The wages of sin

I’ve been profoundly shocked by the developments of the past few weeks: the negotiations with Syria over the Golan heights, the really disastrous decision to agree to a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza, the offer to the Hezbollah-dominated government of Lebanon to surrender the Sheba farms area, and who knows what secret proposals made to the Palestinian Authority.

“The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government’s liquidation sale of Israel’s strategic assets opened officially this week. Iran’s proxies have pounced on the merchandise”, writes Caroline Glick,  and she is entirely correct.

But there’s more than just the practical issue of strategic weakness here. There is a psychological/cultural issue which is hugely damaging to Israel as well. After all, Hamas, Fatah and Hezbollah have gotten to the position they are in today by means of terrorism, by killing Israelis — and, in the case of Hezbollah, by murdering Jews worldwide. Syria has indirectly been responsible for terrorism in Israel by its support of Hezbollah and Hamas, and is threatening mass murder with its chemically armed rocket force.

Israel’s behavior is understood by them and by the world as no more or less than surrender. It doesn’t matter if the Israeli government claims that the deals are actually in Israel’s interest — of course they are not — but even if they were, everyone would understand them as capitulations. Terrorism clearly works, and given that, there is no incentive to try anything else. Combine this with the Arab attitude that compromise is castration, and you have a recipe for continued violence.

Along with the major diplomatic defeats above, there are the smaller but particularly painful ones called ‘prisoner exchanges’, in which numerous convicted terrorist murderers are released in return for kidnapped or dead Israelis. Ami Isseroff writes,

It is not a matter of putting “honor” or “justice” or “revenge” above human compassion. The problem is not the release of prisoners with “blood on their hands.” Rather, it is the blood of our soldiers and civilians that will be spilled in the next kidnapping. The success of the Goldwasser-Regev kidnapping will certainly engender yet another one, just as the success of the previous kidnapping, in which Hezbollah traded the degenerate Elhanan Tannenbaum and some dead soldiers for many live prisoners, was probably the decisive factor in motivating the kidnapping of Goldwasser and Regev. How many people will die because of the next kidnapping, and how many will be kidnapped?

Again, Israel teaches her enemies that the wages of sin are very good indeed. You want land, international recognition and immunity from retaliation? Fire rockets into Israel. You want your operatives freed and various other concessions? Kidnap an Israeli.

When will the ghetto-mentality Jews that are making decisions for the state of Israel learn that — especially in the Middle East, but in reality everywhere — the powerless are treated with contempt, and a nation afraid to use her power is in fact powerless?

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