Recent days have seen an escalation in the level of terrorist violence. Nevertheless, a ground operation does not seem to be on the horizon. The Israeli leadership is too focused on the upcoming elections to contemplate serious military action. Furthermore, in the wake of the recent Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar fiasco, many Israelis have no desire to rock the boat. They argue that if denying entry to two BDS-supporting congresswomen triggered a political storm, an Israeli ground operation – which regretfully but inevitably would cause collateral damage to Palestinian noncombatants – would bring on a hurricane of criticism.
Such an approach ignores reality on the ground. Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi believes that a large-scale ground operation is needed to restore Israeli deterrence. The lives of Israeli civilians are on the line; that should be more important than any other consideration.
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Furthermore, an approach that caves into the pressures presented by the progressive wing of the US Democratic Party damages Israeli security. According to Mendi Safadi, head of the Safadi Center for International Diplomacy, Research, Public Relations and Human Rights: "We still don't understand the culture in the Islamic world and the interpretations that terrorist organizations have for our responses. Every time that morality is used as a component of the decision-making process, terrorism will continue to rise up and to hit our sensitive points.
"When fighting against terrorism, only force is capable of crushing it," continued Safadi. "We must not allow for moral sentiment to become involved. Hamas treats our morality as a weakness. It has learned to exploit and make the most of it, as Israel restrains itself as a number of incendiary balloons and Molotov cocktails are launched, an effective strategy that has caused severe harm to the south. Every strategy spoken about for calming the border does not include the terror balloons, which have become the new status quo. The Arab custom of crossing the red line until it passes the limit that its opponent can no longer suffer and then once more stretching the line, thus defining a new red line, creates fresh norms for us. In order to bring that red line back to its original place, it is impossible not to have a new military operation."
The longer Israel postpones a military operation, the bolder our adversaries get. According to a report by the Middle East Media Research Institute, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently declared: "Every house you have built on our land, is bound to be destroyed, Allah willing. … No matter how many houses and how many settlements they declare that they [plan to build] here and there – they shall all be destroyed, Allah willing." Inspired by Israel's weak response to Palestinian terrorism, he felt at liberty to threaten every Jewish house in this country.
Mark Vandarmaas, the founder of Israel Truth Week, has compared the Jewish people to battered women. After 2,000 years of trauma-filled history, we are afraid to confront our adversaries head-on. As a result, instead of directly addressing the arguments put forward by BDS activists, we speak about our accomplishments in other areas: LGBT rights, humanitarian aid to the Third World, technological innovations, and such. This approach, which allows the arguments of BDS activists to go unchallenged, is a mistake.
The same can be said with our approach to fighting terrorism. Instead of confronting the Palestinian terror groups head-on in a ground operation, we launch sporadic, ineffective airstrikes while refraining from doing what it actually takes to restore deterrence.
It is time to stop behaving like a battered woman. We should overcome our traumatic history and learn to fight back so that Palestinian terrorism can be defeated once and for all. We are no longer victims, we are survivors, and that requires active resistance to our oppressors.
