She is the most beautiful
Israeli you can imagine, all of the good and beautiful Land of Israel in one
person. Raised in Maccabim by a pilot father and a psychologist mother, she is
a combat helicopter pilot. She studied at Oxford and is a principal at Vintage
Investment Partners [an investment fund with $3.5 billion under
management]. She headed the Bnei Zion premilitary
academy after the 2018 tragedy in which nine students died in a flash
flood, and she was a strategic consultant at McKinsey.
Shira
in (protest) action. Screenshot from 60 Minutes
It’s the most Zionist
non-Zionism possible. She is 36, with a wife and a daughter [and a dog].
If you asked artificial intelligence for a beautiful, “quality” Israeli woman,
you’d get Shira Eting. Now she is also the beautiful face of the protest – a
pilot and a principal. At Kaplan Street she swept
up the masses: “The moment they tried to rob us of our most important values,
we embarked on the struggle of our lives. Our cart is full of freedom and equal
rights,” she said to the sound of cheers. How that audience loves to hear such
nice things about themselves, the fighters for freedom and equality, and that
from the mouth of an attractive combat pilot.
Last week all this beauty was
also exposed to the world. In the military-like khaki T-shirts of Brothers and
Sisters in Arms, an organization that is fighting for democracy in Israel, Maj.
(res.) Eting explained in polished English and measured words to Lesley Stahl
on the U.S. show “60 Minutes” what the protest is all about: “If you want
pilots to be able to fly, and shoot bombs and missiles into houses knowing they
might be killing children, they must have the strongest confidence in the
people making those decisions.”
Go
to 9:19 to hear Maj. (res.) Eting's statement
It’s been a long time since we’ve
had such a succinct moment, the essence of the Zionist left distilled into in a
single sentence. We will continue to kill children, but only under our own
people. We will continue to kill children, only if Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid
order us to do so. They are people in whom we have confidence, under them it
will be principled and moral to kill children. Killing children under Benjamin
Netanyahu is unthinkable; he is, after all, opposed to our cart that is
bursting with so many values. If Gantz-Lapid order us to kill children, as they
have before, then the pilots will report for duty and the courageous and
principled refusal to serve if the reasonableness standard is revoked
will be forgotten as though it never existed.
Maj. Eting will put on her
flight suit, don her helmet, climb into her advanced combat helicopter, which
can direct a bomb at a bunk bed in a children’s bedroom, and bomb between Gaza
City and Rafah. This is not only Zionism, it is also Israeli feminism, soon in
the Sayyeret Matkal special operations unit, by order of the Supreme Court and
the chief of staff.
The next time Eting kills
children she will do it unintentionally, of course. She is a pilot with a
conscience. Some will be killed by mistake and some because she had no
alternative. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit will post a video
showing that Eting refrained from bombing a home due to the presence of
children.
When the next war is over Maj.
Eting will again come to the city square and speak passionately about values,
freedom and equality. Then she will be interviewed again by Stahl, who was
moved to tears by the principled pilot, and will tell her how much easier it is
to kill children under a center-left government. When it orders pilots to bomb,
they will do so without batting an eyelash, as they did in Operation Cast Lead (344
children killed) and in Operation Protective Edge (518
children, 180 of them 5 or younger).
Who killed the 180 young
children? Eting and her comrades. They did so in Protective Edge under Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Chief of Staff
Benny Gantz and in Cast Lead under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister
Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. Five of the six commanders of
those two disgraces, among Israel’s most barbaric attacks, are now leaders of
Eting’s democratic protest. On their orders, only theirs, she will again kill
children. That is what she told the viewers of “60 Minutes,” and she is the
most beautiful embodiment of Israel.