In Light of Iran’s Threats, What Israelis Think…

Israelis are not normal people. There’s just no getting around that fact. Normal people react differently than we do. If someone hurts you, insults you, threatens you, and then have the nerve to ask for help? Well, normal people look at them a bit surprised. “Are you kidding me? Why the hell would I help you?”

If someone weaker than you repeatedly attacks you and you try and try and try to stop them without violence. At some point, normal people are going to strike out and just knock them down and move on. Israelis?

Rather than one knock out punch, one swift knock down, we rationalize and offer defensive maneuvers. Rather than shoot 30,000 people who are storming our borders and sending 10,000 flaming tires in our direction, we carefully identify and shoot a few dozen instigators. Then, we pull out huge fans and blow the burning, choking smoke back where it came from.

More often than not, Israelis will look around kind of sheepishly and then offer to help. We’ll help because once we needed help and no one stepped forward. We’ll help because we can and therefore feel that we should.

What happens when someone bigger, stronger and more dangerous threatens you? Well, normal people get scared. Normal people assess the risk and figure out how they can either get help or get away. Israelis?

Did I mention we weren’t normal?

Iran has been threatening us for a long time. In sheer numbers, Iran is bigger, richer, stronger. But then again, Israelis know how to fight and fight we must. The thing is, sometimes fighting someone bigger requires cunning.

And so we have developed an amazing and impressive intelligence gathering infrastructure that has paid off time and time again. It did recently, and Bibi Netanyahu reported to Israel and the world what we had found. Because part of who we are includes our ability to laugh, even at ourselves, within minutes of the broadcast, Israelis started writing. More, Israelis started laughing.

No, we are not downplaying the possibility of war. We never have. We know the cost of war better than most nations; have had war waged against us more than most. But we also know that nothing we do can stop a war our enemies are determined to start.

On one site, it was suggested that Israel is triggering World War III by stealing and releasing the documents. Isn’t it funny that these people don’t consider Iran aiming at nuclear weapons as the trigger? Well, it might not be funny to some, but here in Israel,  we are in a rather unique position. We have been saying for years that the Iranians are working to develop nuclear weapons.

And each time we say that, an Iranian leader comes on and says they want peace and the world is happy to believe it. Now, using their own documents, Israel has shown the truth of the Iranian goals.

In the next few days, people are flying in from several places in Europe and we have invited the Chinese and the Russians to come and inspect the documents as well.

Meanwhile, the idea that Israel managed to smuggle out 1000 pounds of documents…55,000 pages and 55,000 CDs is just to funny to ignore.

First, there is the issue of presentation. There is no question that Netanyahu’s announcement was delivered with much drama but in choosing to use PowerPoint to guide his announcement, he entertained the world and gave Photoshop experts a great opportunity.

Here are just some of the comments and images filling Facebook today as a nation laughs.

Any Israeli traveler, or for that matter, any Israeli who orders something from abroad, knows how tough our Customs rules and regulations are. And so there were many jokes about how Israel managed to sneak through a half ton of Iranian secrets.

But the best comment of the day came from a Facebook friend who wrote:

War isn’t funny but we just smuggled a half ton of smoking gun evidence of Iran’s nuclear program (as confirmed by @TheMossadIL). The mission was indeed daring and more than one Israeli went to bed last night with a smile on their faces!