SIX YEARS! HOW MUCH LONGER?
Noam Bedein
Jerusalem Post, August 24, 2011
It took me 20 minutes to drive to Ashdod from Tel Aviv [last] Sunday morning, two days after the former was hit by seven Grad missiles fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza. According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Office, over 100 rockets and mortars were fired toward Israel since Friday August 19.
As has been my practice in Sderot for the past five years, my car windows were rolled down and the radio was turned down so I could hear the siren that would give me and everyone else 45 seconds to find a safe place. On the bright side, 45 seconds to run for your life in Ashdod is an improvement over the 15 seconds you have in Sderot.
The news announced burial plans for 38-year-old Yossi Ben-Sasson, who was killed by a Grad missile the night before in Beersheba when taking his nine-months-pregnant wife for a medical check up. The following news item was about a young woman fighting for her life at the Soroka hospital, also a victim of a Grad strike in Beersheba.
I arrived at Admor Me’gor street in Ashdod, where only a few days before a Grad missile had exploded within range of 900 yeshiva students and high school kids who were beginning their school day. Yakkov Bozaglo, 56, who was taking shelter from the Friday morning Grad attack, described the huge explosion and the scene, with three men seriously injured as they left their small synagogue; how they were treated for shrapnel wounds on the spot, while thanking God that the high school and elementary students were set to arrive 15 minutes later.
I then drove to the next scene, where a missile had penetrated three meters of sand, burrowing into a ditch between two synagogues, causing damage, but leaving all the holy books and the Ark with its Torah scroll unscathed. Ariel Zeldman, 26, who came to see his synagogue, where he prayed during the attack, described how everyone ran outside and crossed the street to the seven-floor apartment building to take cover. Ariel described how he held the hand of an elderly man who only made it halfway to the shelter and was injured by debris.
Leaving Ashdod and driving south toward Sderot, I saw a signpost on Route 4, next to Nitzan’s tent city encampment, screaming: “Six years! Until when?!” The tents and signs depict the plight of Jewish residents from Gush Katif who have been living in refugee-style conditions since the IDF pulled all civilians and military personnel out of Gaza in August 2005.
Six years ago, these and other Gush Katif residents pleaded their case to the government and the media, warning that missiles would reach Ashdod if they and the IDF left Gaza. Today, they point out that the 60-km range of Iranian Grad missiles in Gaza can easily reach tent encampments on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel-Aviv. The former Gaza residents are genuinely concerned about attacks on other Israeli communities, even though the leaders of the Tel Aviv encampment likely favored the forced expulsion of Jews from Gaza.
As the Internet site News1 headlined on Saturday night, one million Israelis in a 40-km radius around Gaza are now within missile range.
While Iron Dome batteries have been erected near Beersheba and Ashkelon, Ofakim and other Israeli communities can only dream of having a battery. Ofakim, a development town 20 km from Gaza with a population of 30,000, was hit Saturday night by a Grad missile that exploded directly into the Amoyal family’s home. The rocket left the house completely destroyed–something I hadn’t seen in five years of documenting Kassam attacks on Sderot. I saw brick walls, up to 20 centimeters thick, crushed and blown into the kitchen, demolishing four rooms and leaving 25-year-old Kfir Amoyal shivering alone in his bedroom, suffering from shock and light wounds.
Attacks from Gaza, and Israel’s targeted responses, will continue for the foreseeable future. To our dismay, global media will continue to focus on Israel’s responses while ignoring the terrorists’ actions and constant declarations of their intention to wipe us out.
In addition to our remarkable military capabilities, Israel needs a policy corollary to the Iron Dome when it comes to dealing with the driving force behind the Gaza terror regime and its counterparts in other parts of the country.
Israel must deal with the root of the problem, and not waste time debating which town to protect; or continue throwing money into complex and expensive technology that will, at best, only prevent a small percentage of rockets from reaching their targets.
(The writer is director of the Sderot Media Center.)
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ISRAEL?
George Rooks
Jerusalem Post, August 22, 2011
Something has gone horribly wrong here in Israel.
How did we ever get to a point in this country where the South, including Beersheba, Sderot, Ashkelon, Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Malachi, Be’er Tuvia, Ofakim, Azrikam, Gan Yavne, Gedera and Ashdod were hit by more than 100 Grad rockets this past weekend? How did we ever get to a point in this country where we put the safety of our citizens at the mercy of international approval–with an Israeli defense official proclaiming on Monday morning that “lack of international support” was a reason that “Israel could not open a larger offensive” against the terrorists in Gaza.
