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AMNON LORD:
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Meoraot Tashsa
 As I think about a name for the current Israeli war against Islamic terrorism, I go back to the past, and I realize there's something interesting: the conventional wars, the victorious ones translate well to English. Try it yourself: The Six Day War.
The other wars, especially the nondescript violent clashes with the Palestinian Arabs, have memorable names, engraved in the Israeli collective memory, but they don't translate well into English. Such are the massacres of 1929, which are called Meoraot Tarpat, (Tarpat is the Hebrew year of 1929. In the same way we remember Meoraot Tartsav, the terrorist attacks which lasted from 1936 to 1939. As I write, I can see on my shelf a big book called Meoraot Tartsav. It was published by the now defunct Davar newspaper in 1937. In it I found a vivid description of a bus under terrorist atack on the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The piece was written by Herzl Berger who became later on a Knesset member for the Mapai Labor Party. In this most bloody year of 2002, Refael Berger, the grandson of Herzl Berger, was killed in the horrible suicide bombing in the bus near Pat junction.
In this current war the main goal of the Arabs is to prove that no matter how good the Israeli Defense Forces are, and no matter what international assurances and agreements the Israelis have obtained, the Arabs can still massacre the Jews and get away with it. I therefor call this war Meoraot Tashsa, because the terrorist attacks started on Rosh Hashana Tashsa (2000).
Amnon Lord is the author of "The Israeli Left, From Socialism
to Nihilism," and a columnist with "Mekor Rishon."
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