Groveling in the dust

After the Six-Day War, many in the Arab world concluded that Israel was here to stay, so they had no choice but to reconcile themselves to its existence. Then along came the shell shock of the Yom Kippur War, from which Israel has yet to recover, and greatly weakened this conclusion. This lowness of spirit led Arab intellectuals to prophesize that the Jewish state would come to the same end as the Crusader kingdom.

And now, when Israel is groveling in the dust over the Gilad Shalit deal as well, the Arabs will be strengthened in this belief. After all, the Jews have proved, in deal after deal, that they are incapable of learning a lesson from the deadly price of the last capitulation. A country that once again - and with so little time between one extortion and the next - gives in to extortion, perhaps even the worst one yet, shows that something fundamental has gone wrong with its survival instinct.

From an optimistic society that loved life and felt collective responsibility, we have become a society of whining and instant gratification, one that demands, and receives, rights without obligations, and which views the individual as the supreme value. The enemy discerns this and knows that whatever price he sets, it will be paid.

Many articles published in the Arab and Islamic world have claimed that Israel's failure to win the first and second Lebanon wars, or the war on terror - despite its enormous military might - proves that it is in the process of withering away. That is the logical conclusion reached by academics and military men (and not just clerics), based on an analysis of the Israeli public's poor stamina in the face of the ongoing war of attrition to which the terrorist organizations have subjected us.

This belief, even if it stems in part from wishful thinking, is liable to have far graver strategic consequences than the terror attacks and kidnappings that can be expected in the wake of the impending release of murderers. If the forecast is that Israel will continue to weaken, why reconcile oneself to its existence? Better to encourage its decline by the same means that have brought it to this point - first and foremost, terror attacks that destroy its judgment.

Even the chief of staff shares the mood of depression that has made it possible for us to be on the verge of accepting this insane deal. In a speech in Sderot, he implicitly justified its price on the grounds that "I'm obligated to bring Gilad back home." And indeed he is. But as the supreme commander of the Israel Defense Forces, he is obligated to bring Gilad home by the means appropriate to his position: by victory, not by supporting capitulation. Granted, a rescue operation appears to be genuinely impossible, but there are other military measures that would leave Hamas no choice but to free Shalit. Our failure to use them is one of the signs of weakness and debilitation that encourage hopes for our disappearance.

A majority of the public, say those who support caving in to Hamas, is in favor of paying the deal's price. It does seem that way. But if the government were to tell the truth about this terrible price and ask the public to support its refusal to pay, a majority much larger than the one that currently favors the deal would support the opposite choice.

Ehud Olmert, in a moral and strategic reflex, recoiled at the last moment of his term from the implications of the price he was being asked to pay and halted on the brink of the abyss. Now Benjamin Netanyahu comes along and is about to take that final additional step. And the rest of the flock is trailing along in his wake, including those who in the past voiced the strongest and most convincing reasons for why we must not capitulate to Hamas.

The fact that the street is empty of demonstrators against this contemptible deal, and that no significant public protest is making itself heard via any other effective channel, attests better than 1,000 witnesses to what the state of the nation really is.