March 14, 2008 ... Reality bites.

Sderot's Mayor Eli Moyal is reduced to coming across like a whiney, down-and-out schmuck in London, as he pleads the plight of Sderot's kids vis-à-vis the Israeli side of indiscriminate, collective punishment, in the face of persistent badgering by a BBC interviewer more concerned about Hamas' democratic mandate than the lives of Sderot's kids. Even so, it must also be said that, Mayor Eli Moyal does overplay this tactical hand, as do too many of his Israeli counterparts who should know better than to have introduced this 'sympathy seeking' tactic in the first place. In other words, the media can be as much a hindrance as a help whenever the participants are determined upon using it for their own purposes, which seldom coincide.

This also applies to the banning of Al-Jazeera in Jerusalem. Okay, Al-Jazeera's reporting is deliberately prejudiced in the favour of Palestinians, and may also encourage and incite support where it is dangerous to Israelis and counterproductive to the interests of Palestinians. However, Israel is more than well skilled in communicating its point-of-view if it had a mind to do it as assertively as those--including the BBC--who persistently act on behalf of the Palestinians.

The above is not an attack on Mayor Eli Moyal, per se, for even Israeli deputy defence minister Efraim Sneh comes across as annoyingly shifty when he, like too many other Israelis, refuse to answer a straight question with a straight answer. This is bad politics and is rooted in a dangerous lack of self-assurance. Thus: Israel has weapons it is prepared to use in it self-defence. Israel will not permit Iran to acquire such weapons with which to threaten and/or destroy Israel, and/or hold the middle east to ransom, while Iran conducts terror by way of its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies, or developments thereof. Israel will not submit to the democracy of terror even though others cannot or refuse to understand why they should not.

Yisrael Medad of The Yesha Council dismissively suggested that, if the Palestinians want to play with democracy, let them. The irony to this is that Israelis are too much in love with playing around with democracy, as is clearly evident by the perilous stability of their governments. It's as if Israeli politics was working in a bubble divorced from reality. But Israel cannot ignore reality.

In excess of 6-million Jews paid the ultimate price barely more than 60-years ago. No amount of pleading the Jewish case helped then, as they were hustled out of Cuba and the US, for example, so as not to upset Hitler and the Nazis. And no amount of Israeli pleading of the Israeli case including the plight of Sderot's kids will help now. Israel was established in 1948 to ensure that Jews would have a nation-state capable of proper intervention against those who have avowed to destroy them. It was too nearly a defeat in 1973. It is getting perilously close to it again, in 2008.

As has already been said in previous Op-Eds, Israel must act decisively in its self-interest. The EU and US appeasers including those who finance Al-Jazeera will be ultimately just as glad, as when Ossirak was destroyed.