There is no blockade on the Gaza Strip. Goods that are turned into tools of destruction enter from Israel unhindered. The people responsible for sabotaging the supply routes are members of Hamas. That is how the polyethylene for greenhouses is used to build incendiary kites, and cement and electricity are used to build tunnels and missiles. Had they wanted to, the “poor, unfortunate souls” who smuggle bombs and drones into Gaza could just as easily have brought in antibiotics and medicines.
And on this side of the border, the merciful compete to offer suggestions to provide relief for Gaza’s residents, as if doing so would bring any change to the violent agenda promoted by Hamas. And the much-discussed hudna (“truce”) will only serve as a catalyst to bolster the terrorist organization’s standing.
In our yearning for peace and placation, we strengthen Hamas. And as we send them food and aid, they burn our wheat fields. As the saying goes, those who are kind to the cruel will ultimately be cruel to the kind.
This is a vengeful society that carries out honor killings, persecutes the LGBT community, fires guns at weddings, drives recklessly, burns tractors, fields and forests, allows bigamous marriage and establishes crime syndicates; in short, this is a society that shirks responsibility and blames others for its problems.
All this has been made possible in our “police state,” in which residents of Umm al-Fahm murder police officers in Jerusalem for motives of a “national-religious” nature, and public officials like Joint Arab List Chairman Ayman Odeh and Knesset member Hanin Zoabi spit at Arab police officers, whom they call collaborators. It is only in Israel that one can call for nationalist Palestinian isolationism while denying Jewish nationalism, and at the same time, demand the government provide police services to Arab communities.
Under the auspices of “Palestinian equality,” Arab nongovernmental organizations like the Mossawa Center work to negate the Jewish people in Israel. It is only here that the inciters, who are funded by our enemies, can claim they are persecuted by the police and intentionally neglected, block major intersections and throw tables and chairs at illegal rallies.
And it is only in Israel that among these inciters, the voices of the members of a despicable group of people can make themselves feel like members of the elite by acting against the state and its “ignorant” officials, supporting the Palestinian “right of return” and Israel’s destruction, slandering Israeli soldiers and cooperating with the boycott movement. They do this, of course, “for our own good.”
In a police state, the “universalist” left and the Joint Arab List understand that we, the child murderers, are preventing the Palestinians from access to medication and imposing a blockade, that all the disasters that have befallen them are the result of the “occupation,” and that the Arabs deserve better, including their own state with its capital in Jerusalem. What do the Jews have to do with Jerusalem? What is the Bible? A forgotten narrative.
Those who cry out that “the road from Gaza leads to Haifa,” and demand an end to the blockade and would allow the smuggling of deadly weapons to be used against us through both maritime and land-border crossings, would be wise to remember that the path from Haifa to Gaza remains open.
Dr. Reuven Berko was the adviser on Arab affairs to the Jerusalem district police and a writer for Israel Hayom.
