SHOULD ISRAEL RECONQUER GAZA?
Letter from Ruth Matar (Women in Green) Jerusalem
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Dear Friends,
The most basic responsibility of a government is to protect its citizens. The Olmert government is not fulfilling this responsibility.
Yesterday, a woman was killed and a man lost his legs when Kassam rockets landed in downtown Sderot. The Islamic Jihad and Iz A-Din El-Kassam terrorists proudly claimed credit.
Fatima Slutzker, a Moslem woman married to a Jew, was the seventh fatal victim of a Kassam rocket among the nearly 1,700 that have been fired since the withdrawal from Gaza. She was 57 years-old.
The rockets fell not far from the house of former Sderot Mayor Amir Peretz, now Israel’s Defense Minister. Maor (ben Dorit) Peretz, the 24-year-old guard assigned to protect Peretz’s house was also hit by the rocket’s wildly-scattered deadly shrapnel.
Both Fatima and Maor were taken to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon where the woman died, leaving behind her husband and two sons. Peretz had both of his legs amputated. Six other people were treated for light injuries.
Close to ten Kassams were fired at Sderot Wednesday. In addition, four other rockets were fired at the Western Negev. Another rocket landed near a children’s nursery in a nearby kibbutz.
The nearly 1,700 Kassams were not an accident. They were meant to kill and when they did kill Jews, the Arabs celebrated! No apologies forthcoming from them!
However, when an Israeli artillery shell accidentally strayed 500 meters off course, killing 19 and wounding 29 others in Beit Hanoun, senior Fatah officials called for sanctions from the UN Security Council and incited the Arab populace to increase terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
Israel’s wimpy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, on the other hand, publicly apologized to the entire world for the IDF’s accidental firing, giving the Arabs additional propaganda ammunition.
There is currently an intense debate about whether Israel should re-conquer Gaza to stop the Kassams. The journalist Haggai Huberman wrote an excellent article in today’s Hebrew newspaper Hatzofe. The following are excerpts from this article:
One of the lies spread by spokesmen in the government in particular, and by the left in general, is “And when we sat in Gaza, there were no Kassams?” The answer is simple: “NO!” When we sat in Gaza, there were no Kassams.
We left Gaza (and other places from where they are sending Kassams, like Beit Hanoun, Mejabliya, etc. … in 1994 because of the Oslo agreements. [R.M. Remember the famous “Gaza-Jericho” plan?]) Before 1994, (when the IDF controlled Gaza) there were no Kassams. Not on Sderot, not on Miflassim, not on Nahal Oz.
Another famous sentence uttered in these days by the left is: “We tried already everything.” No! That is not true. It is true we tried everything except the one and only thing that will stop the rockets: Complete re-conquest of the entire Gaza Strip. Complete IDF security control in each and every corner.
And thus we will repeat it ad nauseam! There is only one way to stop the rocket attacks. To re-conquer Gaza and stay there. It will happen sooner or later. Even Yuval Diskin, General Security Service Chief, and Avi Dichter, Internal Security Minister, already understand this.
Dear friends, I am including an article by Israel Harel, columnist for the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz, entitled, “You Promised a Dove, We Got Kassams”. This article sheds light on how Israel’s leaders got us into this terrible mess we are in.
You promised a dove, we got Qassams
By Israel Harel, Haaretz
November 16, 2006
The unilateral disengagement, said the politicians who initiated it and carried it out and the journalists who jumped on the bandwagon, will bring calm to the Gaza border. The unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, went one of the most influential arguments, proved that
steps of this nature, despite the delusional warnings of opponents of peace, succeed. Shelly Yachimovich, who, from her influential positions in the media, was one of the instigators of the flight from Lebanon, even scoffed: “The entire region will burn? Not only is the region not burning, but there is absolute calm” (Haggai Segal and Uri Orbach, “They Promised a Dove”).
Not even an enclave like Shaba Farms, on the Lebanese border, was left in the Gaza Strip. Instead, 25 flourishing settlements were uprooted and Israel withdrew to the last millimeter. In addition, a high fence, almost impassable, was erected between the Gaza Strip and the western Negev. And good fences, according to the slogan that those who supported the flight from Lebanon, the uprooting in Gaza and the uprooting in Judea and Samaria like to recite, make good neighbors.
But despite the fence and the traumatic disengagement that tore Israeli society apart, 100 doves of peace are not springing up in the Gaza Strip as promised. Instead, Palestinians are shooting hundreds of Qassam rockets, including the lethal ones fired yesterday. Miraculously, most have not been fatal. But yesterday, there were no miracles.
Last week, an annual conference on social issues took place in Sderot. At one session, following the calamity in Beit Hanun, a melancholy rhetorical question was asked: What is the point of our responding forcefully, even though we certainly did not intend to kill civilians? There have been years of military operations, but the Qassams continue to fall. And shells from Israeli cannons kill civilians, including children. How is it possible to educate our children in such a situation? What kind of hope are we giving them, so that they will not abandon the country and emigrate?
These remarks were made out of genuine concern. But past experience shows that as long as we were educated, and educated others, to a reality of “there is no choice,” there were few cracks in our emotional fortitude and our sense of justice. The loss of hope occurred after we tried the “alternatives” and, as at Oslo, “achieved breakthroughs.”
The sowers of illusion convinced us that there is a Palestinian partner, and pushed the decision makers into unrealistic and even delusional harbors. For the sake of “giving the children hope,” whether their own children or all children, the parents who were in the driver’s seat lent a hand to moves that have proven lethal: Oslo, the flight from Lebanon and the disengagement. And because they were lethal for the Jews, they were also – since it is not possible to refrain from responding to suicide bombings, or even to Qassams – lethal for the Arabs.
It is not vacuous, and therefore unavailing, moves, like the uprooting from Gaza and the flight from Lebanon, that our children need to prevent them from abandoning the country, and us. Imparting illusions, instead of educating our children to believe in the principles of Zionism, national and social solidarity and the need to continue fighting as long as fighting is necessary, increases emigration rather than decreasing it.
It is no wonder that many of those who believe in these illusions have evaded service in the Israel Defense Forces or now live abroad. In the bubble of illusion, disappointment and despair reign: “You promised a dove,” they say, but you did not keep your promise.
We must tell the next generation the truth. We must prepare it, and ourselves, to cope without illusions – among other things, with the fact that fences and unilateral withdrawals increase the enemy’s motivation.
In the Bnei Akiva youth group and the national religious community’s educational institutes, they do not teach that our life in this country is conditional on the Palestinians’ consent. There, teaching about the nation of Israel’s right to its land – which used to be what everyone was taught – is still the key component of an education, and not the supposed injustices the nation of Israel is causing the neighboring nation. Nor is reality whitewashed there.
And the results prove that a difficult truth is preferable to a fraudulent illusion.
It is important to educate for peace. But it is also necessary to inculcate the fundamental educational baggage that will give the students the tools to cope with a situation in which the longed-for peace fails to arrive, despite sincere and costly efforts to attain it. Above all, it is necessary to instill in the students something that many households and educational institutes no longer do: a belief in the justice of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.
* * *
Member of Knesset Tzvi Hendel (National Union), commenting on the government’s refusal to send in massive forces to enter Gaza, said bitterly, “Only a rocket on Tel Aviv will cause Olmert to take over Gaza.”
MK Hendel is wrong! A rocket on Tel Aviv will not make Olmert send forces to take over Gaza. Only a direct hit by a rocket on Prime Minister Olmert’s residence in Jerusalem would accomplish this!
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar