Prime Minister Ehud Barak called for a realignment of national priorities. I never fail to marvel at the ability of politicians to intone the blindingly obvious as though it was a matter of great revelation. A World Health Organization sponsored study last year ranked Israel in the top 10 Western countries for schoolyard violence. Israeli minister Ben-Ami reported that the national statistics for such violent incidents had quadrupled from 1991 to 1999. These acts of mindless violence reveal a frightening emptiness in the soul of the nation.
American culture is the most violent in the world.
A lone assailant picks up a spear and, in front of a vast crowd, murders a prince and a princess in cold blood. A society that runs on sentimentality will ultimately turn around and perform acts of unspeakable cruelty. In Nazi Germany, the first law that was passed against Judaism was the outlawing of shechita, kosher slaughter or animals. And during the war, the German society for the prevention of cruelty to animals sent a memo to the SS to ask them to please slow down the deportation of Jews to concentration camps because they couldn't keep up with the volume of pets for which new homes had to be found. The word for peace in Hebrew also means wholeness and perfection.