07.06.2006
 I am sitting here in the center of the maelstrom that has once again hit my little country, drowning in the blah-blah of hypocritical world leaders and my own confused government and military.
First, a clarification is necessary. Last week, the official military arm of the democratically elected government in Gaza, headed by Hamas, which is on the official list of international terror groups recognized by the US and its allies, crossed the internationally recognized border, entering the sovereign State of Israel by tunneling under a fence, and attacked an IDF military outpost with explosives and machine guns. Two soldiers were killed, others were injured and one, Gilad Shalit, was forcibly abducted.
This unprovoked attack followed months of missiles fired into Israel towns, which Israel has ignored. Here is the list of the number of Kassam rockets that landed in the western Negev by month (from an article by Ami Isseroff): 12 in September 2005; 8 in October 2005; 4 in November 2005; 16 in December 2005; 1 in February 2006; 49 in March 2006; 64 in April 2006; 46 in May 2006; and 89 in June 2006.
According to all international conventions, these are continuing, escalating acts of war. The current conflict is not about the release of an Israeli soldier, may God protect him and watch over him and return him safely. It is about acts of war. Even should Gilad Shalit be returned, God willing, two soldiers will never return. This act of war must be met with a declaration of war and an all-out offensive that will destroy the enemy.
Media outlets like the BBC play it both ways, saying Shalit was "captured", not "kidnapped." If they wish to confer legitimacy on the gangsters of Hamas, then they cannot use the argument that this attack was not an act of war, to which Israel must not respond in kind.
The US saw fit to enter Afghanistan and Iraq following a terrorist attack by Saudi nationals that killed thousands of Americans in New York and Washington. American forces bombed cities and killed civilians who were not directly involved, who have no border with the US and who have not formally declared their intention of destroying the US. Nevertheless, the US administration now sees fit to suggest to Israel that it exercise "restraint" when its borders are violated by those who publicly declare their intention to wipe Israel off the map.
The foreign ministry of Switzerland was silent in the face of death and injury to thousands of innocent Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian suicide bombers during the last five years - in direct violation of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights. Yet, the Swiss saw fit to declare on July 3 that Israel is in violation of the Geneva Convention in responding to the Gazan act of war with its reasonable, most circumspect and, so far, overly cautious and highly ineffective campaign in Gaza.
Israeli air force chief Major General Eliezer Shkedy told the Jerusalem Post:
If we know that [the terrorist] is holding his son's hand, we do not fire. Even if the terrorist is in the midst of firing a Kassam, and the Kassam is aimed to kill. We do not fire. You should know that. And that's a fearsome thing.
The Palestinian people, like the German people in War War II, will no doubt be faced with additional casualties and additional suffering as a direct result of their active support for, and participation in, creating a terrorist state, which continues to attempt to murder its innocent next door neighbors.
While our human sympathy goes out to the child whose father chooses to hold his hand as he fires a Kassam rocket at other people's children, war is by its very nature a collective punishment; just as rockets landing on schools and apartment houses are a collective punishment.
However, the joy in Gaza reported by Arab newspapers belies the idea that the people are not in complete agreement with their elected government. In an article by Ami Isseroff, he writes: "Al-Quds Al-Arab newspaper of June 26 told the truth, not for Western ears and eyes:
Sources in the Gaza Strip confirmed yesterday that there was... happiness in the ranks of the population, due to the quality operation carried out by the Al-Qassam Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Army of Islam, which claimed the lives of two Israeli soldiers and two men from the resistance, and resulted in the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier.
Eyewitnesses said yesterday that joy was obvious on the faces of hundreds of people in Rafah, after they heard about the operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance. They indicated that hundreds of people congratulated one another and some distributed sweets to the citizens to express their joy. We would like to hear international protests concerning this before anybody who wishes to interfere can be taken seriously as a broker in this conflict.
I, as an Israeli citizen, ask the government of Israel to respond to this act of war by declaring war, and putting an end to the conflict by military means once and for all, given that all diplomatic attempts at a solution have failed. Hamas is not a trustworthy negotiating partner - having negotiated the release of a young Israeli kidnap victim the day after they'd already murdered him.
