Jimmy Carter - The Prince of Peace?

I met former US president Jimmy Carter on June 14th and left the meeting profoundly unsettled.

It was a cordial meeting: Shaul Goldstein, the mayor of Gush Etzion had been approached by Carter's staff because in 30 years of peacemaking, Carter had not visited any settlements. I imagine Carter wanted to improve his tarnished image. There was seemingly a dialogue, and yet the meeting revealed the chasm between us. I suspect that the chasm has to do with divergent basic assumptions that are grounded in religious belief and are very rarely discussed. It is not so much the idea of peace that separated us at that meeting as the idea of grace, a Christian belief that as far as I know has no parallel in Jewish thought. Carter didn't talk about grace yet somehow I suspect that we can't understand him, a proud Christian Baptist, until we understand that idea.

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Dear Barack, do not reward terror with gifts

Dear President Obama,

This week the entire country of Israel performed a security exercise. At 11:00am a siren sounded and all of us, every man, woman and child had to take shelter. At a home for seniors who are Alzheimer's patients, it took much longer than the allotted 3 minutes for the staff to help find these patients protection. (They were pushed in their wheelchairs to sit next to an interior wall.) This whole country is a target for attack. All of us are imperiled.

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The second-class fallen

Even the headline in the Jerusalem Post gets it wrong ... Remembrance Day to honor thousands of servicemen and servicewomen. Those who were killed in war.

But there is no mention of the thousands that have been murdered in terror attacks. Even though this day is officially for families like ours as well, the Post doesn't mention it.

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A hatchet job

I belong to an "elite" group of mothers of children who were bludgeoned to death by Palestinian terrorists.

Murdered cruelly, intentionally, and in cold blood. Murdered because they were innocent. Murdered because they were Jews. Targeted by cowardly terrorists because they were defenseless kids. My 13-year old-son Koby was beaten to death with stones.

Now the Nativ family from Bat Ayin has joined our group. Their 13-year-old son Shlomo was murdered last Thursday by a Palestinian terrorist wielding an ax. The family has a passport into the never-ending pain of losing a child.

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Fathers, sons and Gaza

Jerusalem Post reporter and columnist Herb Keinon recently wrote a moving article about his son's first tour of duty in a combat unit during wartime. He described the constant state of tension he lived under while his son was in danger. He worried each time the phone rang that it would announce that his son had been injured and dreaded even more an unexpected knock on the front door threatening something even worse.

I know that his description was accurate not because my soldier son was in danger, but because at least three times during the first day or two of the IDF's invasion of the Gaza strip a father with a son in Gaza described to me emotions similar to those described by Keinon. Once on a street in Jerusalem, once in a parking lot and once on the way to the synagogue a friend or acquaintance came over to me and out of the blue said something like the following:  "Ah. My son just went into Gaza. I'm really worried. Can't sleep at night. Can't get any work done that requires any concentration."

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The NY Times' moral repugnance

On December 13, Clark Hoyt, the NY Times public editor, wrote about the New York Times' reluctance to use the word terrorists to describe the perpetrators of the massacre in Mumbai.

He quotes a memo James Bennet wrote when he served as the NY Times Israeli bureau chief in the years 2001-2004 about the use of the word terrorist.

The memo said that he [James Bennet] settled on a rough rule: He would use the words, terrorists when they fit, to describe attacks within Israel's 1948 borders but not in the occupied West Bank or Gaza, which Israel and the Palestinians have been contending over since Israel took them in 1967. When a gunman infiltrated a settlement and killed a 5-year-old girl in her bed, Bennet did not call it terrorism. "All I could do was default to my first approach and describe the attack and the victims as vividly as I could."

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Not bearing the details

I am at the sulfur baths at a hotel at the Dead Sea with my husband. We are trying to relax. It's been a very difficult couples of weeks.-- the terrorist attack at Mercaz ha Rav Yeshiva and a beautiful young child - Hilleli - in our community who is hovering between death and life from an accident at the nursery school where she was choked by a curtain.

We have one night to relax, unwind. I used to be very good at going on vacation. I could chill out in a minute. But now, ever since my son's murder by terrorists six years ago, I find it hard to unwind. Working helps me because I don't have space for my mind to wander. Empty time fills me with the chill stark terror of what we've lived through - losing our 13 year old son, Koby, an 8th grader when he went hiking instead of going to school. Instead terrorists beat him and his friend Yosef Ish Ran to death

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Throwing Candy

The Palestinians threw candy when they heard that 8 yeshiva students were murdered at Mercaz ha Rav; the mother of the terrorist rejoiced that her son was a suicide bomber. The aunt and uncle in Jordan erected a mourning tent, inordinately proud of their nephew, the hero, who cold-bloodedly targeted Jewish teenagers and a young man in the sight of his rifle.

Among some Palestinian people, there exists a murderous lack of respect not only for the lives of Israelis, but also for their own children. This depravity, this lack of decency should not be condoned in any way. But it is. Too many newspapers and news services, including the AP do, referring to the terrorist as a "militant."

We can hope that eventually people will recognize evil - it's not only that there are  Palestinians killers but also too many in their society rejoice when they kill innocent Israeli children. New York Times, put this in your cycle of violence-- find me a Jewish family that is throwing a party when innocent Palestinian children are inadvertently killed because the Israeli army attacks those in Gaza who shoot Kassam (named after an Arab fighter in the 1930s) rockets into our cities. Find me a Jewish family that celebrates death.