NO WHITE FLAG

At least three days a week I drive on highway 443 to work in Jerusalem. On one side of this road you can see the Jewish town of Givat Ze'ev and, on the other, the entrance to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, the seat of Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmood Abbas (Abu Mazin). It was here, at the large petrol station on this road, that private Ziv Mizrachi was knifed in the heart by a Palestinian terrorist yesterday. Before succumbing to this fatal wound, he struck at the terrorist who had gone after a fellow female officer by shooting him while the blade was lodged in his chest. Consider that. The defense of a fellow soldier is the last thing Ziv thought of, even as he could barely breathe.

12 years ago his uncle, Alon Mizrachi, who was working the security of the famed restaurant Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem, shielded tens of diners with his own body when a terrorist entered wearing a bomb belt on a suicide mission to meet the 70 Virgins in heaven, the reward promised to every Jihadist. Ponder that too. Alon knew that this act of defense would be his last act on this earth.

Ziv Mizrachi's father, Doron and brother to Alon cried out at the funeral that his is a family of strong defenders of the Jewish people who will never surrender to terrorism. Eight days from now, after the first week of mourning is over, he will be at work as usual. He will take the bus as usual. He will go about his life as usual. Palestinian terror will not defeat his family and those of the myriad citizens who his brother and son paid the ultimate price to save. Just for a moment, contemplate that pain. Brave heroes, all three.

"Baruch Dayan Emet", the traditional Hebrew citation when someone passes (meaning 'God's judgement is just'), is a difficult one to say these days. During the current wave of terror, we find ourselves saying it all too often. But then it also reflects the spirit of the Mizrachi family - it connotes a kind of determinism underlying the Zionist project, and yet refutes capitulation of any kind.

I'll be driving that route tomorrow, as usual. Baruch Dayan Emet.

WATCH OUT FOR YOUR VALUABLES

The Friday attack on Paris did not emerge from a groundswell of socio-economic unease by local Muslims. To the contrary, people who migrate in order to better their situation are interested in survival and invest in their contribution to their adopted country. In fact they are usually beacons of the pluralistic ideal. Without losing their ethnic identity, they manage to take on local mores, excel in the education system, and often reach the highest political and cultural echelons of society. This is certainly true of Jewish and Indian Britons, Algerian French, and African Americans. Economic or social anxiety doesn’t usually lead to terrorism.

Terrorism such as that witnessed by Parisians yesterday was indeed orchestrated by 8 members of ISIS who managed to cross the border via Germany together with the swathes of Syrian refugees currently swamping European borders. The war that the continent is now facing must be recognized as ideological in nature, based in a religion that is incompatible with western ideas of individual and democratic freedoms. The radical Islam that ISIS and similar groups espouse seeks to vanquish “infidel” communities from the world. They even say so. You just have to pay attention to their own published charters.

Israel has long contended that the EU should not ostracize but rather embrace our efforts in the Middle East because we know that the war we battle every day is not in fact territorial but religious. If the Israel/Palestinian conflict were about territory it would have been solved decades ago. Jerusalem itself has been on the negotiation table no less than 3 times, and each time was rejected outright by the Arab side. In kind, had the EU recognized the long term unstabling effects of the tribal war in Syria between the Allawis, Sunnis and Shiites (ISIS are Sunnis) and taken steps to curb it, it is possible that the great migration of this century could have been prevented and they would be far better equipped to deal with the wave of terror that radical Islam has unleashed.

But it’s not only nations ISIS wishes to take over. It is also – in fact primarily – western ideas that they want to uproot. Those ideas are embedded in the great symbols of European history: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Place de la Republique and that most famous of all Gothic churches Notre Dame, to name just a few that immediately come to mind. France and Europe needs to either take fierce and unpopular steps to protect its heritage, or gird up the Arc de Triomphe and bury Leonardo’s Mona Lisa in a bunker somewhere until this Dark Age passes.

THE FACE OF TERROR

I live in Ra'anana, Israel. Ra'anana is a suburb not far from Tel Aviv. I am a lecturer in Jerusalem. I usually travel there about 3 times a week. I was there only yesterday for my College's opening conference. Right now, I'm sitting in front of my computer editing material for Yad Vashem's (National Holocaust Museum) project on the rail transports of the Jews out of Germany to the extermination camps in the East during the 1940s. You wouldn't believe the testimonies I have to read. You cannot imagine the belief system that the Nazis actually held and the calculated industrialized mechanisms they used to implement it. I have been working on this material for 4 years now, and never cease to be shocked anew.

As I type I can hear sirens going off all around me. I hear helicopters overhead. I look out of the window and see them circling above my house. Clearly, another Palestinian terrorist attack. These have been going on for over a week now in 'response' to Abu Mazen's claim that Jews are storming the Al Aqsa mosque perched atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The truth is that the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed at all: Arabs are allowed to pray there; Jews are not. It's simple incitement following Abu Mazen's latest tirade at the UN calling for a renewal of Arab terrror against Israel. But the Palestinian populace, free to walk among the Jewish population at will (no, there is no apartheid system in place in this country) is all keyed up, and its youth is on a rampage armed with knives ready to slit the throats of anyone they care to encounter en route. Others find it more efficient to kill parents in front of their children in drive-by shootings; and some prefer to just ram their cars into lines of civilians (or soldiers - it doesn't matter which) who might be waiting for public transport. Palestinian terror is a lot more haphazard than Nazi terror, I grant you, but it stems from the same irrational root: Jews in our midst - absolutely not.

The apparent lack of logistics on the part of Palestinian terror gives apologists fuel for defending it with claims such as, 'But the poor oppressed Palestinians have no other way to vent their frustration.' What a load of rubbish. In a latest attack two cousins aged 13 & 15 stabbed a Jewish 13 year old as he was riding his bike. Talk about child abuse: what kind of mother sends her sons to endanger themselves in the name of Allah? In fact, most of the perpetrators of terror in the last 10 days have been young impressionable Palestinians. But others are not so young that they can't apply a modicum of critical thinking. Israa Abed, an Israeli Arab from Nazareth, shot after trying to stab a security guard, is a mother of three and a student of genetic engineering.

So now this spate of hand-to-hand terror is in my town too. Not just the Old City of Jerusalem, or in cities closer to Arab populations that are easy to get to. To my non-Israeli friends: you are constantly bombarded with headlines such as the BBC's “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two” that squarely blames Israeli security officers for defending civilians by deliberately describing the 'attack' in the passive to avoid actually saying that Palestinians are running amuck; or AP's recent headline "Israeli police shoot man in East Jerusalem" following a terror attack by a Palestinian who deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people disembarking Jerusalem’s Light Rail, killing a three-month old baby and injuring several more. Even worse, not only is the context incessantly (and irrevocably) removed, but sometimes there are no headlines at all! This devastating wave of Palestinian terror just doesn't fit the editorial agenda. So next time you read a headline about 'recurring violence in the Old City' or some such equivalence being portrayed between Palestinian terror and the sovereign country of Israel taking steps to curb it, try to put a face on the Jewish victims. Try mine. That could've been me walking down Ahuza Street in Ra'anana an hour ago.