Internet surfers of the Op-Ed postings this morning (January 8) hit anti-Israel shoals in the New York Times and Washington Post. Three Op-Ed writers – Jimmy Carter, Roger Cohen and Nicholas Kristof – paid perfunctory lip service to Israel’s right to defend its citizens, but then they trivialized Israel’s casualties and complained that the rockets didn’t warrant Israel’s tough response.
Carter: “Although [Israeli] casualties were rare (three deaths in seven years) Sderot was traumatized by the unpredictable explosions… We knew that the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza were being starved.”
Cohen: “But what of the intolerable Hamas rockets on Sderot, the 20 Israelis killed by those rockets since 2005 (four of them in the current violence)? … Yes, there has to be a response to Hamas, but this is the wrong one…. I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions.”
Kristof: “Israel’s right to do something doesn’t mean it has the right to do anything. Since the shelling from Gaza started in 2001, 20 Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets or mortars, according to a tabulation by Israeli human rights groups. That doesn’t justify an all-out ground invasion that has killed more than 660 people.”
Kristof has the chutzpah to tell Israel what it should have done instead. Bomb the tunnels, he suggests, or even better “would have been to ease the siege in Gaza, perhaps creating an environment in which Hamas would have extended the cease-fire.”
In other words, the war was Israel’s fault. Kristof’s call to “create an environment” for Hamas is usually called appeasement.
Herschel Cohen and Robert Zimmerman
My mind whirled: where did I hear such a spineless argument before? Where had I witnessed such a bunch of unprincipled namby-pambies? Then I remembered a frustrated Californian cop I met 25 years ago. I’m sure he was an Israeli named Herschel Cohen who had changed his name to Harry Callahan. He hated departmental paperwork and procedure. On the force he was nicknamed “Dirty Harry” because, as his partner explained, “They call him ‘Dirty’ Harry [because] he gets the shit end of the stick every time.” Isn’t that enough proof that Harry was an Israeli?
When Herschel/Harry beat to a pulp a serial rapist-murderer who was released on a technicality, he was admonished by the District Attorney:
Where the hell does it say you've got a right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel. Where have you been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of the Fourth Amendment. What I'm saying is, that man had rights.
Callahan: Well, I'm all "broken up" about that man's rights.
District Attorney: You should be. I've got news for you, Callahan. As soon as he's well enough to leave the hospital, he walks. ...
Callahan: And who says that?
District Attorney: It's the law.
Callahan: Well then, the law is crazy!
Today, Herschel’s bosses would probably demand that he use a Taser to subdue a perp on angel dust, and if he had to shoot he had to use a small caliber gun and shoot to wound.
But Harry would never follow those orders. He would use his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, [that could] blow your head clean off.”
Dirty Harry was certainly not loved, but he was respected in his neighborhood. Yes, he got shot and beaten up, but he survived.
Respect for the Bully
Harry Callahan probably had one atypical eight-track cassette in his car– a Bob Dylan album, Infidel. And Harry would listen to only one song on that cassette: Neighborhood Bully. It was – and is – a strong, defiant defense of Israel. Here are two stanzas:
Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back,
he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.
Click to hear Neighborhood Bully. Click here to read the lyrics. Sphere: Related Content
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