USE YOUR IMAGINATION -- AND THEN WHAT?

By Schmoel Yitzhak

Imagine for a moment that you are president of the United States and a top deputy places an urgent message in your hands which reads:

ROCKETS FIRED AT MIAMI BEACH -- ONE HOTEL GUEST KILLED, MANY INJURED.

Shortly thereafter -- in this fantasy -- presidential advisors inform Barack Obama that the destructive missiles were unleashed from Cuba.

If you were leader of the world's most powerful nation, what would you do next?

On December 8, 1941 -- following the attack on Pearl Harbor -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war on Japan.

More likely than not, a rocket attack against the American mainland these days would prompt even an ultra-ultra-ultra moderate such as Obama to order a retaliatory attack that would hopefully signal an end to the original unprovoked hostilities.

The aforementioned scenario, however, is imaginary; and Fidel Castro is fortunate that it is.

Unfortunately, a similar script has unfolded in the Middle East and the response, so far, has been muted, to say the least.

Eilat, which happens to be Israel's answer to Miami Beach, has been the latest victim of terrorist rocketry along with its sister port, Jordanian Aqaba.

Mind you, these were not firecrackers left over from Independence Day. We're talking about steel that kills and the Jordanian victim just happens to be Exhibit Z.

As for Exhibits A through Y, all you have to do is count the literally thousands of real, live, kill-as-many-Jews-as-possible rockets that have rained on Israel courtesy of our dear, democratic -- by their skewed standards -- friends called Hamas.

Until recently a combination of inferior rocketry, Israeli air raid shelters and sheer luck has limited the physical destruction -- if not the high anxiety -- among Israel's human targets, as any citizen of Sderot will attest.

So far, Israel's response to the Eilat attack has been unrealistically muted, no doubt -- ironically -- because of Obama pressure as the politically worried American leader persists in an unrealistic attempt to bring Arabs to the peace table.

Had Miami Beach been similarly targeted in the manner of Eilat, you could bet your bottom shekel that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff would have hastily convened as pressure mounted on the president to do something. Chances are that Havana & Co. would then have been so thoroughly pummeled by Uncle Sam that Castro's response would have been UNCLE! in Spanish, English and Red Cross-ese with about 40,000 white flags unfurling every other minute from Cuban windows.

What, then, is Israel waiting for?

When a country turns cheek after cheek as rocket attacks such as the one that exploded in Eilat continue, the chances are that the cheek will disappear along with its owner.

And that ain't good!