The Taba Hotel Attack & Reliance on the Nations:
                 Relearning the Lessons, Again -- the hard way?
                               By Moshe Burt


In the aftermath of the Taba Hotel attack, Israeli's must confront head-on, yet again, the fallacy of relying upon others to insure the security and welfare of the Jewish State.

We read about Egyptian efforts after the attack to stonewall, delay and obstruct Israel's rescue efforts at the Taba Hotel every step of the way.  They delayed the entry of rescue forces and held up ambulances carrying Jewish dead and injured at the Israel/Egypt border demanding the passports of the injured and the dead -- passports which were blown to smitherines by the bombing.

Israeli forces and commanders were livid at Egypt's resistance, intransigence and slowdown.  However, Israeli Foreign Ministry officials, in their efforts at damage control, praised Egypt's "overall cooperation" with Israel while racking up the delays and obstructions to "third world attitudes and lack of initiative."

But Israel's Foreign Ministry and politicians have missed the point yet again.  It's the same point they missed repeated during the Oslo debacle of the 1990s.

What is the point?  What is the lesson?

On the Shulchan Aruch Hilchos Shabbos Shiurim on "Refuah on Shabbos"(treating the ill on Shabbos), one of our great Rishonim -- Tosefus says, "that even when a gentile is readily available and he could attend to the [Jewish] patient, nevertheless it is a Mitzvah for the Jew to attend to the patient, lest the gentile dally and not attend quickly enough and endanger the patient's life."   In short, for the gentile, the Jew is expendable.

Until Oslo, Israel's image was of a nation which sees to it's own and doesn't entrust Jewish lives and security to the whims, the cheshbonot and the expediance of the nations.  The Entebbe rescue of Jewish hostages exemplified this image and attribute.

But nearly 3 decades later, as detailed in the news online a year or so ago, the school named for Yoni Netanyahu in Tel Aviv is a dilapidated shell of it's former prominence as is the Israeli doctrine of only Jews protecting and seeing to the good and welfare of Am Yisrael.

And so, if Prime Minister Sharon were to have his way and the government expells Jews from Jewish land, not only will Dov Weisglass reap huge profits from a Gaza Casino while the Tax (Mas Hachnassa) Monkey rides the backs of every Israeli for the costs of the expulsion and the severe loss of the Gush Katif agricultural economy, the Sharon government will have abbrogated it's sacred, sworn, sovereign responsibility to protect and secure Am Yisrael.  Prime Minister Sharon would leave our safety and security in the charge of Egyptians or the "pa."

Who can calculate dimension of the human, property and economic losses which will result from the increased terror radius of Kassam missles to strike Ashkelon, Ashdod, Rechovot, maybe even Beit Shemesh;  and from not learning and engraining the lesson of Jewish self-reliance, "lest the gentile dally and not attend quickly enough and endanger ... [Jewish] life?"
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Moshe Burt, an Oleh, is a commentator on news and events in Israel and Founder and Director of the Sefer Torah Recycling Network. He lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh.
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