The Holy Land under attack, a perspective
The following was written by an American living in Jerusalem.
I am sitting in front of the television watching our northern population centers being attacked by rockets in “real time.” Today was a pretty quiet day but a few minutes ago Hezbollah rockets were fired on several cities and towns simultaneously resulting not only in damage but in civilian injuries and perhaps deaths. I don’t know how much detail you get in your news coverage, the barrage of rockets on our cities and towns is in addition to pursuing terrorists trying to infiltrate one of our Moshavim (communities) on the Lebanese border right now, after seven terrorists were killed trying to infiltrate there last night and a few more the night before. There are continuing rocket attacks in the South and a suicide bomber in Jerusalem was apprehended yesterday before he managed to blow himself up, etc.
This whole situation seems so unreal. While Hamas has been firing rockets at our southern towns since (and before) we left the Gaza Strip, the current situation started out with two incidents (on the southern border a few weeks ago and on the northern border last week) where Israeli soldiers were attacked and killed or captured on our side of the border. I was certainly in favor of getting out of Lebanon six years ago and of getting out of Gaza last summer, but this turn of events unfortunately goes to show you that this fact didn’t make any difference to Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, etc., that recognized borders are irrelevant to them and that, as far as they are concerned, Israel must be eliminated.
Only a few months ago, our first government since I can remember whose prime minister and defense minister were not former military heroes was welcomed by many, including me. We thought that we were “growing up” and showing that we could be governed by politicians who weren’t former chiefs of staff or directors of the Shin Bet. When our reaction to these recent attacks was so forceful, a small minority of people wondered whether the “green” PM and defense ministers were afraid to stand up to the military men who were getting their chance to put their plans into action. But when Hezbollah started showing their hand using their sophisticated arsenal-not just some mortars which had a range of a few miles—I began to feel that I had really been living in La-La Land.
Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, has never made a secret of his agenda. He was always really cocky and very clear in his public pronouncements. I just wasn’t listening. So I was not sorry that we were pulling out all the stops and trying to put an end to all this. As I have said many times before, how would America react if Texas and New York were being shelled nightly from Mexico and Canada? Only how does one do that? A regular army against insurgents, we know how hard that is. A terrorist government in Gaza and an ineffective government in Lebanon, which can’t control the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah that is now also part of its government. Even if Hezbollah moves back to the Litani and there is a demilitarized zone, it is now clear that it has longer range missiles than it used to have-they were used-as well as other capabilities as we saw when Hezbollah attacked our missile boat and killed several of our soldiers. Now everyone is talking about sending is UN troops, and we know how effective that has been.
Believe it or not, here in Jerusalem, things are peaceful and quiet. I even spent the afternoon at the beautiful archaeological gardens and museum at the Western Wall with a friend and her relatives who are visiting in the middle of all this. Thinking of all the destruction but standing in the shadow of the Temple, or the part of it that is still standing. But a third of our population is under attack and sitting in shelters. So, at the risk of sounding like a fanatic, I rile at the expressions thrown around about our “inappropriate response.” That is what happens when people threaten to wipe you off the face of the earth and I really believe that they do mean it.
In the meantime, I hope that this situation will be resolved quickly and we hope for peace and happier times.