(Jerusalem Post) Emanuel Cohn - In 1995, together with some of my colleagues, I was charged with the mission of delivering weapons to the Palestinian Authority. Lots of weapons were handed out to the Palestinians so that they could provide quiet and order in the territories. Inside a huge container were hundreds of guns, all Kalashnikovs, sent from Egypt. My duty was to count these guns, lubricate them, and hand them over to the Palestinian officer waiting next to me. "What doesn't one do for peace," I say to myself. After several hours, I deliver the last rifle to the Palestinian officer. Then something happens that I will never be able to erase from my memory. The man looks at the gun, then lifts his head and looks straight at my face. All of a sudden, he starts to grin. It is a brutal grin, full of malice. It almost feels as if sympathy for our naivete, for our foolishness, also resonated in that grin. In my head it echoes that the Palestinian officer is thinking: "You know very well that this gun, one day, will be pointed against you and your people!"
2005-09-16 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive