist delusion that large-scale security could be built. The notion of American security being developed in remote mountains halfway across the globe is suspect. This might be so for a very concentrated threat—say, a lab which develops bio weapons—but a regime such as the Taliban is normally so little concerned with American affairs that dislodging it just does not pay. Both security and retaliation are most effective if they are local. The United States can refuse visas to Afghanis, and perhaps to anyone who has traveled through Afghanistan, just as Israel should do for Palestinians.

A proper retaliation for 9/11 should speak the Afghani language: revenge. An air raid destroying everything Al Qaeda and Taliban would be understood and respected. A punishing raid could be effective in Afghanistan because the Taliban was strong there: a strong government can be punished into compliance while a weak one like the Lebanese government cannot. Failed occupation, like any failure, seeds disrespect and paves the way to further attacks on the United States, especially since the Afghanis won’t easily forget the American support for the Northern Alliance.

Vengeance is rarely thought of as an acceptable goal of incarceration. At any rate, a mass murder or an attempt thereof is hardly avenged by keeping the Arabs in comfortable conditions, supplied with satellite TV, halal food, cellular phones, largely unregulated visits, shopping, and even pocket money siphoned from the very taxpayers they tried to kill.

The notion of reforming the terrorists presupposes that they are like common criminals. Wrong. They are good people with nationalist beliefs. They are good people in the same sense as Shlomo ben Yosef, Avraham Stern, Yitzhak Shamir, or Menahem Begin—our terrorists. They are good people in the same sense as the Allied bomber pilots who unleashed their deadly cargo on German towns. They fight for their political goals, and their enemies’ lives pale in comparison to those goals.

Reforming criminals makes sense insofar as the supply of them is fairly limited; therefore, rehabilitation serves the goal of prevention. But in case of political terrorists, the supply is unlimited. Israel currently keeps 0.5% of the Palestinian population in jail. Would anyone imagine that a determined population cannot spare another 0.5% of its members for an important political purpose?

Comfortable prison conditions encourage terrorism, but even if they were very bad, there would still be many who would take the risk. It remains debatable whether large-scale anti-terror operations can curb Palestinian terrorism. British anti-terror measures in Palestinian villages failed to produce the desired effect despite mass hangings and the burning of entire villages. Ibrahim Pasha appears to have had greater success a century before then, but we really know very little about those events, and it could be that the riots simply burned out on their own.

Anti-terrorist propaganda is not an option. The American government erred tremendously in forcing Israel to accept a semblance of democracy in Palestine. An authoritarian ruler friendly to Israel could, theoretically, bend the population to accept their terms. Democratically elected rulers compete with radicals and have to adopt radical slogans. A very strong democratic ruler might have addressed a relatively moderate Palestinian majority and lambasted the radical agenda, but no such ruler exists.

Nor is prevention possible by force. The Americans succeeded in training a Palestinian police force, but so far its main achievements have been against criminals and Hamas charities. As time goes by, the policemen’s zeal will fade and their efficiency will decrease. Their numbers and wage requirements will increase until it becomes impossible to finance them with foreign aid. A still-too-small 30,000-strong police force would eat up to 50% of the aid. Palestinian police therefore wouldn’t be able to fight terrorism even if they wanted to.

But terrorism is changing on its own. The established terrorist groups have matured and are not eager to endanger their social and financial status, go underground, and suffer reprisals. Large-scale terrorism has declined, but the grassroots terrorism of young and zealous cells and individuals is increasingly becoming a problem. Such terrorism is a function of political issues, and cannot be prevented.

When vengeance, rehabilitation, and prevention all fail with Palestinian terrorists, hanging them could become a viable solution.

The already-jailed terrorists can be killed during the riots which would erupt if Israel were to offer them a choice between pork and a vegetarian diet.

And nothing at all precludes Israel from downgrading the resort-like conditions of jailed terrorists, and removing satellite TV, pocket money, cell phones, visitation privileges, and anything but the most basic medical treatment.

But all these measures require Israeli leaders with a different mentality—not like Barak, who patted Arafat on shoulder, or Netanyahu, who didn’t bomb two thousand Fatah thugs during their 2009 conference in Bethlehem.

