Between Parking Ticket Stabbings and Hope Eternal

Illustration (Image credit: Moshe Milner/Government Press Office of Israel)

One can get really upset when discovering a parking ticket on their windshield, right? I suppose we have all had that unpleasant experience. Just the other day a young Arab citizen of Israel drove his jeep into Acco (Acre) where he took his eight-month pregnant wife to be examined in the clinic. When he came out he found a ticket on his car. He was not happy to see this - so he decided the right response would be to murder as many Jews as possible in multiple places, especially those in uniform.

He hit three targets before he himself was wounded. He is now in the care of kind Jewish doctors at Nahariya Hospital. His family claims it was a just an unfortunate traffic accident. How does one wrap one's head around this?

Here we have an Israeli Arab enjoying the abundant and generous fruits of the Jewish state, which has given him and his family a life of freedom and security. He abandons his pregnant wife to kill Jews; the same Jews that built and defend the only place in the Middle East that ensures him and his family basic human rights and opportunity. This case is just another of a dizzying number of similar ones in which comfortable, educated, employed Israeli Arabs find their ultimate fulfillment in killing Jewish fellow Israeli citizens. This phenomenon of comfortable, free Israeli Arabs using whatever comes to hand to murder Jews has increased rapidly in recent years.

As opposed to the reaction to the very rare case of a Jew killing an Arab - when all of the Jews from the president on down voice outrage and shame - the Arab killers of Jews are considered heroes. It is clear that the Arabs in Israel know that they have it very good indeed. If they felt otherwise they would leave; no one is kept by force. Not one of them has left for the Palestinian Authority where they will not have to see the hated Israeli flag. There they can be subject to their own beloved PLO flag that they so passionately wave as proud “Palestinian” students in Israeli universities. Of course, when offered the possibility to stay in their present homes and just be ruled by the PA, they would shriek in horror.

This is a classic psychologically frustrating situation. Israeli Arabs cannot accept the fact that the lowly, despised Jews beat them in 1948. They will always hate us for that humiliation, and for other more traditional reasons. But they love the good life we created for them - that’s a problem. The increasing number of Israeli Arabs in higher education, government, academia, and the courts has no impact on their resentment. It seems to only stoke the fires of their frustration.

I understand their predicament. What I find far more difficult to understand is the continuing delusion of many Jews about this situation.

Just this week I had a conversation with a very nice and intelligent colleague of mine. I know that she is not stupid or ignorant of the facts. I was surprised, therefore, to hear that she was one of those still stuck in the "we should try harder" mode. I thought this type of illusion lost its spell after decades of horrible post-Oslo tragedies. She insisted that it all can be good “If we only talked to them... Dialogue… There is a better way… Teach them." I was truly shocked. I think it comes down to this: Some people just cannot accept that there are no comfortable solutions. Some people just absolutely need to believe in "hope eternal.”

I clearly remember a radio interview a few years ago with Dr. Yossi Beilin, one of the chief architects of the Oslo disaster and its staunch defender to this very day. He was asked his opinion on Oslo now that it has not turned out the way he envisioned and assured it would. I remember his response being along the lines of: "It is true that there are problems, but I just cannot live in a world without hope.”

In every generation such people arise. Neville Chamberlain, facing an ascendent Adolf Hitler, told us he too could not live without "hope.” Beilin cannot - and it seems my colleague cannot either. If only the nice young man in Acco was not given a ticket. We should think up alternatives if tickets upset them so, there simply must be a better way. Never give up on hope.