June 11th, '03
The Forgotten Word: Victory

Just came back from a lecture in Bet Shemesh by Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post. She was supposed to be talking about her experiences as an "embedded" journalist in Iraq.

Instead, she told us about how she sat at her computer this evening, sick to her stomach, as she heard the boom, then started counting ambulence after ambulence after ambulence. It was difficult for her to make the trip down the mountain to fulfil this speaking engagement... not just because downtown Jerusalem was a mess, but because what she really wanted to do was crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head.

One of the most poignant things about her talk was her description of how, inthe heat of battle, she was never afraid. She wasn't boasting... she herself had found this puzzling at the time, because she had found herself viscerally afraid after just hearing about terror attacks in Israel.

Then she got it. There, in Iraq, she was in a war where the soldiers around her were determined to fight ... and win. In Israel, she said, we have forgotten the word Victory.

She says, there's a big difference between being in a war where your goal is victory, and being in a war where your goal is to survive.

I would say that all you non-Israelis out there should get active, and support Israel's leaders in doing what they have to do. But Israel's leaders seem to have lost sight of the fact that victory over people who are trying to kill us is even an option, much less a moral choice.

Back to Diary Menu

  Order Now!