On other hand, Hamas also plays by the rules, and the rule is, don’t kidnap Israelis. Hamas didn’t kidnap Shalit, the Dughmushes did. Only after it took the power in Gaza and had to fight the Dughmushes did Hamas find itself in unwilling possession of Shalit, a hot potato the group couldn’t simply release for political reasons. But Hamas did not kidnap any more Israelis, though to do so would have been exceedingly easy. The hard part, it is assumed, is to keep the prize from Israeli commandos. But the threat of killing the hostage would probably prevent an Israeli rescue attempt today. Israel reciprocates Hamas’s understanding of the situation and refrains from eliminating its leaders.

This war is impossible to fight properly. Israel can obliterate Hamas along with Gaza while Hamas can attack Jews abroad indiscriminately. Both sides therefore play out a war for their voters and sponsors rather than fighting it for real. The situation is similar to the deterrence which exists between normal states strong enough to frighten each other. Hamas is too small to resist Israel, but on the other hand sufficiently small to conduct micro-operations which skip between the wheels of the Israeli security machine.

On both sides, the rulers are happy with the belligerent status quo.

Even at its peak, provoked by the Oslo peace process, terrorist damage in Israel paled compared to the toll taken by road accidents. For some reason, human nature sees violence as more important than accidents; perhaps history has taught us humans that unlike accidents, violence tends to escalate. The Media gleefully amplified the terrorist threat to herd the population into the stables of the peace process.

No Palestinian group is committed to destroying Israel. Their rhetoric is militant, but it is as removed from reality as the Jew-speak on the boundaries of the Promised Land. After Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas shelled her not for any existential reason, but for two practical and specific reasons: to push Israel out of the West Bank, and later to lift the blockade. In both cases, Hamas was successful.

Gaza’s arsenals are no threat to Israel. A few hundred primitive rockets cannot inflict statistically significant damage. Hamas would run out of small arms in about two weeks of fighting in Gaza. Hamas has proved itself to be seriously committed to Israel’s security by preventing other groups from violating the ceasefire.

The West Bank terrorism is merely a show. IDF routinely intercepts bomb-carrying terrorists at roadblocks, even though checks there are lax. That is only possible if the soldiers are tipped off. Almost no bombs explode inside Israel, thus all the terrorists are intercepted. Such an outcome would be completely impossible in any real conflict: terrorists would sneak through the many open border areas rather than walk through roadblocks. The major reason for Shabak’s staggering success against terrorists is the terrorists’ cooperation. Terrorist bosses need to show some anti-Israeli activity, but they don’t want Israel to disrupt their organizations in retaliation. Accordingly, they send the bombers and then turn around and inform Shabak on them. After Israel withdraws from the West Bank, the place will continue to be a haven for corruption and criminal anarchy, but it will not be a terrorist nest. Palestine would be even more orderly under Hamas than under Fatah, and no more terrorist.

The West Bank’s militants don’t care about liberating their Israeli brethren. The Palestinians were never a people to begin with, and are now split into distinct groups: Jordanians, Gazans,  West Bankers, refugee-camp dwellers, and Israeli Palestinians. The last thing the Israeli Palestinians want is to be liberated by their poor, criminal brothers from the West Bank. Left to itself, a Palestinian state would not be a problem for Israel, though it would be a humiliation—our enemies occupying the land given to us by God and fearfully returned by Jews.

The Palestinian state would hardly be left to itself. Syria, Jordan, and Iran would compete for influence there. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has no meaningful quarrels with Israel, yet it opposes her. Iranian proxy forces in Palestine would be similarly subversive. A pretext will always be there: Israeli “oppression” of her Arabs, visa restrictions for Palestinian migrant workers, and so on. Such hostility wouldn’t translate into an existential problem for Israel, though a peace treaty with Palestine would stifle Israeli retaliation for occasional rocket attacks.

There is the problem of grassroots terrorism. As the established terrorist organizations become averse to anti-Israeli actions, ad hoc groups spring up. Here and there, small groups of young Palestinians will join forces for specific actions. Their groups are easy prey for intelligence services when the members are talkative and spread their message widely among their friends, but they can also be impenetrable if their two or three members act with a modicum of common sense. In several incidents, attacks have been perpetrated by lone terrorists: bulldozers, cars, and knives are no less effective than bombs in terms of media effect. This grassroots terrorism inundates both Small Israel and the West Bank. The youth bulge guarantees a large, unemployed, underperforming, jealous Arab population idle on Israeli welfare—and that this population will grow radical.

