Let’s not emulate our enemies.

He stood firm in opposing the Taliban’s overt terrorist acts as well as the intimidation of women and girls who just wanted an education. He was outspoken against terrorism and he committed Canadian resources to fight it. He and his senior ministers stated that when one speaks of terrorism, there can be no moral equivalency between democracies that defend the values consistent with our own Canadian society and terrorist regimes. The analogy given quite frequently is that one cannot compare a firefighter to an arsonist. The arsonist engages in willful acts promoting destruction while the firefighter attempts to restore secure and safe conditions.

In recent days, the prime minister of Israel accepted a document that clearly sets out, as the first item on the agenda, that Israel will cease its hostilities. The second item deals with Hamas and its obligation to cease hostilities. A moral equivalency was created – 12,900 rockets on Israel before Israel’s forceful response, and Israel is obliged to accept a dictate which reads that Israel will cease its hostilities.
There are those within our community who insist that Israel has won a great victory, that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi can now be counted on to act rationally and prudently in his relations with the US and Israel, and that we are returning to the days when former President Hosni Mubarek attempted to maintain some semblance of quiet between Gaza and Israel.

Others state that Israel succeeded in its mission and that we can now expect a period of tranquility. It is now imperative that we do not fall into the same trap as many Arab nations have done after losing wars against Israel. They attacked Israel in 1967 and the Jewish state was clearly victorious, Jerusalem was once again united and Judea and Samaria finally returned as an integral part of the Jewish state. But Arab nationals calmly told their citizens that in fact it was an Arab victory. In 1973, following the horrific frontal attack by the Egyptians and Syrians against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish Year, despite an eventual routing of those forces by Israel in a most dramatic manner, Egypt, nevertheless, continued to claim a major victory.

It is time for us to avoid the type of rewriting of history that the Arabs used to give comfort to its citizens, but that negated the realities of the situation. We must examine the great failure of Oslo which, in fact, helped to precipitate the creation of Hamastan. We must look at the hasty retreat from southern Lebanon and the abandonment of our Christian allies as a disastrous step in perpetuating the dangerous threat that exists on that border, and which helped to propel Hezbollah into the government of Lebanon.

We must acknowledge that the procrastination of previous governments, which readied the Israeli army to rout out the terrorist threat in south Lebanon but did not complete the job, and only created instead a heavily fortified Hezbollah enclave. Likewise, an independent national inquiry in Israel must examine what went wrong in the last few weeks. A nation, totally united from left to right, from every major political persuasion, from religious to secular, stood as one in support of Bibi Netanyahu. Residents of southern Israel thought Israeli operations would finally end the rain of rockets that had put their lives in danger and ended all hope of normal life. Israelis in Tel Aviv finally understood that they are no longer immune to the terrorist threat from Gaza. Residents of Jerusalem saw that even the Holy City, which is claimed by Islam as their third holiest site, is not immune from Islamist rockets.

A country united, an army with resolve, a world that understood Israel’s dilemma and media that was not as hostile as usual, and then all we got was a ceasefire, which created a moral equivalency between a democracy and a terror state.
Israel should take the necessary steps to investigate and draw conclusions but we, as observers on the outside, must also be realistic in our understanding of the situation. This was no victory and this is not the time to shout for joy, but rather a time to reflect and continue to speak out in support of the citizens of Israel in their true quest for safety and security. These are rights that all citizens of the world – including those in the Jewish state – are entitled to claim.