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ISRAEL: THE ABUSED WIFE

by Arlene Bridges Samuels

I frankly think Israel is like an abused wife who keeps trying to make her cruel husband happy. The more she appeases him, the more abusive he becomes. The appeasement only makes him disrespect her more.

Israel might as well do whatever it needs to do to protect its citizens and its infrastructure because the PA and the rest of the world are going to abuse and criticize Israel no matter what. Israel needs to abandon its habit of trying to please everyone. It simply makes the predators hungrier for Israeli land and rights. No other sovereign nation would make the kind of concessions Israel makes to win world opinion. Israel is the abused wife married to the tyrant terrorists. It's about time Israel decided to stand up for herself and say, "No More."

Israel tolerates too much. For example, while terrorists and weapons criss-crossed freely over the border between Gaza and Egypt until yesterday, the United States made it easier for Egypt to receive aid for Egypt's economy and social services. The US State Department is behind the push to make certain Egypt is helped. All this, despite the fact that Egypt is violating its accords with Israel over its border with Gaza as well as not fulfilling the requirements the US expects them to meet in order to receive the aid.

On top of this convoluted wrong thinking, the US State Department did not confront Egypt on the Palestinian border violations. Trust me though. The US State Department, Egypt, and the whole world will join the Palestinians in protesting Israel's plan to build a defensible wall and security border between Gaza and Israel even though the defensive outposts will be built over the line from Gaza. NOTHING ISRAEL DOES IS EVER ENOUGH.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the PA is "furious" about Israel's planned security barrier on Israeli land. It's going to be four miles long and over 160 yards wide. The barrier will help protect an oil pipeline and a power station in Israeli cities.

Any politician or military expert who dreamed that giving up Gaza could be a step toward peaceful co-existence hopefully now has disturbed sleep with the nightmare that is going on between Gaza and Egypt. When the Sharon government decided to turn the Philadelphi Corridor over to Egypt for patrolling and policing, they made a deadly assumption and over-rode clear thinking military analysts. The assumption was that Egypt and the PA really wanted a secure, non-porous border between Gaza and Egypt. I think it's very likely that Hamas planned all along to blow holes in the walls between Gaza and Egypt so they could welcome more terrorists into their midst. Jew-hatred seems to be the one place they can unite in their struggle for power. This huge miscalculation on Israel's part is now quickly growing into a behemoth of terror-strengthening and weapons dealing. Israel is already pretty sure that al-Qaeda has a cell now in Gaza and I think we can safely assume that terrorists from various nationalities lurked on the Egyptian border just waiting to flood into Gaza the moment Hamas blew the first hole in the wall along the Philadelphi Corridor.

Within hours of the IDF withdrawing from Gaza, the lid blew off and the Palestinians began acting out. They set fires, destroyed synagogues, tore down income producing greenhouses, and then over-ran the border between Gaza and Egypt. The holes in the walls between Gaza and Egypt have enabled Palestinians to come and go at will bringing in weaponry sure to be used against Israel sooner rather than later. The PA whines that they cannot control the border and maybe they can't since Hamas flags are flying everywhere and they have such a huge following. 61% of Palestinians in Gaza say suicide bombing is a necessary tool for their statehood. What a surprise.

Egypt is a well-equipped powerhouse militarily and while there is a so-called peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, Egypt is already breaking the recent agreements it made with Israel concerning the Philadelphi Corridor.

When will the Jewish people learn that terrorists and Jew-hating Arabs cannot be trusted? Do they live in a world of denial? Terror sits right across the sand dunes in Gaza and many Jewish people don't want to see the danger that is so close. Appeasement is not the solution for bully terrorists.

I've noted this ancient Jewish proverb before and I refer to it often in my own thinking about the Israelis' dangerous neighbors. "Mercy toward evil is cruelty to the innocent."

I hope Israel will be like the abused wife who finally decides to get healthy and go to a shelter and begin her life again. Israel needs to build that wall and she needs to protect her citizens. It's time for Israel to stop acting like a dysfunctional nation and be a strong, decisive democracy committed to protecting her borders and her rights.

Arlene Bridges Samuels is a free lance writer and Media Liaison for Front Page Jerusalem Global Radio Network. She maintains a website at http://www.israelblog.net. The essays that conpose this article were posted September 20, 2005.