Israel caught in a trap of its own making

Barry Shaw, Jerusalem Post

Image from article, with caption: The Temple Mount on Tuesday morning.

Excerpt:

Ever seen how a jackal kills its prey? Usually, it doesn’t kill it with one blow or bite. It surrounds it, it challenges it, it probes for points of weakness. It then gets its jaws around the neck of its prey and won’t let go. Whenever the animal struggles it makes itself weaker.

This is what we have been seeing from Israel. We are caught, like an animal, unable to shake off the obsessive hunger of those who have their claws into us and want to destroy us. Like a wounded animal, we didn’t assess the threat, or appreciate the real danger. In nature, the targeted animal often appears to be so powerful it could easily resist the deadly jackals. They thought their strong and non-offensive posture would appease the hungry killers into not attacking. ...

Through a fear of being disliked, we have adopted an assimilated-Jew psychosis, of trying to appear nice or appeasing the goyim and the Muslims, yet we still fail to win friends or influence people. It is we that are being influenced to surrender all too often and too easily. ...

The author is the senior associate for public diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the author of Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism, and the best-seller 1917, From Palestine to the Land of Israel.