Disproportionate Response — Really?
All the old familiar names are jumping on the "beat up Israel" bandwagon, once again. From the leader of the United Nations, Kopi Annan, to the Peace Now group, to the internationally acclaimed author Mario Vargas Llosa along with the rest of the usual suspects, all are upset with Israel's response to the murder of an Israeli citizen, the kidnapping of a soldier and other murders of Israeli soldiers. Israel's "out of proportion" operation in the Gaza Strip has come under fire-pun intended. Really now, what people think about a military action-is this really worthy of a news story? One questions why this even makes it to the newspaper pages?Let's examine the facts and then ask some questions:
Since the Fall of 2005 the Palestinians were given Gaza, the Jews are gone. Do they begin building the state they say they want, do they start developing the infrastructure like constructing schools and roads and hospitals?
Hamas wins an election and becomes the territory's leadership. For the first time in modern history Gaza becomes an independent territory courtesy of Israel. None of the area's prior rulers, the Ottomans nor the British nor the Egyptians nor the Jordanians, ever permitted this to happen. What do the Palestinians do? On the very first day of the pull out by Israel, they began firing Kassam rockets into the sovereign country of Israel.
Since the beginning of this year, over 300 rocket attacks have been fired into Israel proper, about two every day, seven days a week, non-stop violence and terror. Dozens of Israeli citizens have been injured, many killed. Targets include power stations, family homes, schools and downtown streets citizens are walking along or sitting in a cafe. These are not military targets, they are all civilian targets.
Many Kassam rockets have been fired toward Ashkelon, Israel's fifth-largest city, over the past several months. In the past week two Kassams hit the heart of the city on consecutive nights. On Tuesday night (July 4), a rocket landed in a schoolyard just as parents and children were engaged in registration for next year. The next night (July 5), one of two Kassams fired northward sent eight Ashkelon residents into a state of shock and to the hospital.
On Friday (July 7), seventeen Kassam rockets were launched falling near a number of kibbutzim, including Sa'ad, Nahal Oz, and Gevim, as well as near the town of Netivot.
Four people were wounded on Sunday morning (July 9), one moderately and three lightly, when a Kassam rocket, launched from the northern Gaza Strip, landed in a house in Sderot.
Hamas decried on Sunday (July 9) a recent call by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to stop Kassam rocket fire on Israel and release kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
This is Hamas in action--the group that was elected by the Palestinian people to lead them. This we now know for sure: it is a Palestinian government openly committed to terrorism and to the destruction of a member state of the U.N. openly using terrorism to carry on its war.
These are the facts. I even left some out in order to keep this brief. So I ask the "bandwaggoners" if you were under fire every day, your citizens you vowed to protect were being wounded and killed, what would you do? Talk? You actually believe that you can talk to a group of internationally defined terrorists to return the soldier they kidnapped? Remember, this is the same group who has as its policy the destruction of Israel, you really believe you can talk them into returning your soldier? Even today, as I write this piece, the Hamas leadership has become enraged with Mr. Mazen for even suggesting that Hamas return the soldier-you still think talk with such an ideology, such people bent upon destruction will work? I am not asking if you want the violence to stop, so do I. I am not asking you hope or want to believe that talk would work-so did I once. Behavior has demonstrated what the truth is with this regard.
I offer to you who criticize a government for protecting its people, a government who only targets enemy fighters, who operates out of the highest of ethical military "right to fire codes" in the world to reconcile your beliefs with on the ground behavior that is absolutely opposed to what you profess.
Hamas and other PA terror groups are each and every day in violation of the Geneva Convention code of behavior-they hide among civilians, they target civilians, they place tunnels in private homes, under baby cribs, they wear no uniform-all of these and so much more, Hamas is guilty of these violations. Where is your concern, your upset, your outrage with this behavior? Finally, I hear your condemnation of Israel's reply to this ongoing action and I do not hear, not once, from any of you, what you think is proportional action! How easy and self-righteous you are to make such proclamations from the comfort of your home-some thousands of miles away! You are part of the problem and are actually reinforcing deviant behavior-time to face the reality and stop spinning tales of illusion.