By Paula R. Stern
May 21, 2007
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They say that Nero fiddled while Rome burned down. It is the ultimate image of an insensitive leader, so wrapped up with his personal interests that he is oblivious to the pain and suffering of others. It is so easy to think of Ehud Olmert sitting in some tiny room in Jerusalem, oblivious, self-absorbed, and fiddling on some instrument as Sderot burns, as Hizbollah and Iran continue to threaten, as Gilad, Ehud, and Eldad remain captives.
Ehud Olmert's population rating is likely at an all time low; the blinders have been removed from the nation's eyes and our leaders lay bare. The country has officially been informed that Olmert's leadership abilities were lacking last summer and there is no indication he has learned anything since. His government is corrupt; his vision as blocked as the binoculars Defense Minister Amir Peretz mistakenly forgot to uncap.
Peretz has been proven incompetent, inept, lacking in all things connected to defense and an utter fool. The President of Israel stands accused of horrendous actions, the justice minister has been replaced for improper sexual actions, the tax authority chief has been arrested. There is hardly anyone left in Kadima who hasn't been suspected, accused or convicted of a crime.
Under Olmert's watch, the war in the north proved we were not ready for battle, that our citizens were not adequately protected. A year later, not much has changed. A school in Sderot was hit with a rocket, classes canceled for fear that gathering in clusters increases the chances that a rocket will cause greater damage. A woman was badly injured in her home, others where they work. Dozens have been injured, even more sent to hospitals in shock after rockets exploded near them. A synagogue was damaged, a gas station, a college, a nursery school playground hit.
Thousands have evacuated on their own or with the help of caring citizens who again wonder where the government is. We know where it is not. The Knesset should immediately move its headquarters to Sderot; the Olmert family should take up permanent residence there as well until inspiration comes to Ehud Olmert, until Israel demands the right of self defense that all nations assume. If the nation is one with Sderot, that is where our leaders should be.
Olmert says that he should be given the right to correct the mistakes he made last summer. Amir Peretz mouths off more platitudes that no one can take seriously. The aged Shimon Peres nods off in the middle of a meeting, likely dreaming of unfulfilled glories he believes he deserves. It could be a comedy of the inept; hilariously incompetent lead roles played by the perfect actors, it we were not forced to live this reality and pay the price of our leaders' incompetence and corruption.
Sderot burns while children cry out in fear. When the Color Red siren goes off, if it does manage to sound in time, residents have but fifteen seconds to seek shelter. Fifteen seconds. So much can happen in fifteen seconds; lives changed forever. Fifteen seconds is a lifetime when you know a rocket is coming and you are caught in the open.
Fifteen seconds can last forever, when you are pinned down against a fence, grabbing your children close to you and praying that the rocket won't land here. There is little reason to run if you are caught in the open. How far can you run in 15 seconds? And if your child is with you? If you have a baby in your arms? Fifteen seconds isn't enough time to run to cover; to know that you are safe.
Olmert cautions against an evacuation of Sderot, as he initially cautioned against an evacuation of the north last summer. It will send the wrong message to our enemies, he claims. And he should know. He is the champion of sending the wrong message. He is very brave with the lives of our citizens.
We can build a wall; they will scale it. We can invent a deterrence system against incoming rockets; they will develop better, faster, bigger rockets. We can guard our malls and cafes against their teenage boys who gladly become suicide bombers in their quest for martyrdom; and they will send their women and children to attack us.
Of course, there is one thing that Olmert hasn't tried, one thing Peretz hasn't considered. Let the IDF actually fulfill its role to defend the nation. Not Olmert, not Peres, and certainly not Peretz. Let the generals, the true IDF have full control to do as it deems best, and this time, don't stop when world pressure urges restraint and calls on us to support Abbas.
Don't stop when one of our rockets accidentally hits a civilian target. Our civilians ARE the target, must be our response when this happens. We must forever remind the world that our targets are military installations, kassem launching grounds, Hamas training centers. If their civilians are placed in harm's way because Palestinians set up their weaponry amidst inside their citizens' homes and schools and hospitals and cities, that is not our doing. We do not target their citizens but, as Dan Gillerman so cleverly quipped last summer, "If you sleep with a missile, sometimes you don't wake up."
In the long run, our leaders have to accept that we will never achieve the peace we all so desperately seek because the simplest of truths is that there can be no peace until both sides want it. Until the Palestinian dream of nationhood converges with an Israeli existence in the area and a Jewish state living in peace, we can try to disengage, we can try to converge, we can try to reason and we can even try to appease, but most likely, all this will accomplish is to entertain the world, Hamas, Hizbollah and others with some twisted version of a tango of death.
What Olmert has not yet figured out, what Peretz never will, is that a strong Israel, an unapologetic one, one that does not endlessly practice restraint, is the only one that can survive in this Middle East. We do not live in a friendly, gentle area of the world and so we must accept our place and our neighbors.
Nero's insensitivity has lived on long after the fall of the Roman Empire. As Sderot bears the brunt of Olmert's weakness today, as the north did last summer, and Jerusalem and our other cities have in the past, one can only wonder what will be left after the reign of Ehud.
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