Yesterday afternoon a young woman stood by the side of a road holding up a sign. It read “Gush Etzion”. Those two words summon up spittle-flecked rants about Zionist settlements from the anti-Israel left.
But for Dalia, it was just home. And then it wasn’t.
Dalia caught a ride to a bus stop on the way home from her job as a children’s occupational therapist. Her next stop was a shift at Yad Sarah, a volunteer organization for the elderly and disabled.
But before that could happen, a Muslim attacker did what songs, cartoons and posters distributed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas encouraging “Car Jihad” had been telling him to do.
He ran her over with a Mazda van.
With the 26-year-old woman on the ground, the courageous Islamic Jihadist stabbed her as she lay dying. Then shouting Allahu Akbar, he began slashing at an unarmed man who had stopped to help. When the unarmed man fighting him off with his bare hands proved too much for the knife-wielding Jihadist, the killer fled, was wounded and taken into custody.
Dalia’s father, a volunteer with Magen David Adom, Israel’s Red Cross, heard that there had been an attack. He did what countless Israeli fathers and mothers began doing right after they heard the news. He called his daughter. There was no answer.
Despite being only in her twenties, Dalia knew what was coming. This wasn’t her killer’s first act of terrorism and it wasn’t her first time as a victim of Islamic terrorism.
When she was seventeen years old, Dalia was attacked by a knife-wielding terrorist in the same place. But the terrorist didn’t have a van and there were armed men at the scene.
“I stood on February 28, 2006 at Gush Etzion Junction when a terrorist came and began to stab those standing at a hitchhiking station,” she would later write.
She described terrorists for whom prison life is “like a hotel”, who watch television, take courses and contact their lawyers. “Those who stab Jews have their rights and privileges. The injustice cries out to Heaven.”
“Punish and expel those who threaten us," Dalia wrote, “no matter the cost to them. They must pay the price for their terror. That is the only way the terrorism will end.”
As you read this, Dalia Lemkus will have already been buried. Her parents and her five brothers and sisters will have cried over her grave. Her killer will receive the best possible care in an Israeli hospital. The Palestinian Authority will use the foreign aid it receives from the United States and the European Union to pay him a salary for life. If he gets out, he will be entitled to everything from special housing to free medical care paid for by you, by me and by all of us.
Stabbing a young woman in the neck while she lay in the street made him a hero of Palestine. He has become a model of Muslim manhood, little boys in UNRWA schools will be taught about his great deed and encouraged to follow in his footsteps. And they will, just as he had followed the example of those great Muslim heroes who had murdered Jewish women and children in Hebron before he was born.
The educational system staffed by Hamas supporters and paid for by foreign aid does its work well. Some countries turn out future doctors and scientists. The Palestinian Authority turns out heroes who can nerve themselves up to take on a 26-year-old Jewish woman as long as they have a few thousand pounds of van or at least a butcher knife on their side. Not to mention Allah and the Koran.
Dalia’s killer may remain behind bars where Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will complain that his smartphone isn’t fast enough, that his Coca Cola isn’t fizzy enough and that the clothes he shops for remotely with his family using the money that the Palestinian Authority pays to the families of its heroes don’t fit him correctly. But it’s also possible that he will be set free.
He was before.
Dalia’s killer had been in jail for terrorism before he was released. Releasing terrorists is how Israel demonstrates its goodwill toward terrorists.
This year, Obama forced Israel to free over a hundred convicted terrorists as a “gesture” just to get the Palestinian Authority terrorists to discuss continuing talks with Israel. Israel was being pressured into releasing terrorists in exchange for an opportunity to negotiate resuming negotiations. And Israel freed most of the terrorists until the PLO broke the deal and went to the UN.
Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it was Israel’s fault because it “didn’t release the Palestinian prisoners on the day they were supposed to be freed.”
The next time that Obama and Kerry force Israel to release terrorists for the opportunity to negotiate the possibility of negotiating with terrorists, Dalia’s killer may be shouting “Allahu Akbar” all over again. And if Israel doesn’t release him on the day that Obama and the PLO want him released, it will be blamed for not wanting peace. What better way is there to achieve peace than by freeing terrorists?
Dalia left her comments on talkbacks in which Israelis shout to be heard above the reassuring lies told by their media. Now she has been silenced. She will be buried in her native town of Tekoa where her body will rest unless the left and their Islamic partners succeed in forcing the expulsion of the thousand Jews of Tekoa, the living in the houses and the dead from the town cemetery.
