For Each New Wave of Terror in Israel, the Old Words of Moshe Dayan

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Recently, and for good reason, the attention of the world has been focused on the Russian war against Ukraine. Largely unnoticed has been a string of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel’s cities.

The perpetrators have been lone wolves, cheered on by Hamas and Islamic Jihad but unaffiliated to any terrorist gang. After each attack, the government has promised to clamp down by putting police and anti-terror forces on extra high alert. But on Thursday night, a lone gunman from the West Bank town of Jenin slipped through the dragnet, walked into a crowded Tel Aviv bar, hollered “Allah hu Akbar” and opened fire. The body count is three. 

A search in the aftermath of the attack was televised in real time by all the Israeli TV channels. Tel Avivis were warned to lock themselves in their homes. As the city slept, the perpetrator was caught and “neutralized” at a nearby mosque. 

The terrorist had no previous record. His father, upon hearing the news, praised his son as a martyr. Palestinians in Gaza and parts of the West Bank celebrated the act of heroism by passing out candy to youngsters.

The media enlisted the usual experts to explain why this wave of terror is happening today. How is it different from all other waves of terror?  How can it be stopped?  What must we do next?

These are rhetorical questions. Arab violence against Jews has been a constant of life in this country since 1920. It is chronic condition. Experts may detect hair-splitting differences, and governments may employ various tactical band aids, but a wave is a wave. If you make your home on the banks of the Mississippi River, you can expect to get soaked from time to time.

Nobody understood this better than Moshe Dayan, the legendary Israeli warrior. He was chief of staff of the Israeli army in 1956, when a terrorist attack from Gaza killed a young kibbutznik, Roi Rotberg, along the border. Dayan delivered a eulogy at the grave. The public was howling for revenge against Arab fanaticism, but he had a different message.

“Let us not hurl blame at the murderers,” he said. “Why should we complain that they hate us? For eight years they have sat in refugee camps and seen with their own eyes how we have made a homeland out of the soil and the villages where they and their forebears once lived.”

Dayan asked the Israeli public to reject vengeance for clear-eyed realism. “Not from the Arabs of Gaza must we demand the blood of Roi, but from ourselves” he said. “We are unwilling to see the destiny of our generation in its full cruelty… Beyond the heavy gates of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of eyes and arms huddle together and pray for the onset of our weakness that they may tear us to pieces — is that to be forgotten?”

Dayan was a farm boy from Galilee. He grew up among Arabs, spoke their language and respected their culture. But he understood that the need for a Jewish homeland was paramount and urgent. “We are a generation of settlement,” he said. “Our children cannot have lives to live if we do not dig shelters. Without barbed wire and machine guns, we will be unable to pave a road or drill for water. The millions of Jews, annihilated without a land, peer out at us from the ashes of Israeli history and command us to settle and rebuild a land for our people.”

“Our reckoning begins with ourselves,” he concluded. “We mustn’t flinch from the hatred that accompanies and fills the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who live around us and are waiting for the moment when their hands may claim our blood. We mustn’t avert our eyes and allow ourselves to become weak. That is the decree of our generation. That is the choice of our lives — to be armed and willing, strong and unyielding, lest the sword be knocked from our hand and our lives severed.” 

Dayan was no warmonger. Later in life, as foreign minister, he played an indispensable role in achieving peace with Egypt. The Egyptians had territorial claims. Their grievances could be settled by redrawing the map of Sinai, a deal that has left both sides satisfied and lasted for more than four decades.

He also understood Palestinian rage. He once remarked that, had he been a young Palestinian, he would probably have joined the PLO. He advocated generosity toward the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, but not independence. A Palestinian state will have to wait for a change in the Palestinian state of mind.

In the meantime, Israelis will exist, as they have for a century, with the threat of Palestinian terror. It may come in the form of rockets from Gaza, lone gunmen from the West Bank, perhaps Hezbollah in Lebanon. There will be a hue and cry from the public. The wounded will be bandaged, the dead, buried. The government will respond with whatever counter-measures will calm things down. Eventually the wave will be over. And Israelis, knowing perfectly well that another is coming, will go about their business.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Zev Chafets is a journalist and author of 14 books. He was a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Magazine.

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