Against Apology

A calmy, fiercely defiant manifesto for Israel from Nidra Poller, who is unknown to me before this.

Don’t apologize. Don’t express sincere regrets. Don’t promise to investigate. Don’t fall into that trap. Apologize in private, in the privacy of the heart, apologize in prayer, ask for divine forgiveness, but don’t apologize to public opinion. Don’t fall into the traps set by vicious jihadis and relayed by unscrupulous media. Investigate, hold to the highest standards, but don’t promise to investigate. Don’t make promises to the cynical birds of ill augur perched on the fringes of the battle, squawking accusations against your brave hearts. Don’t say “we will investigate” because they translate it to “guilty as charged.” Did they ever ask a jihadi to investigate? Did they ever scrutinize a jihadi investigation with their steely eyes? Do they investigate their own misfiring, misjudgments, misleading misinformation?

Don’t apologize to a world that does not share our values. Don’t play into the perverse blood libel game. Your noble words fall into their meat grinder and it’s our own blood and macerated flesh that comes out the other end. Don’t apologize for misdemeanors, for slips of the gun in the heat of battle, because the ears that slurp up those innocent explanations are on fire with lust for our original sin. They are not accusing you of collateral damage, they are accusing us of killing the divinity we brought to the world, accusing us of existing, accusing us of existence itself. The jihad gods belch it out through their beards: you love life, we love death. They want death to win. And their misguided handmaidens pounce on every apology and throw it into the maw of the death worshippers.

Don’t apologize for killing civilians.

The hand trembles to write these words. How not to apologize, how not to suffer their pain in one’s own flesh, how not to have nightmares?

I suspect I won't have to tell you to read the whole thing.

[Hat tip: Kesher Talk]