The State Department, which rejects the existence of the living and dead Jews of Tekoa and wants them gone, responded to Dalia’s murder by urging both sides to show restraint.
The AP’s Matt Lee asked State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether she meant that Israelis should show restraint by standing still and allowing themselves to be stabbed.
“If you’re standing at a bus stop or something and someone runs a car into you or comes up and stabs you, I don’t know how to, I mean, those people aren’t, don’t need to exercise restraint, do they?”
Psaki laughed and refused to address the question. But it’s a question that ought to be addressed.
Israel is constantly ordered to show restraint. It is told that its response to Muslim terrorism is disproportionate. But when does proportionate restraint begin? Is it when a Muslim terrorist is running you over with a van and sinking his knife into your neck? Or is it only when the terrorist is down and you contemplate doing something about the men who sent him and will continue sending more like him?
Israel is generously allowed to fight back once the knife is at its neck. But once it breaks free, then it’s told to show restraint. Taking out the terrorist networks that send out men like this would be disproportionate. Refusing to release the killer of Dalia would show that Israel doesn’t want peace.
And no matter what Israel does, how much it sacrifices, how many young women it buries in its cemeteries after they have been run over, stabbed or blown up, no matter how many of their killers it releases, it is always guilty of not wanting peace badly enough.
Critics of Israel like Jeffrey Goldberg insist that its situation is not “sustainable”. And that’s true.
Struggling with an attacker who has a knife at your throat is not sustainable. Either he cuts your throat or you cut his throat. If every time you get enough breathing room to fight back, you try to negotiate with him, instead of doing to him what he’s trying to do to you, then eventually he will kill you.
Dalia survived her first attack. She didn’t survive her second attack. There are only so many second chances when someone wants to kill you. And if you are a non-Muslim in the Muslim world, then someone always wants to kill you.
The price of restraint is death. Negotiating with your killers lets them trade up from a knife to a van, from a stone to a rocket, from an outpost in Lebanon to fortresses within range of your major cities.
Dalia tried to warn Israelis. She tried to warn the world. Now her voice speaks from the grave. It is the voice of the dead. It is the voice of truth.
“They must pay the price for their terror. That is the only way the terrorism will end.”
But for Dalia, it was just home. And then it wasn’t.Dalia caught a ride to a bus stop on the way home from her job as a children’s occupational therapist. Her next stop was a shift at Yad Sarah, a volunteer organization for the elderly and disabled.
But before that could happen, a Muslim attacker did what songs, cartoons and posters distributed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas encouraging “Car Jihad” had been telling him to do.
He ran her over with a Mazda van.
With the 26-year-old woman on the ground, the courageous Islamic Jihadist stabbed her as she lay dying. Then shouting Allahu Akbar, he began slashing at an unarmed man who had stopped to help. When the unarmed man fighting him off with his bare hands proved too much for the knife-wielding Jihadist, the killer fled, was wounded and taken into custody.
Dalia’s father, a volunteer with Magen David Adom, Israel’s Red Cross, heard that there had been an attack. He did what countless Israeli fathers and mothers began doing right after they heard the news. He called his daughter. There was no answer.
Despite being only in her twenties, Dalia knew what was coming. This wasn’t her killer’s first act of terrorism and it wasn’t her first time as a victim of Islamic terrorism.
When she was seventeen years old, Dalia was attacked by a knife-wielding terrorist in the same place. But the terrorist didn’t have a van and there were armed men at the scene.
“I stood on February 28, 2006 at Gush Etzion Junction when a terrorist came and began to stab those standing at a hitchhiking station,” she would later write.
She described terrorists for whom prison life is “like a hotel”, who watch television, take courses and contact their lawyers. “Those who stab Jews have their rights and privileges. The injustice cries out to Heaven.”
“Punish and expel those who threaten us," Dalia wrote, “no matter the cost to them. They must pay the price for their terror. That is the only way the terrorism will end.”
As you read this, Dalia Lemkus will have already been buried. Her parents and her five brothers and sisters will have cried over her grave. Her killer will receive the best possible care in an Israeli hospital. The Palestinian Authority will use the foreign aid it receives from the United States and the European Union to pay him a salary for life. If he gets out, he will be entitled to everything from special housing to free medical care paid for by you, by me and by all of us.
