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What does a five-year-old girl say to a uniformed adult who enters her room abruptly? What does she think, innocent as she is, of an unknown man who comes armed into her nursery on the Sabbath morning? Does she even know that there is a force in the world that wishes to kill even her, a kindergartener in a community near Kiryat Gat? Did she even have a chance to call out to her mother?
Anyone who, even today, after a year and a half of unprecedented terrorism, dares claim that our actions caused the terrorists to act like scum needs psychiatric treatment. There is the Palestinian problem, and it is a serious problem that should be solved by separation, and then there is the crazed religious terrorism from which we suffer, a terrorism that is completely unrelated to human reason. Merely as a reminder, it should be noted that there were days when we did not occupy any lands and still we were massacred, including our women, children and old folk. It is time that we internalize what our sages have said: Esau simply hates Jacob. It is a matter of empirics.
A diplomatic horizon is of no interest to the types of people who are prepared to snuff out the laughing eyes of a little girl. There is no room, nor will there ever be room, for talking with people who want to perpetrate a suicide bombing in a hospital. When we talk, it will be with the society that will develop in Palestinian Authority territories after the extensive and prolonged blow that the IDF will deal. It will be a society that will know very well that through might it will only be able to bring ruin upon itself.
Although Operation Protective Wall did not ensure an airtight solution to the situation (no one thought it would), it certainly proved that it is possible to embarrass the murderers in their homes instead of allowing them to seem like heroic characters when they come to destroy coffee shops. Therefore, the army must quickly enter the area from which the murder spree originated (Hebron), and do also there what has been accomplished surprisingly well in other areas. Incidentally, the operation can be dedicated to Terje Larsen, with love.
This article also ran in Maariv on April 28, 2002
