A note or two on Israel; from an Israeli

The world, of course, is in outrage. How dare the Israeli government bomb Gaza?

Well here’s my question; where was the world’s outrage when a bomb from Gaza landed mere meters from my best friend’s house? Where was the world’s outrage at the Israeli civilians who were being “targeted”—if one can call blind firing of rockets into purely civilian areas actual targeting—for the past month? Is it all right to bomb Israeli citizens intentionally and wrong to bomb buildings in which Hamas terrorist leaders are holed up continuing their terror after warning the civilians to leave?

Where was the world while my best friend’s been “fixing up” her bomb shelter and worrying about her sons’ day care, because it doesn’t have one? Those children are not important. Those children are being raised in a world so afraid of calling a terrorist a terrorist once he’s been elected to office, that they are being told that just as their grandparents’ generation didn’t mean a thing to the world, its generation doesn’t either.

Do not misunderstand me. I don’t think Livni & Co., are perfect, always right, or even necessarily the alabaster towers of human behavior. I am Israeli enough to criticize my Israel when she needs it, just as I’ve always been American enough to believe that criticism is the best and most important part of democracy. But how dare the world’s media use such biased coverage as to interview a Palestinian woman living in the hell that is now Gaza without talking also to an Israeli woman trying to save her kids? How can any use of force against Israel be counted and reported in said media as everyday behavior but a 5-day offensive to make that behavior stop be reported as unwarranted violence? Why must my country be asked repeatedly to be the lamb to the slaughter whenever it is faced with attack?

Because Jews only matter when someone needs a target, a lobby, a caricature. Because the world assumes that anyone living in Israel is Jewish, as opposed to realizing that there are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Bahai, and many others living there peacefully with each other. Because if the media focused on the reality my birthplace faces, it would have to care.

The city I was born in was bombed today. The city my best friend lives in was bombed two days ago. No one’s asked Hamas to stop killing civilians. Everyone’s asking Israel to stop defending itself. Everyone’s asking Israel to let its civilians die.

Seems Golda Meir had it right all those decades ago; “We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”

I don’t think Meir thought the Arabs hated their children. I simply think that her point is that as long as one breeds hate into one’s children by hating others, one is creating for them a world of hate and pain. I’m sure Arabs love their children as much as anyone else does, but as long as their ideology allows for them to think that encouraging their children to become suicide bombers is a way to show love, there will be no peace.

(But what about the body count?) --Next