The Death of Outrage
by Michael Freund

(November 7) - This past Sunday, one of Israel's ostensible
"peace partners" picked up an M-16 rifle and opened fire on
an Israeli passenger bus carrying children home from school.
This "martyr" for the Palestinian cause -- as Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's state-controlled media
will no doubt refer to him in coming days -- succeeded in
murdering two innocent Jewish children and wounding 46 other
Israelis before he himself was killed. 

And so, while our politicians prattle on about how strong we
are and how powerful our army is, Jewish children cannot
ride home safely from school in our indivisible, yet
apparently under-defended, eternal capital.  So much for
promises of peace and security. 

And how did the sovereign, independent government of the
State of Israel respond to this atrocity?  By retreating, of
course. Just hours after the attack, while some of those
injured were still fighting for their lives at local
hospitals, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave the OK for the
Israeli army to withdraw from Kalkilya, thereby turning
control over the city back to the Palestinian Authority. The
same PA, that is, which Sharon recently compared to the
Taliban in Afghanistan. 

Sunday's events provided further proof that while the Oslo
process may be dead, its destructive mentality is alive and
well, and it continues to reap a bitter harvest of Jewish
victims. 

There is something wrong, something terribly wrong, with how
inured we have become to the violence around us.  The daily
fare of grenade attacks, roadside bombs, mortar rounds,
shootings, stonings and stabbings have all become a regular
part of the news broadcast, and they seem to elicit about as
much interest as the daily weather forecast. 

One of the most dangerous impacts of this "routine" is that
we have become numb, our senses dulled by the numerous
tragedies. We have lost the ability to empathize, to feel
the pain and share in the grief of a family whose relative
will not be coming home any more.  It is the death of
outrage, for we no longer feel any outrage over death. 

We talk about the sanctity of human life, but when our
government does little to protect it, we fall silent.  We
express revulsion for Arafat, the man behind the past 13
months of devastating bloodshed, but when our foreign
minister greets him with smiles in Majorca or Brussels,
hardly a peep of protest can be heard. 

In a democracy, the government is supposed to respond to
public pressure.  It keeps a watchful eye on the public
mood, often basing its decisions on how it thinks the people
will want it to act.  It may sound naive, but in this sense
we all share part of the blame for what has befallen the
Jewish people over the past year, for we have failed to
pressure the government into acting as it should. 

Sure, our prime minister is under tremendous pressure from
the United States and Europe to refrain from sending Arafat
into early retirement.  And yes, Foreign Minister Shimon
Peres, with his weekly threat to resign, adds to the strain
Sharon faces. 

But if the nation were to finally say, "Enough is enough,"
if all the port workers, Labor ministry officials and
university lecturers were to strike, not to get another few
dozen shekels every month, but because Jews are being
murdered in the streets, then maybe, just maybe, the
pressure on the government would be too great to ignore.  If
the prime minister saw that the people of this country are
no longer willing to tolerate daily casualties, then it
might provide the necessary counterweight to US Secretary of
State Colin Powell and Peres. 

Sharon has had plenty of opportunities to bring down the PA
-- after the suicide bombing at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv,
the Sbarro attack in Jerusalem, or in the aftermath of the
World Trade Center.  In all these cases, he failed to do so,
preferring instead to take far more limited steps. Analysts
have suggested that Sharon is waiting patiently for another
opportunity to act.  But that may be only partly true.  If
Sharon is waiting, it might very well be that he is waiting
for us, for the people of Israel to pour into the streets
and express our long-forgotten sense of outrage over what
has been occurring.  And if we do so, if we raise our voices
loud enough in protest, then perhaps it will give Sharon the
political cover he needs - to finally bring about an end to
Palestinian terror, once and for all. 

(The writer served as deputy director of communications and
policy planning in the Prime Minister's Office from 1996 to
1999.)