Stabbing a young woman in the neck while she lay in the street made him a hero of Palestine. He has become a model of Muslim manhood, little boys in UNRWA schools will be taught about his great deed and encouraged to follow in his footsteps. And they will, just as he had followed the example of those great Muslim heroes who had murdered Jewish women and children in Hebron before he was born.The educational system staffed by Hamas supporters and paid for by foreign aid does its work well. Some countries turn out future doctors and scientists. The Palestinian Authority turns out heroes who can nerve themselves up to take on a 26-year-old Jewish woman as long as they have a few thousand pounds of van or at least a butcher knife on their side. Not to mention Allah and the Koran.
Dalia’s killer may remain behind bars where Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will complain that his smartphone isn’t fast enough, that his Coca Cola isn’t fizzy enough and that the clothes he shops for remotely with his family using the money that the Palestinian Authority pays to the families of its heroes don’t fit him correctly. But it’s also possible that he will be set free.
He was before.
Dalia’s killer had been in jail for terrorism before he was released. Releasing terrorists is how Israel demonstrates its goodwill toward terrorists.
This year, Obama forced Israel to free over a hundred convicted terrorists as a “gesture” just to get the Palestinian Authority terrorists to discuss continuing talks with Israel. Israel was being pressured into releasing terrorists in exchange for an opportunity to negotiate resuming negotiations. And Israel freed most of the terrorists until the PLO broke the deal and went to the UN.
Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it was Israel’s fault because it “didn’t release the Palestinian prisoners on the day they were supposed to be freed.”
The next time that Obama and Kerry force Israel to release terrorists for the opportunity to negotiate the possibility of negotiating with terrorists, Dalia’s killer may be shouting “Allahu Akbar” all over again. And if Israel doesn’t release him on the day that Obama and the PLO want him released, it will be blamed for not wanting peace. What better way is there to achieve peace than by freeing terrorists?
Dalia left her comments on talkbacks in which Israelis shout to be heard above the reassuring lies told by their media. Now she has been silenced. She will be buried in her native town of Tekoa where her body will rest unless the left and their Islamic partners succeed in forcing the expulsion of the thousand Jews of Tekoa, the living in the houses and the dead from the town cemetery.
The State Department, which rejects the existence of the living and dead Jews of Tekoa and wants them gone, responded to Dalia’s murder by urging both sides to show restraint. The AP’s Matt Lee asked State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether she meant that Israelis should show restraint by standing still and allowing themselves to be stabbed.
“If you’re standing at a bus stop or something and someone runs a car into you or comes up and stabs you, I don’t know how to, I mean, those people aren’t, don’t need to exercise restraint, do they?”
Psaki laughed and refused to address the question. But it’s a question that ought to be addressed.
Israel is constantly ordered to show restraint. It is told that its response to Muslim terrorism is disproportionate. But when does proportionate restraint begin? Is it when a Muslim terrorist is running you over with a van and sinking his knife into your neck? Or is it only when the terrorist is down and you contemplate doing something about the men who sent him and will continue sending more like him?
Israel is generously allowed to fight back once the knife is at its neck. But once it breaks free, then it’s told to show restraint. Taking out the terrorist networks that send out men like this would be disproportionate. Refusing to release the killer of Dalia would show that Israel doesn’t want peace.
And no matter what Israel does, how much it sacrifices, how many young women it buries in its cemeteries after they have been run over, stabbed or blown up, no matter how many of their killers it releases, it is always guilty of not wanting peace badly enough.
Critics of Israel like Jeffrey Goldberg insist that its situation is not “sustainable”. And that’s true.
Struggling with an attacker who has a knife at your throat is not sustainable. Either he cuts your throat or you cut his throat. If every time you get enough breathing room to fight back, you try to negotiate with him, instead of doing to him what he’s trying to do to you, then eventually he will kill you.
Dalia survived her first attack. She didn’t survive her second attack. There are only so many second chances when someone wants to kill you. And if you are a non-Muslim in the Muslim world, then someone always wants to kill you.The price of restraint is death. Negotiating with your killers lets them trade up from a knife to a van, from a stone to a rocket, from an outpost in Lebanon to fortresses within range of your major cities.
Dalia tried to warn Israelis. She tried to warn the world. Now her voice speaks from the grave. It is the voice of the dead. It is the voice of truth.
“They must pay the price for their terror. That is the only way the terrorism will end.”
