Why We Choose Us

(If there is to be PR when fighting terrorism, let it be as simple and plain as this.)

Why We Choose Us

When rockets fall on Israeli towns, the press doesn't run over to describe the carnage in loving detail or splatter photographs of gore across the evening news. The International Red Cross makes no condemnations, the UN has nothing to say, and the usual suspects who cry out against war crimes when we defend ourselves-- are silent as stones.

That is why we choose us. Because no one else will. The lesson we have learned is that if we do not care for our children, no one else will. If we do not protect them, no one else will lift a hand to do it for us.

The grandfathers and fathers of the "People of Gaza" twice invaded us together with the armies of several Arab nations to wipe us off the face of the earth. They failed. Today their children are trying to help Iran finish the job they started. The world once again chooses them. The world wails over their suffering. The world demands that we let our children die, so that theirs may live to kill us. We refuse. We choose us.

It is the right of every nation to defend itself against enemies at home and abroad. That right of self-defense will not be abridged because the left has decided that Israel has less right to exist than an Iranian backed theocracy that just brought back crucifixion. When Al Queda attacked America, the left chose the Taliban. When Hamas bombed Israel, the left chose Hamas. So be it. We are under no obligation to bow our heads to the moral judgment of the ideological grandchildren of Marx, Lenin and Noam Chomsky. To hell with them and to hell with all their progeny. We choose us.

It is the right of every people to refuse to be slaughtered, to care about their own first, and to defend their own first. You may call this selfish, we call it survival. A nation exists because it chooses not to be conquered, instead choosing the deaths of the enemy over slavery and genocide. A family exists because a man chooses to protect his family from all those who would harm them. All morality must have a base. Yours is in class warfare, ours is in the family. We choose our family, we choose their lives over the intruders who would slaughter us in the name of greed and the maddened fanaticism that turned the once thriving Middle East, cradle of the world's civilizations, into dusty deserts, hovels and torture chambers. We choose us.

We did not force Hamas to barrage our towns and villages with rockets. We did not force them to begin this war, but we are nonetheless determined to end it in the way that all wars end, with the destruction of the aggressor.

We regret that Hamas has chosen to fight a war in the streets of their own cities. But that is their choice. And if their civilian population is devastated for it, it stems from their choice of terrain, not ours. If you begin a war in your own kitchen, you should expect to have it blown up. If you hide behind the bodies of your children, do not be surprised when you have to bury them. And do not expect us to mourn or stay our hand, because our enemy has demonstrated such ruthlessness that he is willing to use his own children to fight their battles. Such tactics did not save Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan or Saddam Hussein's Iraq. They will not save Hamas.

We will not let our children die, because the enemy uses his own as a shield in a war he has started. If it comes to that, we again choose us. The world may roar in protest, and we acknowledge that it is justified so long as when their cities and towns are shelled, that they will seek futile ceasefire after ceasefire, rather than fight back. And if indeed they do so, that form of suicide is their choice. Not ours. We choose to live. We choose to fight. We choose us.

We choose to live. We choose not to put our hopes in illusion or let a billion screeching voices dissuade us from doing our duty toward our own kith and kin. We chose to build a nation out of dust and rebuild generations lost in fields of ash and dirt. We built towns and cities out of swamps, we raised crops, we raised children, we built a future. And we will protect that future whatever else others may say. This is our land we will fight for it because it is our land, the land of our fathers and the land of our children. As our ancestors chose to lift the sword and the bow, rather than to bow before the Greek idol, we choose the rifle and the knife, rather than to bend our knees to the totems of liberalism. We will fight and we will prevail, because we choose to do it, unambigiously and unapologetically. We choose our future. We choose us.