With friends like these

There is an absurd degradation of having a man like John Kerry demand that we release terrorists with blood on their hands, and then publicly threaten Israel with a third intifada.

By ILAN MANN
IDF soldier Eden Atias is laid to rest in Nazareth Illit 370 (photo credit: REUTERS)
IDF soldier Eden Atias is laid to rest in Nazareth Illit 370
(photo credit: REUTERS)
When I reflect on the sickening feeling that I felt last week as I yet again pulled out my phone to greet the familiar vibration of some fresh terror-related tragedy, I can’t help but think of Lady Anne’s venomous words from the 4th act of Shakespeare’s Richard III: “Be thou,” she condemns the eponymous Richard, “accursed, For making me, so young, so old a widow!”
Shakespeare lovers will know that Lady Anne reflects on these words as the words she damns Richard with before playing right into his hands and marrying him. So if I channel Lady Anne in my frustration, as an Israeli, in being so well acquainted with the gnawing open-wound of perpetual terror, it is with the tacit acknowledgement that we have wed ourselves to this reliable hell.
The players are so familiar, and the trappings of the stage set in just the same recognizable fashion, so why does this heartbreak feel different? A soldier, a boy, two weeks into his service, murdered in cold blood while he slept, safely within our borders. Stabbed to death by a terrorist two years his junior.
Perhaps it is swallowing the notion that we find ourselves attempting to force a peace with the very people who put the knife and the notion in this young terrorist’s hands. Sixteen is a violent and impressionable age, but I propose that it is an age too young to concoct out of the clear blue sky the primitive hatred necessary to spill a person’s blood whilst they sleep. Of course he was conditioned and spurred to murder by Palestinian society. We know that he was conditioned and spurred to murder by Palestinian society, as surely as we know that our leaders will continue to attend peace talks and pretend that they are sitting across from people who want a peaceful resolution.
But that alone does not make this situation unique. Eden Atias z”l is the third IDF soldier killed by Palestinian terrorists since the murderer release that heralded this farcical round of talks began.
This is far from the worst attack in Israel’s history, and far from the worst attack in recent memory, but there is a palpable feeling that some feverish frustration is bubbling; something is different in the Zeitgeist.
Thousands have liked and shared status updates from the Eden Atias memorial page calling for the death penalty for terrorists. For want of a statistic I can cite only that “moderate” friends of mine who have long supported a measured and conciliatory tone towards these negotiations are, for the first time, at a loss for a good explanation as to why things are as they are, or why they ought to be; they too can feel the unambiguous shame.
And shame is the right word. Perhaps it is shame that can explain this uneasy feeling that a Rubicon has been crossed. Perhaps it is shame that, as so many have pointed out, the murder of British soldier Drummer Lee Rigby a few short months ago was met with shock and condemnation, whereas Atias’ murder was met with silence. Or shame at the unabashed and sniveling equivocation of The New York Times, which dared to feature a sympathetic and humanizing portrayal of the mother of the terrorist, whilst including almost no coverage, and no photo, of the baby-faced Atias or his mourners.
Perhaps it is shame at the silence of US Secretary of State John Kerry and members of the Obama administration, who have been so vocal in their demands that Israel prostrate herself, but suddenly find themselves at a loss for words. Perhaps it is shame at the ludicrous humiliation of having terms dictated to us by hypocrites who have made international headlines for spying on world leaders, yet keep Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard caged like an animal for an unprecedented life sentence for doing far less; for demanding that we release the murderers of children, who have served a fraction of their sentences, while mercilessly denying clemency to a man who has more than served his time, and making absolutely no demands of the Palestinians.
There is an absurd degradation of having a man like John Kerry demand that we release terrorists with blood on their hands, and then publicly threaten Israel with a third intifada, whilst we simultaneously comply with his unconscionable demands and the Palestinians continue to incite that very same intifada.
But I’ll propose that it is more so the mortifying humiliation of having these same men turn around and tell Jewish voters that Israel has no better friend than them. I’ll propose that it is the unbearable ignominy of having them chide our leaders, threaten our security, embolden our enemies, appease nuclear threats against our citizenry, and arguably most egregiously, sit in silent reproach as our children are murdered, all while they tell the world that the bonds that bind us are stronger than ever. There is a wonderful little adage about having friends like these, but through gritted teeth and white-hot shame, it seems cliché, even for me. Those bonds that bind us are, to a disillusioned Israeli public, beginning to look unmistakably like shackles.