Let me tell you how I think we got here. We got here by hiding the truth in euphemisms. Since the last “cease-fire” in 2008, the South has been assaulted by over 800 Kassams, mortars and Grads. How many times have you heard or read in the media, “No injuries or damage reported,” or “The missile landed in an open area,” or “Rockets disturb relative calm in South”? When did we ever get to a point where “relative calm” meant Israeli men, women and children being hit by over 800 missiles–or that missiles being fired at our citizens is a “disturbance”? Would any other country tolerate even a single missile fired at its citizens? A study as far back as 2008 revealed that “between 75 and 94 percent of Sderot children aged 4-18 exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress.” Each time a missile is fired at Israel, there is emotional or physical injury to our citizens.
We got here by accepting the farcical nonsense that the IDF is doing something to stop the rocket fire. Sure, the government has ostensibly embarked upon a campaign of tit for tat. Hamas fires a rocket at us, and we drop a bomb on them–except that we really don’t drop a bomb on them. We bomb the smuggling tunnels, rocket-making factories, and any empty building the IAF can find. How successful has that been? By the IDF’s own estimate, Hamas has now smuggled in over 10,000 rockets and missiles.
We got here by the IDF’s coming up with every conceivable rationalization not to act at all. Some of the most absurd rationalizations have been the most recent. On August 3, it was reported that two rockets struck the Lachish area. In response, the IAF hit the requisite empty buildings in Gaza. No sooner had this happened, however, than IDF spokesmen quickly excused the rocket attack by rationalizing that “the increase in rocket fire is Hamas’s way to vent its frustration [over] being left out of the Palestinian Authority’s current plans to unilaterally declare statehood at the United Nations in September.”
Does the IDF really believe that Hamas’s continuing assault on innocent children, women and men is a way for its members to “vent their frustration” with their fellow Palestinians? I thought that Hamas simply wanted to see Jews and Israel wiped off the face of the planet. Next we’ll have the IDF blaming Hamas missile attacks on the price of cottage cheese in Beit Hanun.
We got here by the IDF’s being unprepared to do anything. On Saturday night, after a day of unrestricted rocket fire against Israel, causing death and destruction–with more firing on Sunday morning–the IDF did nothing. Instead, we had an army spokesman coming up with the gem that “deterrence must be established before the situation spirals out of control.” But the IDF has no idea about how to deter anything.
Are we supposed to feel comforted that Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz held security consultations all day this past Saturday “to draw up potential responses and courses of actions?” Where has the IDF staff been for the last three years? Weren’t the events of the weekend completely predictable by your average first-grader? The IDF suddenly seems paralyzed by indecision and beset with passive and failed leadership among its top officers.
We got here by hiding behind technology and letting the IDF hide behind technology. Whatever wondrous results the Iron Dome produces, it is a form of passive protection. We let Hamas and Hezbollah accumulate and fire missiles at us, and we intercept as many as possible. Are lives saved? Undoubtedly. Is the terror lessened? Not at all–as the sirens blare, we run to hide in our bomb shelters or crouch behind walls. Technology is no substitute for boots on the ground–or a comprehensive, well-planned aerial attack.
We got here by buying into and perpetuating the idiotic notion that every group except Hamas is responsible for the rocket fire emanating from Gaza. Al- Tawhid wal-Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, Islamic Jihad, and a hundred other groups: Suddenly all of these are “radical,” but Hamas is not. How nauseating it was to read on Sunday that Hamas was now trying to get Islamic Jihad to stop firing missiles at the South. This is classic good cop-bad cop–with Hamas astonishingly being portrayed as the good cop wanting peace. This nonsense has to stop.
We got here by trying to be politically correct and adopting the thinking of human rights organizations that want us to assume responsibility for the “poor” people of Gaza. Late last month, the army stressed its ongoing efforts to help Palestinian farmers export their produce to European markets. So this is how the IDF now spends its time? How proud we are to say that we drop leaflets and make phone calls in advance of our attacks against terrorists. How morally superior that makes us feel. Yet every time we do this, we help the terrorists escape, ultimately at the bloody expense of our own citizens. No matter how many leaflets we drop and how much we help the Palestinians, our attempts to ingratiate ourselves in the arena of world opinion miserably fail.
Finally, we got here by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza. Whatever else you want to say, the settlements in northern Gaza were a buffer between the rest of Gaza and Israel, and to have left without having any security guarantees in return was a gross demonstration of weakness.
Let me conclude by telling you what many of us here in the South think should happen, beginning with what we think should never happen. Any thought that Israel should ever retake Gaza is absurd in the extreme. Nevertheless, the situation here in the South cannot stay the same or go back to the way it was before Thursday. Either Israel has to go in on the ground and root out the leaders of Hamas, or Israel must discard its notions of political correctness and relentlessly attack Gazan terrorists from the air and sea. No matter what course we take, the European Union, Arab League and United Nations–and their friends–will condemn Israel for defending Israeli citizens. But it is time for this country to broaden its perspective beyond Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and rally to the defense of its people here in the South.
(The writer is a retired faculty member of the University of California-Davis
who divides his time between Ashdod and Davis.)