It is not sufficient to check out from the West Bank. We must leave the Arabs behind.

People may have a discussion about rights if they understand rights similarly. Inside a society, that’s generally true: everyone agrees that the right of ownership belongs to the person who created a thing and is entitled to compensation. The owner is the person who bought the thing; even the wildest robber understands that stealing doesn’t convey ownership. Not so between groups which understand rights differently. Palestinian Arabs have every reason to consider the land of Israel theirs: their ancestors lived here, Muslim texts declare the land to be Islamic, and the country was under uninterrupted Islamic rule for 1,100 years. Jews have every reason to believe the land is ours: God commanded us to take it (the Promise, Muslims believe, has been revoked), we had statehood here, and we re-took it recently in several wars. I deliberately omit the irrelevant decisions of the barbarian conference called the UN. Both Jews and Arabs believe they are right. The land is way too small to share: minuscule Israel and miniscule Palestine are equally non-viable states, indefensible.

When both sides are right—in their own worldview—the conflict cannot be resolved in goodwill. Sometimes such conflicts are resolved by compromise when both sides are tired of fighting. If the object is too small to compromise on it, and the balance of power is highly unequal, there is no room for meaningful compromise. Arabs did not try to compromise or consider Jews’ rights when the Arabs felt themselves to be stronger.

Rights are an intra-group phenomenon. Jews are right. Arabs are right. The mosquitoes in the drained Israeli swamps also thought themselves right. Power is the only thing that matters here.

The Palestinian kid was not a professional terrorist, even though a Fatah-Al Aqsa offshoot claimed him as a member of their terrorist organization. The kid went for essentially a suicide mission: he did not try to knife down Jews in Tel Aviv where he would merely be arrested, but at a junction near Shilo, in the dreaded “territories” where many Jewish males are armed, and someone would certainly kill the Palestinian. Yet he mustered only two knives. He was unfamiliar with this weapon and frightened, shaking. The Arab student was willing to sacrifice his life to do minimal damage to Jews.

He was not a stereotypical Palestinian terrorist. We are dealing here with the example of popular war. Palestinian society breeds hatred of “Zionist occupiers,” and Palestinian universities provide ample grounds for nationalist propaganda. It is not incitement, but realistic and truthful nationalist education.

Here lies the nightmare of primitive rationalism: Jews and Arabs are both right. Both defend their religious, nationalist, and homestead rights to the land. Arguing the fine points is senseless: the Palestinians believe that they are a nation, and Jews won’t be able to convince them otherwise. There can be no compromise; people don’t compromise over their basic religious and national rights, not if they want to remain a self-respecting religious community or a nation. Those Jews who are looking to compromise do so because they don’t believe they have any rights here: assimilated atheists, what do they have to do with the Holy Land?

Palestinian Arabs, on the contrary, believe in their rights. If Jews abandoned to them Hebron and Schem, the ancient Jewish cities, how much more do the Zionists owe them Haifa and Jaffa, towns that originally had Arab majorities? Jews act like the classic People of the Sea, foreign marauders who settled the shores of Canaan time and again without venturing deep into the hilly country. If Judea is not Jewish, then what rights do the Jews possibly have to any other place in Palestine?

In real life, situations often arise in which both conflicting parties are right. When the contended issues are critical to the opponents, no mild solution is possible. Olmert, Barak, Peres, and Netanyahu can give away Judea and Samaria to the Arabs, but should a decent Jewish leader arise he will drive the Arabs out.
Fatah,Hamas, and PIJ can accept Israel, but should a more militant Palestinian leader arise, they will restart terrorism against Jews. And millions of Arabs living in Israel will help them.

