Imagine this scenario in your neighborhood. You purchase a home. It is a modest home that fits your needs, even though it is a bit small. It has a fenced in backyard so your children can safely play while you are working inside. After being in the home for a few weeks you hear one of your children crying out in that backyard. Upon examination you find one of your neighbors is using a slingshot to shoot at your children. When you rush out into the yard to ask the neighbor children to stop, they run into their home. This happens more than once.
After the second slingshot episode, you contact the parents next door and ask them to stop the children. The parents refuse to believe anything such as you are describing is really taking place. They ignore your request for their children to stop. Left with minimum alternatives, you call the city’s police. They come out, take your statement, go to the neighbors and get their statement and return to the station without taking any action. The slingshot attacks continue, plus the neighbor children are now climbing the fence to physically attack your children. You call the police several more times with the same result. More statements, no action. Now the parents are not only ignoring your pleas, but they are overtly urging their children on. They are buying them more slingshots with bigger pellets. And since you are now keeping your children indoors, the slingshots are aimed at the house, breaking windows, damaging the siding, etc.
You find out that the neighbors want your house since you have moved in, but they don’t want to pay for it. They want you to simply deed it over to them. Because of the investment you have in your home and because the housing market is at a low point, you cannot move. You have to stay and try to figure out what to do.
Additional calls to the police results in the police chief stating that the two families have to work it out for yourselves. Finally, when one of your children has to be taken to the ER of a local hospital because of cuts from flying broken glass, you decide enough is enough. Since the police won’t act, you charge over to the neighbor’s house and confiscate the slingshots, spank the offending children and tell the parents this is only the beginning of your actions, if their children continue to misbehave. The results of your action? The police department condemns your actions. The local churches demand that you seek a peaceful resolution to the problem. The child services function of the county threatens to come in and also condemn your actions.
What course of resolving action, if any, should you now take?
What you should do is what Israel is doing.
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