You’re at the cool kids party or what is otherwise known as the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. All your friends are there rubbing shoulders with each other and cozying up to the famous television and Hollywood types you see on screen each night. Within minutes faint gunshots are heard from the hallway and you run for cover under tables or farther away from your seat to make sure you stay out of the line of fire. You imagine the headlines the next day as you pull out your phone and begin filming while the news person next to you scribbles down observations on a napkin hoping, as usual, to become part of the story, somehow, someway. Screams overtake your senses as secret service and other law enforcement sprint to cover up the President of the United States, the Vice President and many other cabinet members in attendance.

“A loud bang of gun shots, then “Get down, get down, get down!” I hit the floor at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner mid conversation with Jamie, who heroically protected me, whispering, “You’re ok, you’re ok, you’re ok,” while my host from the Boston Globe laid on the ground while furiously taking notes, and thousands of journalists, photographers, and editors took cover under tables and beneath chairs.” These are the words of Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Bobby Kennedy and a guest at the dinner.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was in the hallway. “All of a sudden I heard these loud, very loud, very scary gunshots right near me. Next thing I knew, a police officer threw me to the ground and was on top of me. I did see the gunman on the ground after he started shooting. Police officers threw him to the ground but he was still shooting. And I could hear the shots going off,”

Another person in attendance said, “We all crawled under our table for what felt like a long time.”

And last but not least, Mark Thompson, the CEO of CNN, said this in a statement to his staff. “We know this was a frightening and disruptive situation for those in the room, and for your colleagues and loved ones watching live on CNN. Moments like this can stay with you in ways that aren’t necessarily immediate or obvious.”

Now imagine you’re a four-year-old girl who has 45 seconds to get to her safe room because of a ballistic missile launched straight at her.

I’m not discounting the shooting or the chaos and fear that took hold of the room. I am sure it was frightening for everyone in attendance. But what I am doing is trying to get these people to put themselves in the shoes of an average everyday Israeli who simply wants to live in peace, raise their family and have a quiet life. Or the simple Jew who just wants to be left alone instead of harassed on the streets of America, in part because of the words the people in this room write or say. These are the very same people who come into your living rooms every night and lecture you about what the awful Israelis are doing to the poor innocent Palestinians in Gaza, Arabs in Lebanon, and Muslims in Iran.

It is a whole different ballgame when the shoe is on the other foot. If you are living in the United States, prepare for the incoming drama. Endless hours over the next few days of harrowing stories of fear and trembling, courage and bravery, and still others wondering how they can ever attend the dinner again without worrying about another event such as this one. Interviews will deluge you, expressing the shock and questioning how it could be allowed to happen. Most will praise law enforcement, while others will question how guns are still able to be carried in America, as if they are the problem and not the attacker. Ultimately, they will blame the President and his supporters for their personal trauma.

But not once will anyone point out how this pales in comparison to ballistic missiles and rockets targeting civilians numerous times an hour, not a day. It won’t even register on the hypocrisy scale. “Think about what Israelis have gone through for decades,” they won’t say.

It reminds me of congressmen cowering in fear when weaponless citizens came to the capitol on January 6th. AOC, in what has since become a very questionable tale said, “I didn’t think that I was just going to be killed, I thought other things were going to happen to me as well.” Senators demanded action against the perpetrators, holding hearings and as usual preening in front of the cameras, yapping in unison that the Capitol cannot be this lax in security ever again. So as they usually do, they paid to protect themselves with taxpayer money. These are the same people who just last week voted on a measure to restrict funding for Israel for defensive weaponry. I can hear you saying these two instances are not the same. I agree they are not. What I am pointing out is the sheer chutzpah of it all. Take a look at what happens when a gun is in a hallway outside the banquet hall. A hallway, not a ballistic missile sent for their children’s playroom.