Take Arab rocket attacks on Israel. Few Jews are so contemptuous of Arabs as to imagine them stupid to the point of not recognizing the economic benefits of stopping the attacks. Israel would open some crossings, allow some migrant laborers from Gaza, and international aid would increase. The Arabs can get still more aid by ousting Hamas, whose forces constitute, at most, 2 percent of Gaza’s population. In a place where firearms are abundant, Arabs would have no trouble dethroning Hamas. Gazans are not afraid of Hamas: the people who lived for generations in squalid refugee camps under Egyptian, then Israeli oppression, who are used to artillery fire at night, are not afraid of anything. Individual Arabs, yes, they crack easily under interrogation, but the Arab masses are fearless.

The only reason that Gazans support the militant factions and withstand Israeli retaliation is the noble feeling of immense hatred toward the enemy. They can live peacefully in refugee camps on UN handouts, but they are willing to suffer in order to return to what they consider their homeland—what is now called Israel. Gazans did not come from the West Bank; they came from the “core” Jewish cities, from Haifa to Jaffa. This is the land which they fight to get back. They don’t fight for Schem or Hebron: those cities are already in Arab hands. They want what the Israelis think is core Israel. And if they cannot get the land now, they will at least continue pounding the Zionist enemy until he gives up.

It might be that the Arabs’ calculations are right. By any measure, Haifa and Jaffa are not Jewish cities; Jews controlled those territories in antiquity only for a very short time. By any measure, Schem and Hebron are Jewish towns: we bought them, conquered them, settled them, had them as our major cities, and have a full-fledged religious right to them. Therefore, if Jews abandoned Schem and Hebron, the Arabs find it completely plausible that Zionists would eventually abandon Haifa and Jaffa. And they are right—Jews keep abandoning those places: Akko is now an Arab town, and Jaffa is becoming one.

So when Gazans shell Israel, they act neither cowardly, nor stupidly, but bravely, shrewdly, and—from their point of view—righteously.

Likewise, Israeli Arabs refuse to integrate and assimilate into the Israeli identity which would be so beneficial for them economically. First, Jews must be eternally grateful to them for doing so. Imagine if Israeli Muslims started acting as good Israelis: learned Hebrew, served in the army, and became nice to Jews. The next thing we would see would be a wave of Jewish assimilation, Jewish women converting to Islam to marry those nice, unobjectionable Arabs. The Arab hostility reminds Jews that something has to be done about the swelling numbers of Israeli Arabs; nice Arabs would be accepted as legitimate voters, breed up to a majority, and vote the Jewish state out of existence.

Israeli Arabs refuse to assimilate in return for economic benefits. That’s what the Jews praise themselves for. The good Jews abandoned the safety and economic advantages of America and moved to Israel. Arabs are smart and rational, or call them cynical: they accept economic benefits from Jews, but refuse to integrate into Jewish society. Some youngsters are even willing to fight the Jews instead of accepting economic benefits from them, such as higher education; others accept the almost-free education, and then work to subvert the Jewish state by building a parallel Arab society, donating to Islamic charities, and showing solidarity with their Palestinian brethren in the “occupied” territories. In the meantime, Israeli Arabs work to take over Israel by rationally exploiting her democracy, by the mere act of breeding. Sex for them is a political affair. Arabs accept temporary dhimmitude, but lose no chance to further their comeback as the sovereign nation in Palestine.

Arabs don’t want coexistence with Jews, and they wait patiently for the moment when they can drown some Jews and drive away the rest. That is how normal people behave when someone takes over the land they consider theirs. That is why the Torah commands the Jews to fight the natives of Canaan and drive them away, for they would always remember that the land was theirs, and their hostility toward the Jews would be implacable. Arabs want to drive the Jews away. Arabs resisted the Jews fleeing to Palestine from burning Europe; America and Britain resisted Jewish flight, too. That’s exactly what Jews are commanded to do with respect to Arabs: “For I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will expel them” (Exodus 23:31).

Jews love to assert that Arabs claim more land that they actually need or have ever settled, that Jews worked the plains which were no-man’s land. But Jews were commanded to conquer the land from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, and from the Nile to the Euphrates; that’s also land that Jews have never settled, and cannot settle with meaningful density. National sovereignty over the land has nothing to do with actually settling it: look at the Chinese Himalayas or the Russian sub-Arctic.