WHAT WOULD BEN-GURION HAVE DONE?
Michael Bar Zohar
Jerusalem Magazine, August 25, 2011
This month, a modest exhibit of cartoons depicting Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion was inaugurated at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Not many people showed up to view the satirical images of a bygone era, but for the few that did they were a reminder that Israel was once a very different place.
It had a smaller, weaker, and infinitely poorer society, but one that fervently embraced Zionism and was devoted to fighting for its survival and protecting its tiny piece of land. Israel was a proud, brave nation of people that did not doubt its place on the right side of justice but that still dreamed of peace with its neighbors.
The Israel of yesteryear also believed in social justice. If a member of the Mapai party would have dared to build a private home in Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion would soon have him excluded from his party. When Ben-Gurion himself retired to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev, it was not to a farm or a ranch surrounded with acres of land, but rather to a modest hut.
“The fate of Israel,” the former prime minister opined, “depends on two things: its strength and its righteousness.” And the most tangible expression of that righteousness emerged through the building a just society that was based not on imported socialism, but on the profound Jewish values preached by the prophets of Israel.
The strength of Israel was a major component in Ben-Gurion’s political vision. He did not believe that Israel’s existence was due to some decision that took place at the UN, but that it came about as a result of the courage and devotion of its people. Ben-Gurion’s attitude also extended to his military theory: He believed that Israel should retaliate for every provocation and every murder committed by terrorists from neighboring countries.
In 1955-6, following terrorist incursions into Israel, the prime minister ordered reprisal raids against Egypt and Jordan. These reprisals culminated in the Sinai campaign of 1956–a campaign that secured peace on Israel’s borders for 11 years.
Ben-Gurion never opted to go down the road of clandestine negotiations with terrorist organizations, invariably interpreted–as indeed they are today–as signs of weakness or acquiescence. Instead, he felt that it was Israel’s strength that provided the optimal deterrent for acts of terrorism.
He also knew that the Third World Nations–together with the Arab states and the Soviet bloc–would always form an automatic majority against Israel, and he therefore shunned any pretense of “nations uniting for peace.” For this reason Ben-Gurion despised the UN, often referring to it as “UM-Shmum” (UM being the Israeli initials for UN).
The Old Man harbored no intimidations about what the world might think. “Our future,” he famously said, “depends not on what the gentiles will say, but on what the Jews will do.” Had he been alive today, Ben-Gurion would never have allowed himself to get in a panic over September’s UN vote–in contrast to so many of Israel’s contemporary leaders.
He was a leader that withstood external criticism–even if it came from superpowers. Today’s politicians and analysts, on the other hand, have a penchant for singing odes to those superpowers, waxing sycophancy about, say, the unshakable friendship between the US and Israel since the day of the latter’s birth.
But that is a blatant lie.
Israel was disliked–to say the least–by several American administrations. Former president Harry S. Truman may have been a friend, but his cabinet and his advisers were anything but. Former president Dwight D. Eisenhower was not a friend, and John Foster Dulles, then-secretary of state, was even worse –going as far as to support a plan that would make Israel give parts of the Negev to Egypt and Jordan in exchange for a dubious peace deal.
John F. Kennedy–another president who was not a friend of the Jewish State’s–made every possible attempt to stop Israel’s nuclear project, which included blunt threats in his letters to Ben-Gurion. (It was only after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War when Lyndon B. Johnson was president that any changes took place).
The Old Man saw the naiveté in the US’s courting of the Arab world for what it was, and understood that Washington considered Israel to be a liability. Therefore, whenever he felt it was necessary, he had no qualms about saying a resolute “No” to Washington.…
Not surprisingly, many of the cartoons in the Cinematheque’s exhibition portray David Ben-Gurion in the notorious position taught to him by his physician and therapist, Dr. Feldenkreis, i.e. standing on his head. But in an ironic twist, one of the cartoons depicts Ben-Gurion with his feet on the ground in an upright position, and this time it is the State of Israel that stands on its head as the prime minister looks on sadly.
The cartoon is a poignant echo of the prevailing attitude in the Israel of today. It is a testimony to all of our current internal and external errors and hesitations, of our diminishing belief in the justice of our cause, and of our loss of self-confidence–especially at a time when we are stronger and more prosperous than ever before.
The poet Nathan Alterman, who Ben-Gurion himself deeply admired, echoed the latter’s worries when he penned his last poem:
Then Satan said: This beleaguered soul–[Israel]
How can I subdue him?
He has courage and skill
And weapons and ingenuity and judgment.
And he said: I will not take his strength.
Nor fetter nor restrain him
I will not weaken his will
Nor dampen his spirit.
This will I do: Dull his brain
Until he forgets that justice is his.Let us take Alterman’s immortal words as a reminder–and as a warning.
(The writer is a former Labor Party MK and the official
biographer of David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres.)