Make no mistake. America has zero requirement to fund Israel’s defense. It is America’s choice to do so, and obviously, as we just saw, America’s choice not to. At the same time, when they do, they should not restrict Israeli purchases, defense or otherwise, to American products. Under the current 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and Israel (covering 2019–2028), 100% of the $3.3 billion annual Foreign Military Financing (FMF) is required to be spent on American defense contractors. Essentially it’s a three-billion-dollar welfare program for the United States defense establishment. Most of the television talking heads or ivory tower academics and the minds full of mush they teach, have no idea the left pocket is funneling the money through Israel to the right pocket. I am of the opinion that we need to cut that faucet off right quick, but that’s a different topic for a different day.

Before you get too carried away with “what about the Palestinians,” I remind you, Israel did not want this war. Like all the other wars previously, it was the Arabs who chose to poke the bear so to speak. I am so done hearing about proportion and the rest of that nonsense. I can’t ask this enough times. What would you do if they took your babies? Your wife? Your husband, parent? What would be your breaking point to give up on your family at the cost of innocents? What would make you say, enough, I’d rather the innocents live than my own child, G-d forbid? I can speak for myself and say there is nothing in the world that would keep me from getting to my child and yes if that meant destroying every home, every city, every block, count me in.

You don’t want your people to die, don’t attack us. But of course what the west doesn’t understand is they actually do want their people to die. That is the whole idea. Use the useful idiots in the west to bring about the destruction of the Jewish state through their westernized lens of instagram AI and the rest of social media. More carnage, more outrage. Nevermind that baby has three legs and nine fingers on one hand. But if you doubt me, listen to their own words. The spokesperson for Hamas in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said on July 13 in an interview on Al Aqsa TV (Hamas’ TV network), “We aren’t leading our people today to destruction. We are leading them to death.” With all due respect to western sensibilities, I say we help them all reach that goal. I don’t get it actually. On the one hand you tell everyone in the world you love death and desire death and then when you get death, you cry about it? Make up your minds. Either death is a good thing and you desire it, or it’s a bad thing and you want it to stop. But I think this answers the question why instead of greasing their own pockets with foreign aid and building hostage and murder tunnels for their idolatrous “Molech” ideology, they didn’t build shelters to protect their people.

Which brings us back to the event two nights ago. There is no question this was an attempt to assassinate the President of the United States and whomever else this nut job could take down with him. I am sure it was a scary moment for everyone in attendance. I don’t blame them for being afraid. What I do blame them for is what they have done to Israel and the Jewish people.

For the most part, choose any day in the last two and a half years and pick up a copy of the New York Times, Washington Post or simply turn on CNN. Invariably, there will be a negative story about Israel at war. Rarely do you find a story or even an opinion piece which asks the question why, for instance, Hezbollah entered into a war with Israel in the first place? It’s almost as if the media feels why shouldn’t they attack Israel? Rarely will you find in any story or column that Israel is the rightful owner of the land based on the fact that, as I have written here before, they acquired the land through negotiation, conquest, in defensive wars, mind you, and the Jews are indigenous to the land. Instead, it’s the Jews have stolen land, killed innocents and kicked out inhabitants from their homes eighty years ago. Forget that their very own papers covered the stories much differently at the time these events actually took place, which also testifies against the false narratives they peddle today. It is to those people I say, how does it feel being under attack? How does it feel to have mere seconds to run for cover? How does it feel to have to experience an unprovoked assault on your daily life for no reason? Not so great, huh?

I’m not going to belabor the point any longer. I pray everyone is safe and the agent who did get shot makes a full and speedy recovery. But more than anything else I hope the next time the media in attendance report on some ginned-up Israeli atrocity, they take a moment to consider what we here in Israel are dealing with every single day that kind of dwarfs what happened in Washington Saturday night. No, it’s not a contest of who got it worse. They both suck. But occasionally, some do get it a little more than others while other times the shoe jumps onto another foot and it isn’t as comfortable as you might have thought it would be. I hope this is the worst and last of it.

Something tells me we are just getting started.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)