As for releasing prisoners, the 1,500 prisoners Hamas want released in exchange for Gilad are not political prisoners. They are terrorist scum, tried and convicted of crimes of murder, attempted murder, etc. The last time Israel released hundreds of terrorists to secure the return of the bodies of three Israeli soldiers and the release of an Israeli drug dealer and double agent, 34 Israelis were subsequently murdered by those set free.
My prayers are with the family of Gilad Shalit. May God rescue him.Israeli National News
Remember What Happened Here
 Israel Invades Gaza. That is in response to an attack from Gaza that killed two Israelis and wounded another, who was kidnapped and brought back to Gaza ...which, in turn, was in response to Israel's targeted killing of terrorist leaders in Gaza...which, in turn, was in response to the indiscriminate shelling of Israeli towns by rockets launched from Gaza.
Of all the conflicts in the world, the one that seems the most tediously and hopelessly endless is the Arab-Israeli dispute, which has been going on in much the same way, it seems, for 60 years. Just about every story you'll see will characterize Israel's invasion of Gaza as a continuation of the cycle of violence.
Cycles are circular. They have no end. They have no beginning. That is why, as tempting as that figure of speech is to use, in this case it is false. It is as false as calling American attacks on Taliban remnants in Afghanistan part of a cycle of violence between the U.S. and al-Qaeda or, as Osama bin Laden would have it, between Islam and the Crusaders going back to 1099. Every party has its grievances--even Hitler had his list when he invaded Poland in 1939--but every conflict has its origin.
What is so remarkable about the current wave of violence in Gaza is that the event at the origin of the "cycle" is not at all historical, but very contemporary. The event is not buried in the mists of history. It occurred less than one year ago. Before the eyes of the whole world, Israel left Gaza. Every Jew, every soldier, every military installation, every remnant of Israeli occupation was uprooted and taken away.
How do the Palestinians respond? What have they done with Gaza, the first Palestinian territory in history to be independent, something neither the Ottomans nor the British nor the Egyptians nor the Jordanians, all of whom ruled Palestinians before the Israelis, ever permitted? On the very day of Israel's final pullout, the Palestinians began firing rockets out of Gaza into Israeli towns on the other side of the border. And remember: those are attacks not on settlers but on civilians in Israel proper, the pre-1967 Israel that the international community recognizes as legitimately part of sovereign Israel, a member state of the U.N. A thousand rockets have fallen since.
For what possible reason? Before the withdrawal, attacks across the border could have been rationalized with the usual Palestinian mantra of occupation, settlements and so on. But what can one say after the withdrawal?
The logic for those continued attacks is to be found in the so-called phase plan adopted in 1974 by the Palestine National Council in Cairo. Realizing that they would never be able to destroy Israel in one fell swoop, the Palestinians adopted a graduated plan to wipe out Israel. First, accept any territory given to them in any part of historic Palestine. Then, use that sanctuary to wage war until Israel is destroyed.
So in 2005 the Palestinians are given Gaza, free of any Jews. Do they begin building the state they say they want, constructing schools and roads and hospitals? No. They launch rockets at civilians and dig a 300-yard tunnel under the border to attack Israeli soldiers and bring back a hostage.
And this time the terrorism is carried out not by some shadowy group that the Palestinian leader can disavow, however disingenuously. This is Hamas in action--the group that was recently elected to lead the Palestinians. At least there is now truth in advertising: a Palestinian government openly committed to terrorism and to the destruction of a member state of the U.N. openly uses terrorism to carry on its war.
That is no cycle. That is an arrow. That is action with a purpose. The action began 59 years ago when the U.N. voted to solve the Palestine conundrum then ruled by Britain by creating a Jewish state and a Palestinian state side by side. The Jews accepted the compromise; the Palestinians rejected it and joined five outside Arab countries in a war to destroy the Jewish state and take all the territory for themselves.
They failed, and Israel survived. That remains, in the Palestinian view, Israel's original sin, the foundational crime for the cycle: Israel's survival. That's the reason for the rockets, for the tunneling, for the kidnapping--and for Israel's current response.
If that history is too ancient, consider the history of the past 12 months. Gaza is free of occupation, yet Gaza wages war. Why? Because this war is not about occupation, but about Israel's very existence. The so-called cycle will continue until the arrow is abandoned and the Palestinians accept a compromise--or until the arrow finds its mark and Israel dies.
Time
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