Comments
Without meaning to exploit Dalia's murder or the venue of this column, Dalia's vicious, random murder by an Islamic fanatic (or the earlier car-jihad murders of a woman and an infant) in Israel, I could not help but see the parallels in the plot of "The Black Stone," in which the brutal rape and slaying of Rachel Lerner is investigated and resolved by a detective in 1930 San Francisco, long, long before anyone in the West had heard of the Muslim Brotherhood or became familiar with the term "jihad" or might have thought that " Allahu Akbar" was the name of a striptease artist in a period burlesque theater. See the column to the right. Mr. Greenfield has featured that recommendation there for many months. It is available as a print book, and on Kindle and as an audio book. The book has had a successful sales record, so there must be something right about it.
ReplyDeleteOn this Veteran's Day, my sincere prayers for a new Commander In Chief. One who loves our troops and supports our Allies, most especially Israel and its' people..
ReplyDeleteDalia represents our daughter, sister or friend, and could be our future, unless the West wakes up. R.I.P. Dalia.
sophie
You must learn to ignore oblamo and kerry. We don't care what they have to say so why should lsreal ! Hence ! The out come of our midterm elections. Sorry for the loss of this young girl. Firing squad sound like a fitting end to that scum bags life instead of 3 hots and a cot. Should be 3 rounds to the forehead !
ReplyDeleteUntil we take back out sovereignty, these attacks will only continue. Properly vetted Jews who have served in the IDF must be given the right to carry a weapon, when instead the exact opposite is happening.......making it increasingly more onerous to attain a carry license, in fact almost impossible. It is shameful.
ReplyDeleteBibi needs to stop talking, and start doing.......for once.
I wonder what Barry would do if one of his daughters was murdered in this way.
ReplyDeleteSabaShimon is correct about arming more Israelis, but I would take it a step further. If every responsible, law-abiding adult Jew in Israel, IDF veteran or not, could receive a carry permit if he or she so chose, life would not be so carefree for the Arab terrorists, or so safe. Let them try to attack armed citizens and see how that works out.
ReplyDelete-- Lightbringer
Lightbringer, I hear you, but I would still limit it to not only IDF vets, but only combat vets.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, there's enough of us to get the job done.
;-)
The problem is Shabak......they don't want armed Jews.....go figure.
As I said, in a Jewish nation it is, to put it mildly, shameful and reminiscent of dark times in dark places.
Very moving Daniel -- thank you.
ReplyDeleteThe West, and that is, all free countries around the world including Israel, is at war with Islam.
ReplyDeleteAs long as we continue to evade the reality of Islam, the fact that Islam is utterly vile, completely immoral, and thoroughly evil, we will continue to see the kind of vicious atrocities as the one in this article committed by cowardly Islamic scum.
Will the West wake up? Given the ability of our leaders, especially those on the Left, to chronically criminally evade the facts, it's not clear.
What is clear is that if we don't wake up, we will lose the war and our civilization will collapse into chaos and death.
Perhaps this perpetrator could be 'shot while trying to escape' or send him to the jurisdiction of Law Enforcement in a certain small southern town I know where this sort of resolution could be arranged. Notorious wanted repeat felons and murderers who find themselves apprehended there, do not survive until their paperwork is completed and served. This is not police brutality, I'm sure all those perpetrators attempted to escape...probably because the jail's cable didn't carry enough channels or their smart phones didn't get the best reception.
ReplyDeleteSibyl
I do not understand why Israel doesn't institute the death penalty for Terrorism. Why not?
ReplyDeleteThe perpetrator is being treated in an Israeli hospital.......to be nursed into his prison hotel. The one who was shot dead after having knifed and killed a 20 year old soldier in Tel Aviv, evoked cries in our local media on Israeli police being murderers for not just arresting him.
ReplyDeleteThis is happening wherever Whites attempt to live in the same area as lively, vibrant, diverse savages. In the U.S. we have imported millions of these parasites from Mexico to add to our millions of Black parasites.
ReplyDeleteThe only solution for us is mass deportation of nonWhites. It will happen. The only solution for Israel is to force ALL Arabs out of Israel, theWest Bank and Gaza. Then they must officially annex these areas and repopulate them with their own. By blocking this, the U.S. merely perpetuates the war. Since our leaders are clinically insane, they are unable to comprehend their crimes.
In any case, restraint is about to be abandoned as Whites increasingly are forced to admit that they are under siege by the very people that they have so generously embraced and supported. NonWhites have no right to destroy our countries. Whites have no right to let them.
