Israel, then and now

I grew up thrilling to tales of Israeli heroism. The raid on Entebbe (conducted on July 4, 1976, when the attention of much of the world was focused on the American Bicentennial) told me everything I needed to know about brains, heroism and sacrifice. It is a matter of historical record that a single Israeli soldier died in the otherwise successful assault on the Ugandan airport: Jonatan Netanyahu, brother of Benjamin, aka Bibi, who would, two decades hence, be elected Iraeli Prime Minister, when the Oslo accords began to be exposed for the PLO subterfuge they were. You can't make this stuff up.

File this, if you must, under, "Some of my best friends . . ." but this is more full disclosure. My college roommate, Hugh Milstein, was, is, Jewish. It is a great American tradition that whenever Mom and Dad visit their child at college, they must invite the roommate or the best friend or both out with the kid for first-class restaurant food, a wonderful break from Ramen and turkey franks. This tradition was followed, shall we say, religiously by Hugh's parents. But there was more. In every way and every time, they treated me like family. Perhaps this treatment colored my vision of the unending turmoil that is the Middle East. Perhaps it always will. But.

But I think of the Israeli officer's code: "After me." And then I look today at pictures on Little Green Footballs, in which Palestinian terrorists surround themselves with young boys, reasoning (if that is the word) that any mortar that lands on them will take out the boys, thus providing more victims. And I wonder two things:

1. What would it take to stop the incessant repeating of the term "cycle of violence," as if the two combatants were somehow engaged in behavior even remotely equivalent?

2. Has a society built on murder and nihilism ever succeeded? Ever? Wait, put it another way: do the Palestinians define themselves by anything other than the destruction of evil? Christ, even Hitler had Wagner and industrial progress to point to.

Right now, Corporal Shalit (I hope) sits somewhere in Gaza. Israeli children are taught from a young age that they might be taken hostage and that no deals would be made on their behalf. It is the main reason so few Jews have been taken hostage since Munich and Entebbe; a refusal to negotiate makes hostage-taking a lose-lose. Even Palestinians almost never take Israelis hostage; they simply blow them up when they can. This has to be the position of Israel now; give in, and the door to more hostages gets kicked in.

I thought the withdrawal from Gaza was a good thing; Jeff Jacoby thinks otherwise, and furthermore looks to see some of that Entebbe spirit. I agree with Jacoby on the essentials. No ransom. No ransom. No ransom.