I was watching TV in Israel.
The lead story was the most important one, that I have seen or that most of you out there have not yet heard through the networks in the Diaspora. The military correspondent, Ronny Daniel, was inside a bulletproof command car being driven by the Sgan Aluf(Colonel) M. inside the Casbah of Schechem (Nablus).

We watched as the IDF Golani unit 202 comprised of paratroopers were going from house to house inside the 700 year old Casbah of Schechem Since last Passover's massacre in Netanya on Seder night, our IDF has been in and out of Schechem unable to finish the 'job,' because Arik Sharon knowingly allowed his coalition partner, the former Defenseless Minister Ben Eliezer of Labor to run for its leadership while running down our IDF.

Tonight, we sat back with our mouths wide open and frozen in anger and disbelief. As Ronny Daniel, Colonel M. and soldiers entered an Arab's house in Schechem, the cameras were filming the three floor 'find' of the IDF Golani heroes today. The 'family' of Arab men, women, and children were escorted out of this house before the IDF engineering unit began to cut apart the tiles of the kitchen floor. The area below the kitchen was filled with hundreds of bags of nails, bolts, and screws in quantities that were apparently more than ACE Hardware's supply in your local mall! The heating and soldering machines were assembled with oil, gas, and combustible materials for the next tens of bus bombs being assembled.

On the second floor of this 'residential house of militants, activists, and residents' (sic), the cameras followed the explaining Colonel M. and our correspondent, Ronny, and we watched as more of our IDF soldiers were removing the walls of the 'kids' bedrooms' to find hand grenades, guns that the Arabs had received and stored. On the 3rd floor of this house, the camera crew captured the bomb belts, their pieces and parts with all sizes, colors, and widths of belts, again more choices than your local belt rack in Nordstrom!

As the officer and soldiers went to the next house in search, the soldier began to shout excitedly on his find in this house. Here we watched again and saw dynamite sticks and fuses inside kids' school bags which our kids carry with school books. There must have been dozens of assembled school bags with bombs inside. Cellular phones and clocks were discovered which are the alleged methods of detonation by remote control of some of the Arabs' terror.

The Colonel M. stated to the correspondent inside Schechem's Casbah that the IDF is now here for months to clean up, capture, destroy as much of these terror tools as possible. The questions we had comprised of why did we leave, enter, leave, enter, and now have to come back again in the past months, year?

I turned off the TV as I knew that this rare habit of watching the news was dangerous to my health, but tonight's coverage of why we and our soldiers have to go house to house to search and destroy rather than utilize our airforce in one night will not be covered by CNN, BBC, or Reuters antisemite club groups. Instead we will be faced with possible IDF injuries or G-d forbid deaths in the coming weeks of this long delayed action by the IDF under Shaul Mofaz, a Defense Minister who also knows what the word Offense means, because we Jews cannot do that which others can do in nonstop aerial bombing (remember Afghanistan last year?).

Efrat, February 23, 2003
Harvey Tannenbaum