Archive for December 28th, 2008

As the New York Times began their reports on the situation in Gaza, the reporters spun the situation against the Israelis, as usual, blaming the Israeli Air Force for civilian deaths. Only in the second or third to last paragraph did they actually reveal the true reason for the attacks: “On Wednesday, some 70 rockets hit Israel over 24 hours, in a distinct increase in intensity.”

If Mexico decided to slam California with 70 rockets in the span of one day, would the United States sit back and do nothing? If Luxembourg decided to fire 70 rockets into Paris, would France sit back and do nothing? (well, maybe France would, but that’s besides the point).

I think not.

A day-two  Times follow-up, written by Robert Pear, did a much better job encapsulating what was really going on and detailed the US government’s view that Hamas’s rocket fire was directly responsible for the air strikes – they had brought it on themselves.  And as Pear points out, it’s not just Bush making these statements. President-elect Barack Obama agrees.

“If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” Mr. Obama said in July. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

Israelis are not trying to target civilians when they strike Gaza, but they sometimes have no choice, and the public needs to understand what is actually going on. As the Jerusalem Post points out in an article today, Hamas strategically places most of its rocket launch pads in Palestinian civilian neighborhoods – so when Israel bombs them, it looks like we’re aiming for civilians.

Before criticizing Israeli Defense Force actions, Americans and people all over the world need to step back and imagine how they would feel if deadly explosives were randomly falling in their backyards. Certainly, you wouldn’t want your children to go out and play under these conditions – and surely, you’d want your government to take action and do something about it.

**Addendum: I was just talking to my friend who lives in Israel, and while she supports Israel of course, she feels that they should have gone about combatting Hamas in a different, less-politically-oriented way. Unfortunately, now that they waited so long, this is not really possible. She presented the following analogy: there’s the kid that cleans up his room methodically when asked and then there’s the other kid who waits till the last minute and stuffs all of his toys in the closet — in this case, Israel is being that second kid, and should’ve been the first. But unfortunately, once you’ve waited this long, you have to be the second and not the first.

I’d be interested to hear what people think about that.