Hang in there Gilad

Today is the first anniversary of the abduction and kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, who still sits and waits for freedom somewhere in the bowels of Gaza.

Here's what I wrote in my journal around that time, one year ago, in my pre-blogging days:

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June 2006

So you think that the problems of the Middle East will be solved if Israel cedes land to the Arabs?

Today we are only getting a little taste of what happens when we try to trade land for peace.

Immediately after we withdrew from Gaza last summer, the Arabs began firing rockets over the border into schools and living rooms in surrounding Jewish towns.

Today we have something new: Islamic rats are digging kilometer long tunnels under the border to murder and kidnap Jews.

The entire Gazan border is maybe 30 miles long. Imagine what would happen if Israel bowed to world pressure and pulled back to the 1948 armistice line (known as the Green line). That would create a winding, convoluted border of 240+ miles, leaving 60% of Israeli Jews living in a narrow 10-mile wide coastal plain wedged between the sea to the west and mountains on the Green-line to the east. Imagine the trouble and heartache that we would suffer from snipers, rockets, missiles and whatever stuff the Arabs manage to get their hands on!

Let me make it simple for all who don't understand: The Arabs are not fighting for land and justice. They are fighting to spread Islam and the rule of Sharia law through every corner of the world. They will not stop until Israel is completely destroyed, then they will march on to conquer Europe, and then the US and beyond.

To all of you in the "give them what they want and they'll leave us alone" camp, consider this: If you give them what they want then you may soon be reading the Koran with your morning coffee rather than the Washington Post.

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That's what I wrote one year ago. In the year since, the Arabs have fired hundreds of rockets at Sderot, southern Ashkelon and the western Negev, making normal life impossible for tens of thousands of ordinary people. Last week, Hamas kicked Fatah's butt out of Gaza and will shortly turn it into an Islamic mini-state ruled by Sharia law.

When I wrote my journal entry last year, I referred to the fact that 60% of the Jewish population of the country lives in a narrow 10-mile wide strip wedged between the sea on one side and the Samarian mountain range on the other. When I made that comment, I had in mind a certain memory that I'd like to share with you:

In January 1995 I was sitting in a doctors waiting room flipping through the pages of Newsweek . I skimmed an article about the Siege of Sarajevo. The bombardment of Sarajevo began in April 1992 after the breakup of Yugoslavia. The city is surrounded by mountains, as you may recall from the scenes of the Winter Olympics that were held there in 1984. During the siege of the city, snipers in the surrounding heights kilometers away, fired mercilessly at anything that moved in the city below, and hundreds of shells were fired into the city every day, destroying 35,000 buildings. By the time that NATO military intervention and the Dayton accords ended the siege three years later, 12,000 people in the city were dead, 50,000 injured.

What I remember so vividly was the photo that accompanied the article. In it, a young boy 8 or 9 years old lay sprawled face down in a giant pool of his own blood in a playground, a soccer ball resting at his feet.

I wondered then how much hate a Serbian sniper needed in order to put a bullet through the heart of a little boy playing soccer.

Looking at that photograph, I thought of a different small country on the sunny shores of the Eastern Mediterranean, where just 28 years earlier, snipers hidden in the commanding hills above fired on boys playing ball in fields below.

So people, lets have a show of hands: Who is in favor of giving the high ground to the Arabs?

Keep doing those acts of kindness folks, it's the only solution!