Western countries, including Israel, will give it the old college try. That which they will not do is drive on to a final victory.
I had no plan to write opinion articles. The first one came out in 2002 and not intentionally. My son and I were walking home from my lab in Jerusalem. It was March, the month with the greatest number of suicide bombings during the second intifada. As we walked down King George Street, I noticed a woman walk past me with a huge hockey duffle bag. As my name is Bauer and BAUER was written on the side of it, I could not have missed it. I thought to myself that if there was a bomb in that bag, then we were goners. The explosion happened about a second later. When I stopped my forward trajectory and landed hard on my knee, I saw that my left arm was bleeding. I found our son face-down on the sidewalk where we had been holding hands only moments before. When I was interviewed by Israeli police from my hospital bed, I mentioned the woman and her bag. They looked at each other. I was wrong. It had been a Palestinian policeman whose head was completely separated from his body by the force of the explosion.
During the weeks that followed, I received many emails from friends and family asking how we were. I could not write. I could not answer them. For all of my natural verbosity, I had nothing to say. We were going through a delicate period in our family life, with our son in pediatric ICU and our doing our best to juggle time with him and his younger brothers at home. Finally, a month after the attack, I wrote a “To All” letter giving an update. This letter somehow made its way to a Jerusalem Post editor and she asked if they could publish it as an article. They sent a photographer to the children’s hospital where our son was by then and the article came out in May.
My son wanted to make the bombing go away. He hated the attention and his first priority was to be like everybody else. I felt that we had been given a job, part of which was to retell our story but also to make people aware of what actually transpires in the “Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”. I wrote a book, The Short Long Path, which went nowhere, though there is a copy in the Harvard Judaica Collection. I gave talks, primarily to visiting groups of Americans to tell them what the horrors of a suicide bombing were like. I went toe-to-toe with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI, trying—in vain—to get them to extradite and prosecute the dozens of Palestinians who had killed and injured American citizens. I worked—again, in vain—to get any terrorist who had harmed an American off of the Schalit get-out-of-jail list. The DOJ actually made a list of such people but never gave it to the Israelis. Eighteen such terrorists walked, including the two women who brought the headless bomber to downtown Jerusalem.
We joined several lawsuits against those who harmed us and those who moved their money. Our main case, Sokolow v PLO, is scheduled for an oral hearing before the Supreme Court in March. The original case was filed in 2004, two years after we were wounded. Our lawyers have represented hundreds of American clients, including many who were involved in the October 7th attacks and ensuing war.
There are times when I tell myself to stop writing. My words have not changed anything. The ones making the decisions don't read them. I then look in the comments section and see a positive reply from a reader. Or a friend says that the piece was spot on. Or someone suggests a topic which leads to another article on this site. I am grateful to the Townhall editors for letting me express my thoughts; I am grateful to you the readers for reading my material and putting in comments. Some comments are harsh, but it comes with the territory.
There was a story of an Allied bomber that came back from a bombing run over occupied Europe. The fuel tanks were shot up but the plane made it home. Officers found shell fragments in the tanks and inside was a note: “This is all we can do for you now.” These words were written by slave laborers in Czechoslovakia who made sure that the shells would not explode. Each of us has to do what he or she can to make our homes, neighborhoods, and country better. Israel is facing a disastrous deal which will release over 1,000 terrorists who wish to kill and maim again. After the 42 day period—if they get that far—there will be international pressure not to resume the fighting. And with that, Israel will have fought for over 15 months and Hamas will still be in power, its ranks replenished. The only question being whether money and weaponry from Iran will reach it without the Philadelphi Corridor.
Rommel, if he had made it past Montgomery, would have plowed through Gaza in three days. America was in Afghanistan for over 20 years without a victory. The British have Pakistani Muslims raping their young daughters but do not throw the cretins out. America’s border is overrun and the illegal immigrants get better conditions than America’s own veterans. The West seems like it is out of gas. It does not have the will anymore to fight or to push on to victory. Most of America’s great battles involved setbacks and painful losses. But in the end, the US prevailed. Israel’s miraculous 1948 victories and its 1967 triumphs are things of the past. 15 months to conquer a space the size of Belgrade and job still not done. The soldiers have done their best; their leaders have not let them win.
The West has to believe in its history and the good that it has brought into the world. Is it perfect? No. But unless it believes that its cause is righteous, then it will never push on to total victory. Rather, it will muddle on for years and then just give up. Most experts say that a thousand troops left behind to aid the Afghan National Army would have been enough to keep the country out of the hands of the Taliban. But there was no urgency to keep them there, so everybody left, people died, others were left behind and a new and improved Bagram Airbase and billions in hardware were left for our Islamist enemies.
If the West wants to return to its winning ways, it first has to believe that its values and goals are worth fighting for. If its leaders cannot believe in the goodness of its cause, then it’s time to shut shop.
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