Not normal, but the norm

This is a picture of children lying on the sidewalk in my town, covering their heads with their hands to protect themselves from shrapnel from the ballistic missile that was fired (again) today at Israel. Of course, no hands covering heads will prevent shrapnel from doing tremendous harm, or death. It's a protocol about as effective as children taking cover under their desks in the 1950s and 1960s in the US in the event of a nuclear attack. Maybe it makes one feel protected, but let’s be honest....

The air raid siren sounded at 7:44am today, sending millions of Israelis to bomb shelters unless, like hundreds of thousands of children like these, they were out, on their way to school, or parents taking their kids to school, or going to work. 

Strangely, inappropriately but sadly true, the image was captioned that this is just another "normal" day in Israel. It's normal from the perspective that we have been living like this not just for weeks, months or even years, but for decades. But it's anything but normal, and cannot be tolerated.  Israel's immediate response was to warn Yemeni civilians (I wonder how many are following Israeli warnings even in Arabic) to clear out of strategic port areas. By the time you read this, those strategic port areas may not exist anymore, which is none too soon. How nice that we warn their civilians. How silly to think they would ever afford us the same courtesy. In looking at the picture, sometimes I wonder why even bother when their goal, and that of all the Islamic jihadists, is to murder and maim as many of us as possible. 

As we sat in the bomb shelter that's part of our home, the family WhatsApp group got lively with everyone checking on one another, especially my daughter and son in law.  Last night bedtime was interrupted as they put their four boys to sleep when Houthi terrorists fired another missile at Israel, almost exactly 12 hours earlier. This morning, where were they? Taking kids to school? Were the kids in school already and if so, how did the teachers quickly scramble to get them all in a bomb shelter?  

It turns out my oldest grandson was on a bus to school the moment the siren was sounded. He’s six. What stress it must have caused him, rushing off a school bus with 40-50 other kids, to take cover in the dirt or on the sidewalk like the children pictured here. What stress for the bus driver who had to manage that quickly and safely, and also deal with any panic among the children.  What stress for my daughter and son in law, and us, not knowing where he was or if he is OK and how he managed to get through this, and without a phone to tell everyone he was OK, or scared, or just to be comforted from afar. 

No, this is not normal. Not at all. But it is our norm. I discussed that a lot during my recent US speaking tour. Again not days, weeks, or even months. 

This week, 77 years ago, the State of Israel declared independence from previous British, Ottoman, and other foreign rulers who controlled the Land of Israel for centuries, millennia actually, since the destruction of the Temple in the year 70, and exile of the Jewish people. When the UN voted to establish a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland 6 months earlier, the Arabs said "No," loudly and repeatedly. They rejected two states if one of those states was a Jewish state. Many, joined by hundreds of millions of other Muslims, still reject the very right of Israel to exist. 

For 77 years, Israel has not had a single day of peace. We have had to innovate to be able to survive, spending trillions to defend ourselves, and to do so in ways that also involve added risk and massive expense to ourselves, trying to prevent civilian casualties on the other side, whether in Yemen today, or Gaza yesterday, or Lebanon six months ago. This is not normal, but it is our norm. 

This week, rather than reflecting on their own values, culture, and society being corrupt and broken, hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims, including Palestinian Arabs and many other Arabs and Muslims around the world along with their alleged supporters in the West, will mark what they call "Nakba Day." Nakba means catastrophe in Arabic. Yet far from being enlightened to realize that their god, Allah, and their leaders, have failed them all these decades, the actual catastrophe that has afflicted Palestinian Arabs, they will chant, protest, threaten, and burn things as they declare that their catastrophe is Israel’s very existence.  

This is the reality from Gaza to Tehran, from Saana to Syria, from Damascus to Doha. This is their norm, and no, it’s also not normal. 

But as long as their norm is to blame and burn, rather than take responsibility, make peace, and build for the future, this will also be our norm. 

In a dozen years my oldest grandson will go off to the IDF, probably as a combat soldier like his father. I pray that he does not encounter jihadi peers who look at him, at all of us, as the enemy, as illegitimate foreign occupiers. I pray that Palestinian Arabs will rise up not just to reject Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and their extremist Islamic backers in Iran and Qatar, but have a radical change of heart, and realize that by living in their “catastrophe,” it is in fact self-inflicted, and self-fulfilling. 

With President Trump in the region, meeting with terrorists in suits from Syria, Turkey, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, and more, I hope the message he delivers, loudly and clearly and repeatedly, is that this week, of all weeks, the choice is up to Arabs and Muslims how they want their future to be.  They can be enslaved by their past and the failures and consequences of decades of terrible decisions and evil actions, or they can look ahead, shed their past, and build for a future where children never have to race off a school bus to bury their faces in the ground, “protecting” their heads from terrorists weapons with their little hands. 

Just as Israeli children protect themselves with their hands, it's time for the Arab and Muslim world to take this responsibility into their own hands.