We are Ready to Pack and Leave
We are ready to pack our bags and leave (Gaza, the briefing, Israel). The war can be over. But I still need to ask the question I prepared. My front is the Public Diplomacy Front, the fight the world’s public opinion, where we fail miserably: reports that Israel is using phosphorus bombs, Gaza’s cemetery cannot hold the dead, carnage is everywhere, indiscriminant firing at will aimed to murder the Gazans.
The General continues describing the conditions for an end of the fighting: Hamas runs out of will power or fire power, whichever comes first. He emphasizes: The sooner Hamas will cease fire, the better it will be for all of us. He reiterates the goals of the Operation: Bring peace and quiet to the Southern part of Israel and make sure Hamas cannot shoot missiles at innocent civilians – like you right here, inside this briefing hall.
We finally arrive at what interests me most: Israel’s behavior as opposed to that of Hamas. “The fighting doctrine is clear. It starts from the very top and exists at every level to the pilot that pushes the trigger. Almost everything is audited, every action of every participant can be viewed and reviewed. What cannot be audited is once the airplanes move away and there is a secondary explosion (of weapons and explosives stored) or what Hamas calls ‘accidents.’”
Fighter airplanes get data but are not authorized to strike since the target is in the vicinity of populated areas. Release of weapons in populated areas will be authorized personally when the target is about to launch. Every hit in Gaza is done with the greatest care and hope for minimal damage. “We use reduced munitions, not heavy bombs.” This statement is repeated over and again. When dropped on populated areas, people outside a 20 – 30 meter radius are safe.
The target must be fully incriminated. The IDF calls people to get out and watches them evacuate. If they do not, the IAF will make sure they understand they need to get out, allowing them sufficient time to do so and only then will it attack the building. Modern warfare, Israeli style. Who else would go to such lengths to protect the civilians among which the enemy operates?
Targeting innocent people goes contrary to our culture. In Judaism, every soul is like the whole world, we do take a great care to ensure that we adhere to our values.
Gazans do not flee, there are many clear areas where Hamas would not go (since they will easily be targeted). The Gazans know the IAF is not targeting civilians. Their life is safe if they distant themselves from weapons and terrorists.
If you are not around a potential target, your life is safe. IAF avoids harming innocent civilians.
Hamas places a launcher inside a school area. Remember – you are 25 seconds away and can be the target of this launcher. Hamas constantly puts its own people in harm’s way. Its members now walk around not in uniforms but in civilian clothes. They walk with children. We hold Hamas responsible for every civilian hurt.
This war is surreal as long as we are out of harm’s way. Hamas should be tried for war crimes – against Israel and against the people that “elected” it three years ago. There must be only one reward for the terror inflicted by Hamas – and that should not include 72 virgins and the flow of many more hundreds of millions of dollars and Euros and Liras into Gaza.
An End to Gaza?
Gazans should be ordered to leave the refugee camps into a new tent city with a field hospital and temporary schools. A new world order has to be created to rebuild Gaza, stripped of any weapons, explosives, hand grenades and anti-tank and anti-airplane missiles. A place into which each person can enter, carrying only clothes onto a new world. The old world –boobytrapped buildings, a city of tunnels underground, weapon caches, immense military power, children and patients as shields – must be destroyed, like Sodom and Gomorrah.
Genesis 18:20 reads: And God said: ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah because is great, and their sin is so grave. I will go down then and see, have they done as its cry that arrives to Me, and if not, I will know.
Israel has gone to Gaza and saw that the sin is indeed so grave. The world talks about a humanitarian crisis but does little other than to blame Israel and promise funds. If the world really cared, if the Arab brethren were truly concerned, if others viewed a human life as Israel does, Gaza could become a flourishing area, a garden of good.
As the unilateral ceasefire by Israel is shaping and forming, may G-d bless Israel, its people and the world. We definitely need His protection.
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