One of the stranger facts of life is that we always react more emotionally to murders and crimes committed than we do to murders and crimes prevented. One of the most effective institutions of Israeli security, which has prevented countless terrorist atrocities, is the secretive and little-noticed Duvdavan (Cherry) unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. Duvdavan is a group of underground infiltrators that are effective at penetrating deep into Palestinian areas and arresting or executing terrorists and would-be suicide bombers before they can act. Duvdavan should be the source of pride for every self-respecting Jew in the world, the perfect Zionist answer to Nazism in the post-Holocaust era. We will never know how many Jewish lives these brave soldiers have saved, and in a statistical sense perhaps we should all say the "Birkat Hagomel" thanks to them (each life slightly more secure -- the probability of each of us not being here slightly lower).

Or at least that was so until the Oslo nightmare began. From the start of Oslo, the Labor Party Doves decided that Israel should simply stop defending itself. The Rabin-Peres governments decided that it would subcontract out the job of preventing terror and violence to the PLO. Within the framework of the Oslo Accords, Israel dismantled its intelligence networks in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. After all, who needs an effective intelligence network in Arab towns and villages when the PLO, our friend and protector, can do the job? Israel turned over scores of Palestinian informers to the PLO who were, in turn, executed, tortured and arrested, a crime for which Peres and Beilin should be put on show trial. The result? Like Samson, Israeli intelligence became blinded in Gaza, and not just in Gaza.

(The role of the PLO stormtroopers in suppressing violence is captured nicely in a photo in Ha'aretz, April 10, 1997. During the riots in Hebron on April 9th while Palestinian mobs assaulted Israelis, the Ha'aretz photo shows a PLO "Policeman" shooting rocks from a slingshot at Israeli troops.)

While the intelligence networks were dismantled by Peres and his fellow-travelers as a goodwill gesture to the PLO, and while Palestinians "informants" who in the past had assisted Israel in its fight against terrorists have been labeled for three years traitors and fascists and criminals by the Israeli Left (especially Meretz Knesset Members), the Cheery Cherries of Duvdavan continued quietly to fight terrorists. However, the job became more and more difficult under increasingly stringent governmental restrictions. In effect, Duvdavan units faced prosecution if they did not "Mirandize" the terrorists and treat them nicely and respectfully, and any use of the slightest amount of force --- even in self-defense -- risked them court martial and arrest.

The Left has been demanding the complete dismemberment of Duvdavan, and some of the Doves in Likud agree. Ha'aretz (April 10, 1997) reports that the heroes of Duvdavan were recently checked by a team of psychologists who found them on the brink of collapse and in perma-crisis. No, not because they risk death and maiming each time they carry out their heroic underground infiltrations and activities. That does not bother them in the least. They are on the brink of breakdown because of the intolerable constant threat of being court martialed and arrested for violating some detail of the absurd set of rules of engagement drawn up for them by deskbound bureaucrats and Oslo-obsessed politicians. As the doves eat away at the cherries so goes one of Israel's most valuable and effective means of security.
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