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1,053
Hard to believe 20 years have passed. The Second Intifada (Arab for “Uprising”) was unleashed on Israel by Yasser Arafat and his bloodthirsty henchmen in September, 2000. The last months of the Clinton administration, a gang that had done much to prop-up the evil troll. We were two months from the contested election of George W. Bush.
And still more than four years(!) from the end of the Intifada. In all, during that time, 1,053 Israelis were murdered. Not a peep from the international community.
What it meant was that Palestinian terrorists were given the greenlight to bomb and murder Jews wherever they could. Restaurants, buses, malls. It was the systematic murder of Jewish civilians, something the international community has counted as sport for many hundreds of years.
It was when the disastrous Ehud Barak tenure as Israeli prime minister was coming to an end that the country woke up to the real game the PLO was playing. Raising its children on a diet of Jew-hatred, the Palestinian “leadership” targeted innocents.
I was there in November, 2000. I will never forget standing at the Western Wall and turning around to see no one in the plaza behind me. If you’ve been there, you know where this is and know that constantly almost, there are hundreds or thousands milling about on their deeper entry into the Old City. Merchants practically grabbed my hands, begging me to buy something. Once again, the PLO had hamstrung its own people and ruined businesses as they were ruining Jewish lives.
One morning, I was finishing breakfast at the American Colony Hotel, talking with a friend. As we got up to leave, we noticed a commotion outside. Word had reached us that a homicide bomber had detonated on a bus in the western part of the city.
I went outside and three Palestinian cab drivers argued over who would take me to the scene. They seemed unconcerned that children had been murdered on that bus.
When we arrived, police were keeping the public away, but the bus was no more than 40 yards away. Unfortunately, we could see everything. Then I had one of the strangest brief conversations I’ve ever had.
It was obvious that mostly young Palestinian men were detonating these bombs; not difficult to profile.
But of course, in societies where liberalism seeps in, people cannot profile. It might be offensive to the alleged killer!
So, I asked an Israeli man standing next to me: “Why don’t you just not allow young Palestinian men on buses?”
His head snapped around and he looked incredulous.
“We can’t do that!”
Even in the midst of 11 dead children, hanging out of blown-out windows, the Israelis could not bring themselves to “discriminate” against their enemies.
It took (thank you, merciful God) Arafat’s death in 2004 to bring the curtain down on this latest reign of terror.
It was also ushered-in the Ariel Sharon era in Jerusalem. His building of the security barrier largely stopped the bombings, and its importance continues to this day.
The whole affair is a stark reminder that the world groans in misery until the Prince of Peace arrives.
May that day be very soon.