Via The Times of Israel:
Precisely 10 years ago Tuesday evening, a 25-year-old man walked up a short flight of stairs and crossed through the lobby of a modest hotel near the beach in Netanya, a city on Israel’s Mediterranean coast.
It was the first night of Passover, and the hotel’s dining hall was packed with guests celebrating the Seder meal at tables set up among the room’s six round pillars. The man, Abdel-Basset Odeh, who grew up in a Palestinian city a short drive away and had been dispatched by Hamas terrorists, detonated the powerful bomb he carried among the diners, killing 30 of them and himself and wounding 140 others.
Palestinians carried out hundreds of attacks against Israelis in the onslaught of violence generally known in Israel as the Second Intifada. But the Park Hotel bombing stands out both as the deadliest of them all and as the turning point in the violence of those years.
On Tuesday, the tenth anniversary of the attack, survivors of the bombing and relatives of the dead gathered in the hotel’s dining hall for a memorial service.
Every time you hear one of your local campus Israel-bashers complain about the “Apartheid Wall,” point out that they are referring to the security barrier built in response to suicide bombings like the one at the Park Hotel.
From my post in 2009, Mr. Netanyahu, Tear Down That Wall For Our Suicide Bombers:
In fact, the barrier built by Israel was a direct reaction to Palestinian suicide bombings commenced as part of the Second Intifada in 2000, which took almost a thousand Israeli lives. Suicide bombers slipped past the unprotected border to blow themselves up in Pizza restaurants, buses, supermarkets, hotels, and anywhere else they could find civilians.
The barrier was built to keep suicide bombers out, and it worked, much to the chagrin of the Palestinians. In 2002 452 Israelis were killed; that number dropped by half in 2003, and now almost no suicide bombers get through, although they still try. Ironically, the barrier also saved Palestinian lives by lessening the need for Israeli military actions in the West Bank to prevent suicide bombers.
What the Israel-bashers really want, whether they will admit it or not, is to free up a path for the next wave of suicide bombers.
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Comments
Absolutely spot on. “Its not fair! We can’t walk up to you anymore.” They are spoiled children, intellectually.
The ugly truth is as you say, the Israel bashers want a renewed pathway for killers, since their rocket barrages apparently don’t satisfy the liberal bigoted fools. Behind all of this thinking is the same old rotten core: antisemitism.
That is the REAL reason that progressives hate the wall: Not enough dead Jews. Say this and say it often.
When talking about murdered Israelis, it’s useful to establish an extrapolated picture of the horror, vis-a-vis the United States.
To do that, multiply the number by 60 (U.S. has 60 times as many citizens). Thus, those 452 dead in just one year (2002) is the equivalent here of more than 27,000.
Now THAT puts it in perspective.
I view it as because of these animals, the Israeli’s have to live inside walls-
there are always two sides to a wall…
Do we know if Odeh was a white-Palestinian?
I’ve said it here before, but I’ll say it again: I do not understand how people can have such hatred for a teeny tiny country called Israel, where men and women walk free, and don’t threaten any of their neighbors.
The bullshit meme that has been spread in colleges that Israel is the “bad guy” is bull, and it’s straight up anti-semitism.
You want to know why palestinians are refugees? Watch this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_3A6_qSBBQ&feature=player_embedded#!
I stand with Israel.
A “little” historical perspective of “Palestine”.
(may I suggest if anyone doesn’t have the time for a little comprehensive reading to bookmark it for later)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2696941/replies?c=7
The bullshit meme that has been spread in colleges that Israel is the “bad guy” is bull, and it’s straight up anti-semitism.
1. IMO antisemitism is (maybe the biggest) part of the story, but not the whole story.
2. We’re all supposed to be celebrating “diversity” as we “coexist” in a rich tapestry of cultures yadda yadda. The sight of barbarians attacking a civilization is an existential affront to the multicultural fantasy. It means that the civilization, by not being sufficiently “inclusive” and “accommodating”, is oppressive. The defender is depicted as the aggressor.
3. Right after 9/11 there were those who asked What did we do to make them do this to us? For people like that, the Israelis are the leading scapegoat, but there are others.
4. From time to time I read complaints, from Islamic reformers who are trying to make their religion compatible with a modern civilization, that the administration ignores them in favor of barely disguised extremists. Such poor devils don’t seem to realize that, their very desire to adapt to modernity brands them as inauthentic.
Brilliantly put, GS.
And I suggest to anyone who thinks that muslims can EVER modernize to read a little book called “What Went Wrong” by Bernard Lewis, a middle east historian.
Thanks, I just ordered it. As it happens Amazon has the paperback version at a closeout price. Some in the LI community may want to take advantage.
Knock on wood that a book with that title, perhaps in an Asian language, is never written about us.
I believe that Bernard Lewis is British, but lived in the middle east for many many years. He’s in his 80’s.
It’s a hard read(at least, it was for me, as I hate compound sentences that are paragraphs).
But it’s worth the read to learn the history of Islam.
Came out, coincidentally, only a few years after 9/11.
Anti-semitism indeed is not the whole story, though it is a big part of it. Remember the Left demands total obedience: most Jews (as well as most Catholics) refuse to put all their faith and trust in a secular movement, and so at some point will oppose the Left. Some won’t, of course, and others get to the point of opposition in different ways and different times, but in the end, the Left has to tear down the obstinate believers. That means the Jews have to convert or die. Sounds familiar, huh?
But another part of the story is that the Left sees Israel as an Imperialist state, created by imperialists (the U.N., the U.S., Britain, France etc) as part and parcel of the Balfour Declaration. Since the Left stands against imperialism (unless they created it), the Left has to oppose Israel. Yasser Arafat was smart enough in the mid 1960s to latch on to this and play it well, working to have the Paleostinians be seen as ‘oppressed’. Brilliant, actually, as he succeeded in getting most all of the Left to agree and thus to support the Paleos.
But as to the good Professor’s point, the West Bank wall, the Gaza wall, the Lebanese border fence, and the currently under construction fence between Israel and Egypt certainly does create barriers for the splodydopes. It’s one reason why Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza have gone big for Qassam and Grad rockets to go over the walls. Israel is now deploying the Iron Dome anti-missile system to counter that: yet another wall.
Short answer: Because they are lied to and deceived into believing the inverse of the truth, and “knowing” that lie blinds them from seeing the truth.
Long answer: Because they are lied to and deceived into believing the inverse of the truth, and have had it so deeply ingrained in their sense of injustice that believing the lie has become tied to their own identity, thus the truth becomes hostile to their own self-image.
Alternative option: They are either psychopaths or pathological narcissists, or something approaching close to one or the other.
This entire country has become a cesspool of narcissists.
I hope we can change that…
Now how many times have we heard this one from the Arab media? And is Big Peace only posting it without comment in sarcasm?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/03/28/Israeli-Soldiers-And-Settlers-Storm-Al-Aqsa-Mosque
.
They’re naive.
They probably aren’t even aware of the attack on Israel that will happen in 2 days.
I wish Breitbart was here…
A horrible event. Thank you for remembering. It should not be forgotten.
Learn from the Israeli’s and build a wall on our southern border. Now it is illegal immigrant workers. Next it will be suicide bombers.
When the Chinese build a wall, it’s “Great.”
When the Israelis build a wall, it’s “apartheid.”
God rest the victims’ souls.