Recently I hired a locksmith to change the rather shaky locks on the front and back doors of our house, increasingly necessary as we live in a high-theft neighborhood. The front door lock tended to catch from time to time and had to be forced shut. The back door giving on a fenced patio was a trickier affair, secured by a vertical sliding lever that did not inspire confidence. Following a robbery and a break-in, I belatedly realized I could no longer fall back on my habitual laziness and complacency. Criminals don’t go on vacation.
To my surprise, the locksmith turned out to be an Israeli who immigrated to Canada several years ago in search of a more peaceful life. Amit served in the Israeli Air Force, acquired skills in several mechanical trades, and eventually became a master locksmith. He was tired of war and the threat of war. He was weary of living in Jerusalem, a city he described as a tinderbox waiting for a lighted match. And he was exhausted by the endless disputes between the innumerable political factions that comprise Israeli politics, the unceasing rounds of elections that seemed to resolve nothing, and the unrelenting tensions between the secular left and the religious right, between the café society in Tel Aviv poring over their laptops and the orthodox community in the holy cities bent over their Talmuds. These were problems and issues he now wanted to keep out of his life, and his profession seemed like a metaphorical analogue to his desire. Keys, locks, and doors were paramount symbols.
The vicious, unprovoked, and unexpected attack by the terrorist organization Hamas on Israeli communities occurred a week after my encounter with the locksmith. Much blood has been spilled, and so has much ink as commentators and pundits from around the world expound their views on the devastation, all from the safety of their domestic and professional cocoons. Almost none are on the firing line, few or none are losing wives and children to the unmitigated savagery of the subhuman animals out of Gaza butchering their victims, none are citizen reservists donning their battle gear. I am no different. Having been asked by editors and friends to write an essay on the atrocity to complement a volume of mine on Jewish and Islamic themes, “Crossing the Jordan,” soon to be released by NER Press, I felt obliged to refuse—until this moment when my conversation with Amit the Locksmith on the subject of doors and locks came to mind.
I have written extensively on Jewish and Israeli issues over the years in articles and essays and in books like “The Big Lie,” “The Boxthorn Tree,” and “Hear, O Israel!” Yet I am reluctant to weigh in on the discussion. Though I am a Jew, I am also a privileged outsider. At the same time, the story of Amit the Locksmith seems instructive, as does the absolute necessity of reliable locks on both front and back doors.
Related: Hamas and Fatah Explain What Their War Against Israel is All About
Israel’s front door, so to speak, was breached by its enemies in ways that continue to defy explanation. The lock must obviously be changed or upgraded. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not about to go on vacation. Israel’s more easily accessible back door giving on its inner courtyard was also compromised by an internal enemy, namely, the destabilizing Israeli left with its spurious ecumenism and its subversive media outlets like “Haaretz” —witness the recent aggressive protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to reform a hard-core, self-appointing, leftist Supreme Court dedicated to interventionist judicial activism and which often appears to favor the wellbeing of Palestinians over the lives of its own soldiers. Moreover, it is a tribunal which regularly thwarts the will of right-leaning governments like Netanyahu’s Likud. Israel needs a stay-at-home Amit to take charge of its security, both internal and external.
Good fences may or may not make good neighbors, but strong doors and impregnable locks make for less destructive neighbors, whether beyond the gate or within the compound. Of course, a social and political structure is far more complex and volatile than a simple dwelling. Nonetheless, Israeli intelligence, despite its unaccountable lapse in monitoring its high-tech defenses, will figure things out for itself, and a conservative government will hopefully stand its ground against a socialist fifth column. The schism between the haredim and the laity will admittedly remain a challenge. But as Amos Oz observed in “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” antisemites and murders of Jews never troubled to distinguish between them. And as I commented in “The Big Lie,” “warm Jews, lukewarm Jews and cold Jews are equally at risk. At the end of the day, the antisemite never stopped to take their temperature.”
It should be plain that antisemitism and its companion anti-Zionism are forever, almost as if they bore the status of a law of nature. Nor does it take much acumen to note that a cohort sworn to annihilate you cannot under any circumstances be allowed into the national premises or permitted to prosper at your expense. And is should be clear that the Left is more than adept at burgling its own house. It’s time these lessons were learned.
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