The prime minister and defense minister recently boasted that the stabbing terror plaguing Israel has dissipated. They attributed this cessation to the hard work of Israel’s defense forces. But that’s not true. The prime minister, the defense minister, and all of Israel’s armed forces (both regular and clandestine) have no idea how to deal with a 13-year-old Arab (often a citizen of Israel) who suddenly decides to take a pair of scissors and stab Jews.
What really brought about the current decline in stabbings is the Btzelem video of an IDF soldier in Hebron shooting a terrorist who had just stabbed a fellow soldier. The hysterical reaction of the prime minister and defense minister triggered widespread public support for the shooting soldier. The elimination of the terrorist broadcast time and again all over the world rectified a horrible moral distortion. It clarified that whoever in Israel – which rose from the ashes of Auschwitz’s ovens – attempts to stab a Jew immediately loses his right to continue breathing air on this planet. Bringing such a person to trial is immoral. The six minutes the terrorist continued to breathe were six immoral minutes.
The wave of stabbing terror, to which we were growing accustomed, returned us to a time when Jewish lives were worthless. The question mark over the right of Jews to live was erased by the moral act of the soldier in Hebron. The Btzelem video broadcast it all over the world, the prime minister and defense minister provoked the indignation of 82 percent of Israelis, and, in the face of the authentic and natural statement of the public, the murderous illusions of the Arabs waned.
We must always remember: The war that we are waging today is not physical; it’s psychological. This war will be won by the party that remembers that justice is on its side.