Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Life and death in Israel

Thursday, May 16, 2002 | 8:47 a.m.

TEL AVIV, Israel -- There was a rally for Peace Now activists here in Kikar Rabin square. Their demand for an Israeli pullout from areas claimed by the Palestinians was expressed in speeches and signs.

The organizers of the rally claimed there were 150,000 people in attendance. The police estimated there were 60,000 people present. Allow me to add that the whole gathering could have been seated in Sam Boyd Stadium with a few seats remaining. Let's say there was a maximum of 35,000 people. How many like me were there out of curiosity, I don't know.

One thing is for sure, Israel is the only country in the Middle East that would allow this kind of gathering. It's also the only country in this part of the world that would allow professors who advise students in the military reserve not to report for active military duty and go unpunished. This university activity is taking place as fellow citizens die from suicide bomber attacks.

Israel is also giving the same expert medical care to wounded bombers as it gives those who are the bombers' victims. I watched this equal medical care given during the first intifada several years ago. At the same time Israeli police have tracked down and taken into custody four Jewish men suspected of planning to detonate a bomb near an Arab hospital and school for girls. If convicted, you can bet they will be jailed and not be set free to plan other acts of terror.

What has amazed me is Israel's seeming inability to get this kind of information out to the rest of the world. What gets the most attention appears to be the lies spread by Yasser Arafat and his followers. The story that Israel Defense Forces massacred hundreds of innocent civilians in Jenin took on a life of its own, despite only 54 bodies being found by international workers. Most of them, according to the Israelis, were gunmen and militants. Even the Palestinian Authority's Fatah organization had to admit there wasn't a massacre. Not much press attention was given to the 23 Israeli soldiers who died fighting the Palestinian guerrilla's war in order to prevent the loss of civilian life.

Then there was the screaming about the Church of the Nativity being violated. It wasn't Israeli soldiers with guns and explosives in the holy place. An Israeli paratrooper at the site told me "we don't take guns into holy places." No, it was violated by Arab gunmen, many of them identified as killers, who invaded the church knowing the Israeli troops wouldn't follow them. After 38 days a deal was made and among those let out were 13 known killers who were granted passage to another country and will soon be free men to cause trouble for some other people.

An editorial writer in the Jerusalem Post identified some of those deported gunmen. Khaled Muhamad Abd Alhamid Abu Najma is a good example:

"His cell was responsible for a female suicide bombing in Jerusalem and an attempted bombing of the Macabbiah Games. The IDF also notes that he was personally involved in the suicide-massacre of March 2 in Jerusalem. The terrorist detonated himself next to a group of women waiting with baby carriages outside a synagogue. Ten Israelis died, half of them children, ages 15, seven, three, 18 months, and seven months."

The Israeli soldiers had good cause to follow the gunmen into the church with heavy weapons fire. They didn't, but many press reports coming out made the standoff sound like it was the fault of the soldiers.

When the gunmen were leaving the church, Walter Rodgers of CNN almost wept as he told of Palestinian mothers wailing because their sons would be deported from the land they love. Rodgers and the mothers should be thankful they aren't attending the execution of some to these killers who will probably kill again. Rodgers and CNN should have been at the funerals two days earlier when Israeli families bid 16 of their own goodbye at cemeteries from Tel Aviv to Ashdod. The victims weren't carrying guns and hiding in a church. They were laughing, playing pool and cards or dining when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed them in Rishon Letzion's Sheffield club.

Life in the Middle East changes so much it remains the same.