Concerning US-style carry permits, SabaShimon wrote:
ReplyDelete"The problem is Shabak......they don't want armed Jews.....go figure.
As I said, in a Jewish nation it is, to put it mildly, shameful and reminiscent of dark times in dark places."
Perhaps the boys and girls at Shabak should remember that the people of Israel pay their salaries. I'm not sure how to send that message to intelligence services in any democracy without the risk of compromising national security, but there should be a way. And as to Jews with firearms... well, that's a beautiful sight. Check out the website for JPFO (Jews for the Protection of Firearms Ownership).
-- Lightbringer
Much like US taxpayers pay the salaries of the boys at the ATF
ReplyDeleteIt's a problem across the West
Daniel, truer words were never written or spoken. Had today's pc been around in the past, what a disrespect it would have been to the memories of our brave servicemen and women. The allies flattened Germany. The bomb was dropped on Japan despite its horiffic consequences, although it saved lives. But above all, WWII did not end until the Asis powers surrendered unconditionally and were rendered militarily benign. Israel has always been pressured to end its wars prematurely, guaranteeing only that there will be more war at some later time. Shamme on the U.S., the EU, the UN, and all others in the world too blind, or too hateful, to recognize the truth.
ReplyDelete"...Obama forced Israel to free over a hundred convicted terrorists..."
ReplyDeleteIt's way too easy to push Jews around; they don't fight back, and they believe they're not supposed to. Why they don't just move into Gaza, and any other source of terrorism on their people, is beyond me. What's going to happen? Will they lose the good will of America? Europe? They should just do it, and call it "peace-keeping", removing the leaders, quietly, and without witnesses. Then, elections would be in order, and it would be a fait accompli.
The people who live there would be much happier that they and their children are protected by Israeli "peace-keepers". The military went in and then left; big mistake.
Those of you who think we are at war with Islam, or them with us, are pathetic. Half the World is Muslim, but most, outside the Middle East, are not easily manipulated, ignorant peasants. 90% of those in the M.E. would rather have peace and a job, and would not miss the Leaders that make their lives miserable, especially the ones in the Mosques that tell them their, and their children's, duty is to die for Allah.
Whining is far easier for Jews, but it becomes sickening, fairly quickly, and it doesn't accomplish anything except show weakness..
Regards
Excellent essay, as always. As Rabbi Kahane ztk"l hy"d explained decades ago, the Israeli government, which allows the mere presence of Arab Muslims in Israel, is every bit as complicit, if not more so, in the murders of Israeli Jews. No Muslims, know peace. It is sad that the little that Netanyahu does nowadays makes him seem like a hawk. He must do what needs to be done, regardless of world opinion. The Arabs expelled 850,000 Jews in the late 1940s. That was phase 1 of an exchange of population. Phase 2, the expulsion of Arab Muslims from Israel, is long overdue. If the expulsion of ethnic Germans by Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the exchange of populations between India and Pakistan was eventually sanctioned by the U.N., then an Jewish-Arab exchange of populations will be sanctioned as well. A nation whose leadership does not have self-respect, will not win respect from other nations.
ReplyDeleteBut..according to most social studies teachers at the high school at which I teach, as well as the Left generally...Islamic terrorism is a result of United States' actions. Never mind that Islam has been involved in genocide since its beginning and long before the birth of the United States. (Facts always bother the Left.) My school, as well as almost all public schools in the nation, teach that America is the greatest source of terrorism in the world. That self-hating ideology creates a passive, "we deserved it" mentality that our enemies are sure to exploit. If you simply count the number of terrorist acts in the world, almost all are perpetrated by followers of the "religion of peace". They immigrate to these countries not to assimilate and acculturate; but, rather, to spread Jihad. It is, after all, in their sacred text: read 9:15, 9:123, 8:12 & 5:51 to name a few.
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes out to Dalia and her family. Clearly her family raised a wonderful human being.
King Western Man
Peak Altruism. djr
ReplyDeleteThis man should never see another year. Her father and her other male relatives should have the right to both choose his method of execution and carry it out. No musloid that kills anyone, much less a Jew, in a terrorist attack should ever receive anything but death. Moreover, if he was an Israeli-domiciled Jew, his family should be expelled into Gaza and his assets confiscated by the State of Israel. If they want to kill non-Muslims, show them that is a game we play better than they do. That's the only way to make them stop.
ReplyDeletePost a Comment