Arabs are religiously intolerant; they protest when Jews worship at the Temple Mount. If only the Arab example rang a bell in Jews’ minds: “You shall destroy, destroy their deities and break, break their monuments” (Exodus 23:24). Every rabbi with the least trace of honesty would concur that cleansing the Temple Mount of Islamic structures is an immensely important commandment, and every minute we procrastinate in doing so is a grave sin. God granted us a miraculous victory in 1967 for a reason, and what reason can we imagine beyond giving Jews sovereignty over the Temple Mount? That’s, of course, if you believe that there is God; for those who evolved from monkeys the implications might be different.

Muslims exert horrendous religious punishments. Saudis sentence rape victims to capital punishment and ban every other religion from their country; Iranians stone adulterers. Liberal Jews have long forgotten their own punishments—which are exactly the same for the very same crimes. But Jews prefer tourism income to religious purity, and porn-industry tax revenues to morality.
Arabs teach their children violence; at the age of eight, they slaughter sheep. At the age of three, good religious Jewish children start learning the Torah from Leviticus, the section that details sacrifices. Liberal Jews assert that Judaism is non-violent; reading the Torah might change their opinion. The God who told us to slaughter Amalek babies and the priests of Baal during their worship, who killed the Egyptian firstborn and ordered us to bring numerous gruesome animal sacrifices, the God of the Deluge, pogroms, and Holocaust—he is not a merciful, liberal “spirit which is in man.”

Arabs are terrorists. But when Arabs kill Jewish civilians, they act normally—as any normal person does to his hated enemy. Jewish civilians serve in the army, pay taxes which support the army, vote for the governments which keep the territories under “occupation,” and send their sons and daughters to fight the Arabs. Palestinian terrorists don’t seek to annihilate the Jews; that’s a task for Arab mobs and armies. The terrorists seek rational political ends, and employ violence only to achieve those ends. Such violence is very economical by the standards of warfare. Such violence is extremely efficient in political terms: polls show Israeli support for Palestinian statehood growing after major terrorist acts.

Jewish partisans in Europe during WWII also employed terrorist tactics, and so did ETZEL and LEHI. Forget the fringes; it was the Haganah that carried out Dir Yassin and Kfar Kassem. The Israeli army routinely shot POWs in 1967 and in 1973, and crushed them flat with tank tracks. When given a minimally free hand, IAF bombed Lebanese and Gazan towns with no compunction. Indeed, what compunction could be there about destroying an enemy? The British—the world’s utmost liberals—exhibited very limited compassion to Dresdners whose women, children, and elderly they burned in incendiary raids, hurrah. Jews have a divine guideline in dealing with our sworn enemies, “Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (1 Samuel 15:3). God severely punished Saul for merely killing women and children, but not animals. David, likewise but for a different reason, killed all the inhabitants but not the animals. You may not like it, but that is Judaism. If you want to be nice, join Tibetan monks. Of course, they are not nice either.

Arabs are suicidal, and they send their children to suicide bombings. And Jews sent their children to senseless risk in Beirut for eighteen years. Arabs, at least, sacrifice their children for political ends; not so the Jews who during the Second Intifada feared for their children day and night but did nothing to stop the Arabs from killing them. No grieving Jewish parent went to Ramallah and blew himself up on an Arab bus; that is a shame. Arabs sacrifice their children for what to them is the noble aim of fighting the Zionist enemy; Jews sacrificed their children to Shimon Peres, the idol of Rabin, and his peace process. In the Book of Maccabees, Hannah urges her seven sons to suffer horrible death at the hands of liberal Jews and their Greek masters rather than “merely” eat non-kosher meat. That’s a Jewish mother. That’s Judaism. Compare that to Tel Aviv restaurants serving pork.

Of course Islam is a perversion. Of course Arabs are wild, primitive, and make worse neighbors than Anthrax bacteria. Of course the country is ours and we must cleanse it of Arabs by whatever means necessary. But the Arab example offers Jews a valuable insight into what “normalcy” really is.

UN Security Council refused to condemn the massacre. The world’s leaders, as usual, expressed their admiration for the dead Jews. And then nothing changed. No high-level commissions, nothing. Israeli police rushed to announce that the murderer acted alone, even though someone obviously gave him the expensive automatic rifle with a large number of cartridges.

