PrintApril 8, 2011
Terrorism in Their Backyard
Yesterday's bombing by Hamas of a school bus outside Kibbutz Sa'ad in southern Israel was only the latest in an escalation of terror inflicted upon a population of innocent civilians by a hateful people who have proven time and again incapable of becoming partners in peace. The IDF reported that the attack on the bus was followed with 45 mortars and shells over the course of three hours.
Of course, the media continues to portray Israel as the aggressor. For instance, the AP headline read: "Israel army strikes Gaza after school bus hit" and the article placed the news of the bus attack in the 4th paragraph of the story while discussing the Israeli strike in the opening paragraph. And in Melanie Phillips' scathing review of the insanity of the BBC's reporting of the event as "Israeli forces strike after attack on bus," she noted:
"The fact that Gaza terrorists tried to kill Israeli schoolchildren clearly does not register with the BBC as an important enough development to merit leading its story. Indeed, the BBC clearly does not register the moral difference between Israeli victimisation and Hamas aggression at all."
I will never forget my family's visit to Kibbutz Sa'ad two years ago. My older son had been Bar Mitzvah'd the day before and part of his mitzvah project involved bringing clothing and sneakers to some of the needy boys staying on the Kibbutz. My children, who play freely outside in their quaint New York suburb, spent the afternoon kicking around soccer balls and eating lunch with children who live in constant fear of the next missile attack.
That same day we visited the town of Sderot which borders Gaza. Sderot is the unfortunate recipient of incessant rocket attacks on an almost daily basis. During our visit, we met with a family whose house had been recently bombed and took pictures of the clothes hanging in the trees above, debris scattered across the lawn, and glass shards strewn on the floor inside the bedroom with a hole in the ceiling. After my children held a missile that had landed just two weeks before, we toured the newly constructed indoor playground. Thanks to the funding of the Jewish National Fund, the children of Sderot now have a bomb shelter that also serves as a safe play space.
So as Palestinian terrorists continue their onslaught against innocent Israeli civilians, watch this video and consider it the next time Obama tells Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu that Israel has to make more concessions in order to achieve peace, that Israel has to cede more land notwithstanding its very real security concerns (let alone the Jewish people's legal, historical and Biblical right to that land), and that Israel's aggression (a/k/a existence) is the cause of Mideast unrest.
And as Obama begins his campaign for another four years of devastating Mideast policy, consider his silence in the face of these on-going terrorist attacks by a people who glorify their "martyrs" with monuments and financial payments for each act of jihad against the Jews. From the man who has injected himself in everything from the arrest of his friend Henry Gates last year, to the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, Obama's silence in the face of this most recent attack of innocent Israelis is telling.
