After a week in Israel, my anxiety has decreased substantially, my constant startle response has waned, and I am starting to welcome and freely explore my environment. While at first put off by the constant presence of guns, they are now a source of comfort for me. And, of course, they are a necessary preventative measure. Daily terror attacks are thwarted by the presence of these guards. When I was sitting in Mike's Place, an American bar located next to the U.S. Embassy, I was not afraid to be sitting there. Although a suicide bomber blew himself up in there a few years ago, I could not help but think about how safe I felt there. I am in Israel, and I feel at home.
Now, that does not mean that I am not afraid of extremists. Actually, I'm afraid of radicals on both sides of the spectrum; however, I guess I have to admit that I'm more afraid of radical Muslims (note the distinction between Muslims and radical Muslims) due to their indoctrination of hatred towards the Jews beginning in their early childhood. I saw a documentary last week entitled "Obsession: Radical Islam's War against the West," which exposed to me the breadth and depth of the hatred. Essentially from birth, many Muslim children are taught to fear and ultimately hate Jews. This fear and hatred are so strong as to make violence and terror acceptable mechanisms in their minds.
How do such ideas work, you wonder? Well, so do I.
It's been documented that from early childhood, toddler-hood essentially, children are taught that Jews are like apes and pigs and that they desire to kill and eat children. For example, on one recent television series, the Muslim actors portrayed Jewish ones slaying an innocent Christian child in order to include the child's blood in their Passover matzah. Many Muslims see this program during Ramadan, a time during which many families gather around the television, and it furthers their fear which they then transform into hatred. This type of programming coincides with the regular programming of sheiks and other religious leaders who claim to be representing the desires of Allah by demanding the death of the Jews and multicultural societies like the West. They also blatantly call for taking over the world and killing any and all people who are not Muslim.
These leaders not only incite and provoke violence, but they teach youngsters that the noblest action for them to strive in life is to become a suicide bomber. During their initiation ceremony for training, the youths must strap a bomb to themselves.
This whole process has me quite puzzled for two major reasons: 1) it relies entirely on false, misguided information and 2) it is a religion that actively promotes violence and widespread murder. The hatred of the Jewish people and westerners is based upon what? The belief that Jews use the blood of children? Of course this is a completely fallacious statement. Instead, the hatred is based upon the religious leaders' pronouncements of the evils inherent in the Jewish people. These accusations lack substantiation; however, they are freely and repeatedly promulgated throughout the Arab world. And, the Jewish position is not permitted to be expressed. Did you know that if an Iranian blogger were caught even writing the word "Israel" in his blog, he would be sentenced to ten years in prison? In the radical-controlled Middle Eastern world, only one side of the story is presented.
As for the anomaly of religion calling for death, this is one I do not even know where to begin. I cannot understand the rationale behind training youths to commit suicide in the name of Allah, when the elders who call for such extremist actions fail to follow their own words. Actions really do speak louder than words. How can religion demand murder? How can a person be pure if he or she kills other people? But really the question for me is how can anyone believe that G-d would ask for people to kill others?
Regardless of the lack of logic surrounding these ideas is the fact that the tiny state of Israel is surrounded by Muslim nations, each with factions of radicals. In order to protect its citizenry, one measure taken by the State of Israel was to erect the Security Fence. The rate of attacks from terrorists in the West Bank has dropped substantially as a result of this fence, more than proving its worth. Although the State of Israel would rather not need the fence, it is needed at the current time.
According to Nonie Darwish, the daughter of a shaheed, the Arab world has been surrounding the State of Israel since its inception with a psychological fence. The Arabs must tear down the psychological barrier before the physical fence can go.
