Soccer Dad

The Ambiguities of Fighting Terror

In his troubling article, "Teenage choices" Yaacov Lozowick outlines the ambiguity that is necessarily part of Israel's defense against terrorists.
Drawing on his daughter's experience during her national service he decries an incident where Israel didn't allow Arab parents to visit their dying son, until it was too late. But then Lozowick faces up to the problem.
His daughter, a teenager, is tending to dying children. Other teenagers in Israel are taking responsibilities that seem beyond their years. There were last week's heroes:

Mamoya Tahio, an Ethiopian, and Menashe Komemi died stopping her, but everybody else in the crowd was saved. At only 19, faced with the ultimate test, Mamoya and Menashe sacrificed their lives for the bystanders next to them.

and, of course, so was the young woman who killed them.

WHILE ALL this was happening, an 18-year-old Palestinian girl named Zayneb abu Salem sought to kill as many people as possible waiting at a bus stop in northern Jerusalem.

At only 18 she chose to be an agent of destruction. Israel could exempt teenagers from searches (and "humiliations") because they could be presumed to be innocent. Alas, in Israel's neighborhood that is not the case. Such a presumption could spell disaster for Israel.
Presumably Lozowick was arguing that if even someone as apparently innocent as a teenager cannot be trusted, neither can distraught parents. It is the nature of Israel's enemies that makes this so. Actions that may seem cruel, may be necessary. (It is a lesson that recently departed photographer Eddie Adams understood.)
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 29, 2004 4:15 AM