Keep your eye on the ball; a criticism of Israel

Editor’s note. This was written before Israel’s blessed attack on Iran. Hopefully, it will still serve as support for that initiative.

By Walter E. Block

In sports, the newcomer is typically advised to keep his eye on the ball. This is crucially important in golf. Whether putting or going for long yardage, you will not do well if you take your eye off that little white sphere even for a split second. Too many golf patzers look, instead at the flight of the ball after being hit, and not sufficiently at it before contact.

In basketball, while dribbling, the last thing you want to do, paradoxically, is look at the ball. Control, there, should be automatic. But when receiving a pass, that is the be-all and end-all. Pretty much nothing else matters. Ok, ok, you don’t want to run into anyone else and be penalized for a charge. That’s why you have two eyes!

Something very similar applies to every other sport where there is a ball: volleyball, handball, soccer, football, cricket, tennis, ping pong, squash, badminton, dodgeball, bocce, pool, snooker, the list goes on.

The batter in baseball who fails to follow this advice will not hit well, and will be smashed in the teeth to boot; the fielder will not make any great plays. When there is no ball in a sport such as hockey, the athlete does well to keep the puck in sight.

Ok, ok there is an exception: bowling. There, you’d better focus on the pins, or on a point in the alley. But as they say, and they are never wrong, it is the exception that proves the rule.

What has any of this got to do with Israel, for goodness sakes? The only civilized country in the Middle East has taken its eye off the “ball.” It has not yet taken out the Iranian nuclear facilities. That is the be-all and end-all of the “game” the Jewish state now finds itself enmeshed in through no fault whatsoever of its own. It is in a war game, and Israel has taken its eye off of this particular “ball.”

It has spent too much time with admittedly other very important concerns. What the Houthis are doing in the Red Sea pales into insignificance compared to an Iranian nuke, as important as it is that they be quelled from interfering with Jewish and international shipping.

Yes, it is important to expand and safeguard the Golan Heights. But making inroads into Syria cannot be counted as anywhere near as important as you know what.

Ditto for the Hezbollah in Lebanon, even before they were defanged. Yes, they were a pest, but only teeny, tiny, small danger compared to Persia with the Bomb.

Yes, yes, I full well know, and my heart goes out to the kidnap victims still held by Hamas. This may well be the exception that proves the rule. I am going out on a limb here. Even on October 8, it would have been better to more heavily target the Iranian nuclear program than to do what the IDF in the event did so magnificently.

Ok, ok, maybe I am obsessed with Israel not being nuked. Sue me for that. But I know of no better way of highlighted the importance of obviating this threat than to place it higher on the Israeli to do list than dealing with Hamas one day after that date of infamy, October 7, 2023.

What is the Jewish state now doing? They are twiddling their thumbs, that is what they are doing. To do anything other than obliterating the Persian nuclear capacity counts as doing that. That is, doing nothing.

The hope, presumably, is that Donald Trump will save the day. This is not totally crazy. After all, he has proven throughout the years to be a strong friend of Eretz Yisreal. He gets credit for the Abraham Accords; he can be thanked for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; he is responsible for help regarding with the status not of the “West Bank” but with Judea and Samaria. He is to be congratulated at the very least for not being Barack Obama or whoever was running Joe Biden.

However, what is the President of the US now doing? Mr. Trump is in the process of negotiating with Iran, for goodness sake! That just allows this country more time to do their evil deeds. Recently, he visited every Arab country in the Middle East and some located as far away as South American, Greenland and the South Pole (I exaggerate here, but only slightly). Guess which country did not make his visiting list? I don’t care if he visited Israel 20 times in the last month and no Arab state at all. Iran is still developing its nuclear capacity.

Israel must take its safety into its own hands. Yes, it is good to have allies. But the ultimate safety of Israel properly rests with the IDF, not anyone else. Thanks to previous efforts of this heroic organization, Iranian air defenses have now been weakened. But they are in the process of strengthening them. The time to attack is now. No, scratch that. It was yesterday.

So, Israel, get your eye on the ball. No more pussyfooting around! Kick Iran where it hurts the most. In the balls.