And I submit to you they were really embracing themselves.

What is going on here is but another facet of a very well-known Israeli behavior commonly experienced as rudeness. For example, one day some time ago, I was standing in a medical clinic waiting to speak to the appointments secretary and being an American allowed for some space between myself at the head of the line and the person at the moment at the desk talking to secretary. And just as that person patient finished and started to walk away, cutting in front of me was a young mother, a little girl in tow, who approached the window, at which I must have said something, I forget which, which made her heads spin head and say, “Just a question,” at which I said, calmly, politely but audibly: “No problem. Everyone knows your life is more important than my life; the whole world knows that your life is more important than my life.” At which she got flustered and turned beet red and was embarrassed in front of her daughter.

Well, for my money, this is exactly but Noam and Aviva Shalit have been doing for five years. How different they are from Pini Magen’s mother 41 years ago. The Shalits’ message has been, “We want our son back, and everyone else can go to hell. We don’t care how many people in Israel get murdered by the hundreds just so long as our boy comes home.”

This is the same Israeli narcissism, selfishness, on display 24/7 on Israel’s roads where every driver experiences other drivers out there as not fellow drivers using the same facility but an inconvenience in their way. “I am going about my business, going where I want to go and everybody else is an annoying obstacle in my path.”

It was reported that yesterday in the High Court after the session – which of course ended as it did – Noam Shalit, in leaving, was verbally assaulted by those who have lost loved ones and now have to watch as their murderers go free, saying to him as her passed by, “Shame. Shame on you.”

And they were right. How opposite is this behavior to that of Pini Magen’s mother? Whatever happened to the tough, bold, determined Israeli of yesteryear? A generation ago we also suffered constant terror attacks but consoled ourselves to a degree with the belief that our resistance was right and moral, a war against evil that had to be waged.

What has happened is that today’s Israelis are a generation and more away from the revolutionary fervor of their Zionist grandparents and parents. These Israelis believe in nothing but pleasure…