The Store

Ezra Halevi once told me an interesting analogy, which I would like to expand on: Sharon has a store of actions in order to defend Israel - assassinations of terrorist leaders, destuction of bomb factories, etc. But the price for each action is a certain number of Jewish lives. 10 Jews killed buys one assassination. 20 Jews killed buys a 3-day incursion into terrorist-filled cities. The "coin" can only be used once, and expires after a few days. It is as if we have a complete "road map" of actions to completely win the war on terror, but we keep needing to get new "coins" in order to carry out each action.

Have you ever noticed that the "major" suicide bombings always seem to kill about 20 people, give or take a couple? There have been so many attacks that killed about 20 people, but none that have killed 30, as far as I know. I doubt that it is due to the limits of the Arabs' bomb-making abilities. They have many factories producing rockets and missiles. Surely they are capable of more mass destruction that they have carried out.

I think the reason is the store. The "20 Jew coin" only buys limited military action. But they know that a 30- or 40-Jew coin would buy a disproportionately large action - killing Arafat, dismantling the PA, or annexing territory. But since the coins cannot be combined, and they expire so quickly, they can kill 20 Jews as many times as they want, and we will only take limited action. Arafat knows that a 20-Jew coin bought the descision to remove him, but only a larger join can actually buy that action.

As further proof, during the "hudna," there were seven terrorist actions resulting in the deaths of individual Jews. But the "hudna" did not end until close to 20 Jews were killed in one day. Why? Because the one-Jew coin is like the five-agorot coin - its worth is apparently negligiable, and becoming more so every day.

I think it's nice that we bombed the Ein Saheb terrorist camp in Syria. But did Israel know about it last week? Why did we have to wait for 19 Jews to be killed this week to make the move? Weren't another 20 Jews just killed a few weeks ago? Do we even need to wait for a mass murder to bomb an active terrorist camp?

Apparently, we have a situation where we have placed a value on Jewish lives, and a low one at that. How can we, who cannot make military descisions for Israel, change this situation? We have to change our own judgement of the worth of a Jew. One Jew killed must be as valuable to us as the whole world. Further, we must not forget those killed or wounded one week, one month, or one year ago. And just as we see one life lost as the loss of the whole world, we also must see every Jew who is born in Israel, or who moves to Israel, as if the whole world was born in Israel today - the contribution to Am Yisrael is immesurable.