Tractor attacks hours before Obama visit

I was just cruising back into Jerusalem this afternoon after a whirlwind visit to Beirut when I started seeing police cars zipping past me and heading towards downtown.

Pretty soon, the messages started peppering my cell phone: Another Palestinian had gone on a rampage using a construction vehicle.

This time, the attack took place within view of the five-star Jerusalem hotel where Barack Obama is scheduled to stay tonight on the final leg of his Middle East visit.

Police were still closing off the scene when I got there. One white car had been totally crushed by the backhoe. Another was flipped on its hood.

At least 16 people were injured in the rampage before the attacker was shot dead by a driver and police officer.

Since this attack comes about two weeks after the first bizarre construction vehicle rampage in Jerusalem, it is certain to stoke the debate here about whether this is a new strategy being used by Palestinians - and what can be done to stop these attacks.

Since the first attacker acted alone and had no known ties to militant groups, it was thought that the rampage might be a strange anomaly.

But, as newspaper editors always tell us, it only takes three to call something a trend.

Now we have two.

"You can't say this is an isolated incident," said Jerusalemite Kenny Lerner, who was having lunch at a nearby restaurant when the attack started. "Not the second time."

Lerner, 67, rushed into the street with his wife and started running after the rampaging backhoe.

Then he saw a driver get out of his car and open fire. Soon an Israeli policeman arrived and opened fire.

Lerner said Israel needs to figure out who is staging these attacks - and why.

"Are they being brainwashed?" Lerner asked. "Are they being blackmailed?"

Police said the driver was a 29-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem who had a criminal record they declined to detail.

Conservative politicians are quickly calling on Israel to demolish the family homes of these attackers, revoke the citizenship of their relatives and possibly expel them.

"There is no doubt that destroying houses and expulsion are the most effective sanctions against terrorism," Avi Dichter, Israel's public safety minister, told Israel Radio after the attack.

Eyewitnesses were stunned when they saw the backhoe slamming into cars and flipping vehicles on one of Jerusalem's busiest streets - one that runs right by the King David Hotel where Obama is scheduled to stay Tuesday night.

The driver apparently slammed into a bus on a side street yards away from the hotel and then started smashing into cars on the road running past the King David.

Obama aides have said that the US Senator has no plans to change his schedule.

Comments

[Howard]

Unlike the far left, elitist Obama supporters, who have voiced support for the Palestinians, and condemed Israel ... Israel's first, second, and third priority is mere survival. The Israelis can not afford to place all their trust in the empty rhetoric of Obama, because if he flip flops with Israel, it could easily result in the destruction of Israel and all of her people. Obama's main supporters in America are a bunch of immature young people, with no life experience, or wisdom ... or, people who are so committed to electing the first black president, that his credentials, experience and competence are their secondary considerations ... if those traits are considerations at all.

[Steve]

You know what I don’t get about Jews?

I would destroy a whole city, heck I would destroy whole nations to protect my family, my friends, and the fellow citizens of my country and while I would have some regret most of that would quickly dissipate.

Yet there is so much hand-wringing among you Jews about what to do about an enemy dedicated to your extermination.

In one way I guess one could see that as noble. It could be seen as the height of ethical behavior for a people to say they wouldn’t stoop so low as to adopt the behavior of their enemy or even come close to doing so even if it means the destruction of themselves as a people.

But what kind of example is that? There were these people called the Jews, they were extremely ethical and they no longer exist because of that.

Don’t a people to be a moral light to the world have to well, first exist?

Survival is the first requirement of any people, any nation. All else is secondary. When threatened, a people, a nation needs to do whatever it takes to ensure their survival. Whatever it takes. It needs to embark on for a lack of a better term a time of “necessary cruelty”. A time where it puts away its ideals for the sake of its survival. After all if it doesn’t survive then neither does its ideals.

Someday, Israel will be in a place where it can afford to take “the high moral ground”. Someday Israel will be able to treat all people equally and justly with the dignity they deserve. But not now. You haven’t “earned” that yet. You haven’t gone through your period of “necessary cruelty”.

You know the people in the West, those who criticize you? Canada, the United States, England, they all went through a period of “necessary cruelty” some even more times than one. When their survival as a people was at stake they did the cruelest of things. They had to. If they hadn’t they wouldn’t exist as they do now. So now they can afford to be all morally superior as they have eliminated the threats that necessitates the actions that the Jews must do now to survive. But at one time they all did such actions and worse. Each and every one of them.

The choice any people have is this: will you allow yourself to be as a people subjugated to others, led into concentration camps, perhaps destroyed as a people, wiped out as a whole people or will you take your destiny in your own hands and fight back doing whatever it takes to survive?

In the end, no matter how it might seem, there is no nobility in a group of people just laying down and dying no matter the reason. It’s just national suicide not to do whatever it takes even if it goes against the higher principles of the society; even if you must be crueler than the enemy to win. For only after the threats to your existence are removed can you really build that idealistic society you want for your children and their children.

Besides if you just lie down and die against and evil force that just increases the evil in the world. That is kind of what it means that it is better to do evil than be evil. You must do evil to ensure that those who actually are evil don’t prevail.

Two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation. He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words Civis Romanis I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens.

Where was Ehud Goldwasser’s protection, or Eldad Regev’s? Where is the retribution for the families and where is the warning to the rest of the world that Israelis shall walk this earth unharmed, lest the clenched fist of the most mighty military force in the history of the Middle East comes crashing down on your house!? In other words, what the hell is the Israeli government doing here?

Israel needs to do whatever it takes to ensure that for its citizens. It needs to stand up for the worth of each and every Jew and that will only happen when people fear what happens when they don’t respect the worth of Jews and their right to exist.

NEVER AGAIN!

[e. radcliff]

Re: Steve (July 25, 2008) - Steve, man, you gotta stop stealing West Wing dialogue. It's embarrassing. http://www.quicklyfind.com/quote-the_west_wing.html