It is outrageous when Jews kill others. It is normal when others kill Jews. The government never liked yeshiva students, anyway. That it was an attack by an East Jerusalem Arab reinforces the government’s policy of divesting from that troublesome area. The mass murder also gives the Israeli government a bit more international acquiescence in the Gaza invasion.

It takes a lot of bravery and hatred to conduct a mass shooting alone. Doubt that? How many Israelis have stood up to shoot Shimon Peres, whom just everyone despises? The lack of hatred, the lack of courage… So how did an Arab villager manage such a horrendous but nevertheless brave act?

His hatred was twofold. Generally he hated Jews who, he honestly thought, stole his land. His village was in Muslim country before, in a Jewish country now. No amount of Israeli propaganda can change that fact. And all the liberal education that Jews bestowed on him taught the Arab one thing: that nationalism is noble and the country is worth fighting for. The Jews imagined they taught the Arab their history, but he readily applied their doctrines to his own history.

Then, it was the Arab labor. The yeshiva employed the Arab as a driver. That was a shame for Rav Kook’s disciples. Religious Jews, of course, treated their Arab driver a bit better than a swine. They were masters, and he was, to put it mildly, a worker. Someone who lacks the divine soul which Jews have. No doubt he was treated politely—but with unmistakable disdain which he couldn’t fail to miss. Not that the Jews were wrong to treat him thus; they were wrong to employ a despised human being—one who could reasonably be expected to hit back eventually.

As the Arab’s family told journalists, he was depressed by news of the Israeli invasion of Gaza and massive killings there. And his attitude, though factually wrong, is understandable: Israel daily sends signals that we have no right to this land. The government abandons Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount. Step by step, Palestinians reclaim “their” land: Schem, Hebron. Even the Jews, the leftists, agree that the Arabs are right and join their demonstrations. Israel ran from Gaza and jailed the Jews who protested that move. How could Israel be possibly right in invading Gaza now, in killing the Arab’s brethren? That they bombarded Sderot and Ashkelon with rockets is irrelevant. They only demanded forcibly what is rightfully theirs and what the Zionist state refused them: Palestinian statehood. Even the Zionists have long agreed to Palestinian statehood, but now wickedly drag out the negotiations. And so in the Arabs’ eyes, Hamas was right to shell Israel, to get what is rightfully theirs, what even the Zionists have conceded is the Palestinian land.

You don’t play games with your enemies.

Modern terrorism is a return to the historically standard situation of no universal security. Every man stood—and stands—for himself. Medieval travelers were much more likely to fall prey to bandits than Israelis are to Arab terrorists. Terrorism is a normal mode of war in which the enemies don’t match forces in the open, but undertake to crush each other’s will to fight. In moral terms, terrorism against non-combatants is no different from sieges, which also affect non-combatants. In both cases, the status of non-combatant is dubious, since the entire population supports the war effort by paying taxes and encouraging able-bodied males to fight. Indeed, the textbook example of non-combatants—pregnant women—give birth to babies who will soon become soldiers.

Israel patently demands that Palestinian Arabs stop terrorism before the final-status negotiations commence. The British occupiers of the same land failed to extract the same concessions from Jewish guerrillas. Irgun and Lehi continued attacking the British until they withdrew, much as the Afghan mujahedeen attacked the withdrawing Russians, and as Hezbollah and Hamas pursued the Israelis. Israel negotiates with the Palestinians only because of the terrorists. Should they stop, Israel would abandon the negotiations at once. Israelis want to hold on to Judea, but don’t want to pay even the minor price of suffering terrorism. Public support for abandoning Judea to the Arabs grows with the increase in terrorist acts in Israel.

As a lawyer, I recognize that people have conflicting values which often cannot be reconciled. I have encountered many situations in which I could equally well argue both sides of the conflict. In the present Jewish-Muslim situation, both sides are right. Jews needed a land for our state and sensibly chose a religiously significant land. Palestinian Arabs had settled the nearby hills for millennia and sensibly regarded the country as their own. No amount of debate can solve that contradiction. Jews used terror successfully against the British occupiers, and need not scream when Arabs use a similar tactic against the Jews.

Just fight the Arabs.