The grey boats

I was sitting on the veranda of the Mini-Golf restaurant in Netanya, admiring the sunset over the Mediterranean sea. It was beautiful, not a ship in sight, the broad empty horizon of the sea stretching as far as the eye could see. It brought to mind two things.

I remember a short story I once read by Amos Oz called "The Grey Boats" or something like that. Every day an old man in Tel Aviv gets up early and goes to the seashore and looks towards the horizon. Someone asks him why he does such a thing, and he replies "I am waiting for the grey boats to come." Of course, the "grey boats" represent the fear that we all have of the distant evil of the German Nazis, or the British or all the others, sailing to our small independent state and finally trying to finish us off.

I was thinking that there are no boats on the horizon. Except for the flotilla, that is now making its way from Greece towards our shores. Oh yes, they are aiming for Gaza. But, make no mistake they are replicas of the "grey boats," they are its substitutes, of the so-called civilized world bearing down upon us, telling us what to do, what is moral. Do we need your advice after what you have done to us? It is full of self-satisfied, self-righteous "useful idiots" trying to teach us a moral message. What do they know about the Hamas terrorists firing rockets at our children, what do they know of the Hamas thugs throwing Fatah men off the roofs, what do they know of the hatred for Jews inculcated in their children in the UNWRA schools?

So the "grey boats" are beginning to come. As I left the restaurant I was stopped short by the vision of the new building rearing up opposite the restaurant. It is 30 stories high and shaped like stairs with a tower on top. It looks like a huge grey ship. I had a sudden image of the two sets of boats, the grey building and the flotilla engaged in battle, each with the other. We have set deep roots in our land, when the pioneers came here there was nothing. The village of Uhm Khaled was located near where the main Post Office is today opposite the Sharon Mall. The Sheikh sold the land to the Zionists and told them "we have been waiting hundreds of years for you to return." Then, there was only sand, sea and sky. Now there is a bustling metropolis of nearly 200,000 people. Yet these interlopers have the temerity to question our right to exist, those who developed the land and built the cities and those of us that followed. So bring on your "grey boats," your flotilla of hate. We are here!