Israel, Past and Present

From a column by Janie Cheaney

     Israel's story - from King David to David Ben-Gurion, from Philistia to the Gaza Strip - is always "news." 

     What hold does this land have on our imagination? When Hamas terrorists boiled over the border to slaughter over 1,000 Israeli civilians in October, they sent the world on fire. Such barbaric acts are not unheard of.  

     The bloodlust in Rwanda in the 1990s was equally horrific, and on a much larger scale. Warlords in Africa and drug cartels in South and Central America regularly splash their gore across the news, and then we hear no more about it.

     But every time Israel is attacked, or when it strikes at a target, the world trains a critical eye for weeks. The IDF hovers on the edge of all-out war, while hysterical denunciations rain down on them from all over the world. 

     This much is obvious. Hamas militants didn't suddenly "break out" from under Israeli aggression. They didn't somehow bring about Israelis being "subsequently killed." 

    Rather, Hamas militants butchered and raped and pillaged and returned to cheering crowds in Gaza, parading the bodies of their victims as the Philistines must have paraded a stripped and blinded Samson in the same city.

 Tomorrow: Cheaney's conclusion