The Point Isn’t Whether Israel Is Safer

When Jews are attacked in the diaspora, the question to be asking is not whether Israel is safer.

But if you did want to get into that argument… the answer would be yes, it is. We have learnt the lesson again and again that we cannot rely on others to protect and defend us. With Israel and the IDF we are finally able to do that for ourselves.

Of course there is still danger in Israel, but accidents happen all the time, as do deliberate attacks, all around the world. If it’s not car terror attacks, it’s car accidents. I’ve heard of Israeli soldiers who survived fighting Hamas in Gaza only to get injured in a motorbike accident or even dancing at a wedding. So the point isn’t where you are safer.

The point is that we are learning that there is no future for Jews in France, and it seems like the rest of Europe is heading in the same direction. The difference here is that Israel understands the danger of the threat, what is at stake, and is doing everything possible to stop it.

But it is the insane – and antisemitic – reactions like that of BBC newsreader Tim Willcox, trying to rationalise terrorism, which are the reason why it continues. Speaking to a French Jewish woman at the rally in Paris about Jews being the victims, he said “many critics of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.” Which is of course one of the excuses terrorists cite when they attack Jews.

It is why Abbas’ presence at the rally was so sickeningly hypocritical and insulting, as he consistently excuses, justifies and encourages Palestinian terrorism.

Israel’s more rational critics would concede that Israeli soldiers do not deliberately kill innocent Palestinians; that Israel doesn’t have an institutionalised policy of oppressing Palestinians; and that, surprisingly, we’d rather not have to go to war every couple of years.

Israel’s rational critics might agree with all of that, but would still ask, even – especially – at times when Israelis are under attack “but what about the settlements?”

What about the settlements??

You can’t have terror attacks and murder of Israelis in one column, and building settlements in the other.

You can’t put the slaughter of French Jews in a supermarket in one column, and “Palestinians suffering at Jewish hands” in the other.

You can’t put a massacre of journalists in one column, and drawing offensive cartoons in the other.

Which column would you put the French Muslim policeman in who was shot in the head as he lay injured on the ground? Did he draw an offensive cartoon? What about the Muslim employee who hid Jews in the freezer of the supermarket? Should he have helped the terrorists instead? What about the Druze policeman Zidan Sayif who died fighting the Palestinian terrorists who carried out the Har Nof synagogue massacre?

Stop trying to make sense of evil, to find a cause-and-effect sequence where there is none. To try to understand it is to give in to it.

Israel refuses to do that – and that is the point.