On Saturday night, Hamas did a big favor to the confused Israeli psyche, and a great disservice to itself. The terror organization warned of a coming blitz in Tel Aviv, prompting the city's residents to empty the streets and cower in shelters, but in practice, the rockets amounted to a molehill. The positive aspects of the evening's events are a little complex: The average Israeli was intimidated by the uncertainty manufactured by Hamas' war cry. Later, it became clear that though there was a problem, it wasn't so bad. There is a threat, there is a fear, but there is no monster. No remark made by any Israeli leader could have had the kind of calming effect that this experience had. The experience put things into the right proportions for the average, thinking Israeli, thanks to the weakness of the enemy's rockets, and even more importantly, thanks to Israel's Iron Dome anti-rocket system, individual precautions taken by every citizen and the Israel Defense Forces' attacks in Gaza. The Israeli media has not made much effort to strengthen the people. There are so many electronic media outlets in the country, but which, and how many, dedicated just one hour to playing uplifting music to cheer up the battle-weary? How many of them featured Jewish poets and song writers Haim Nahman Bialik, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Nathan Alterman or Naomi Shemer? Close to none. Neither public networks nor the commercial ones. The only thing available on all the media channels was more and more talk. In one instance, MK Yariv Levin (Likud) was even removed from the Channel 10 television studio for trying to defend Israel from a panelist who, in Levin's view, may as well have been reading from a Hamas memorandum. Therefore, with no domestic source from which to draw strength, the confused Israeli turns to the enemy. The confused Israeli has no choice but to draw strength from the very failure of the terrible attack. Operation Protective Edge has so far been waged under conditions of luxury (knock on wood). Nowhere in the world can a country wage a war like this -- without any casualties. Israel has this luxury thanks to the dedication and sacrifice of the Israeli fighters, the Israeli science and technology, and the many years in which the defense budget was never scaled back more than necessary. But the average Israeli needs to think about two important truths: The future will not be like this. It cannot be. The average Israeli needs to mentally prepare. A success like this will never repeat itself. If violence breaks out again, the successes will be different ones. Even in the immediate future, still within the current round of violence, we must adopt a balanced approach. We must rejoice the successes but maintain a certain degree of vigilance. Hamas is still firing at us, and we cannot afford to give ourselves over to the heady exuberance that has supplanted the deep depression of the days immediately preceding the operation. These are manic-depressive symptoms that the Jewish state has experienced with unjustified exaggeration in the recent past. The current operation, waged in the air and on land, was so accurately described by the first lady of Israeli poetry Naomi Shemer, that it is as though she wrote these lines today: "I shall come through tunnels, citadels and caves / Clefts in rocks and dusty cavities / Somewhere in the heart of night, tense and silent / Someone who wants to kill me is lurking." In practice, Saturday night's threat teaches us that Hamas wants a truce. The threat, followed by a salvo, sounds like a grand finale. But the potential mediators -- chiefly Egypt -- are in no hurry. They are pleased that Israel is pummeling Hamas. In the lead-up to a cease-fire agreement, it would behoove us to monitor Egypt's take on the situation very closely. They are balanced. They see Israel on one side and the Palestinian Authority on the other. Not Hamas. Is this the start of a new era in which Gaza will become subordinate to Ramallah? It is too early to tell.
