Catastrophe

It's been a very busy few days, consisting of Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Remembrance Day, immediately followed by Israel Independence Day), and I wrote about neither. 

Then, over this past Shabbat, I met members of a delegation of Israeli political high-fliers, about whom I was going to post, and will do soon. 

Today, I attended what seemed to be the very highly successful "We Believe in Israel" conference. I've taken so many notes, and wasn't sure where to start. I've got several days' worth of material to write about. 

And then, as I finally sat down to see, hear and read about today's news, once again I'm left writing about turmoil in Israel. 

In the morning rush-hour in Tel Aviv, an Israeli-Arab truck driver seems to have purposely driven into several other cars and ended up crashing into a primary school. A 27-year-old man was killed, and over a dozen injured. 

Around Israel's borders, in particular on the Golan border with Syria, and at the Erez border crossing into Gaza, large numbers of people started violent protests. The BBC has reported that twelve people have been  killed. They've managed to miss the fact that ten of them were killed by the Lebanese army. Their headline, as usual, speaks initially of Israeli aggression, and only mentions the Palestinians' initiating actions as a secondary detail.

All this, in the name of marking the "Nakba", the Arab description of Israel's independence - Catastrophe. 

The real catastrophe is that this can all have been avoided, and could certainly come to an end. All it will take is some very brave decision-makers, and the acceptance of one simple fact: Israel is there, always will be there, and will always remain, an independent, democratic, Jewish state.