Israel accepted a ceasefire last week, but Hamas did not and continues to attack Israel with non-stop rockets.
For six hours after announcing its acceptance of the ceasefire, the Israeli Defense Forces suspended all strikes against Hamas in Gaza. At the same time, Hamas fired 50 more rockets at civilians in Israel.
I know that the New York Times and other Western press headlines are saying that the ceasefire failed and Israel is now attacking Hamas, but understand, please: The headlines are biased and factually inaccurate.
Israel stopped its defensive attacks and agreed to the ceasefire if Hamas would stop its offensive attacks.
Unfortunately, Hamas didn’t stop bombing for a minute.
The entire world heard Israel tell Hamas that Israel would stop its defensive response to Hamas rocket fire as soon as Hamas stopped attacking Israel. Since Hamas refused the ceasefire offer and continued its rocket attacks against civilians in Israel, Israel was required to strike back and to protect its citizens.
One evening, there were four Hamas terrorist rockets aimed at civilians living in my area, which were intercepted by the Iron Dome system. The siren sounded; I ran to my safe room and immediately heard
the booms of the four rockets. I didn’t know until this morning if I was hearing the rockets’ impact on reaching their targets in my city in the Judean Hills, outside the capital of Jerusalem, or if I was hearing intercepted rockets imploding safely in the air before making landfall.
At least I have a full 90 seconds to reach safety before Hamas rockets explode.
Israelis living in the south of Israel have just 15 seconds to flee. It isn’t enough time.
Few Civilian Casualties an ‘Open Miracle’
In my opinion, it is an open miracle from God that so few Israelis (Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze – rockets don’t discriminate) have been killed or injured by Hamas rockets so far.
Imagine if this were happening in Washington or wherever you live in the world. What would you demand your government do to protect you?
Gaza is home to 1.3 million Arabs. Of these, 35,000 are known terrorists. Of the 35,000, some 19,000 are Hamas terrorists, and the rest are from the more radical Islamic Jihad.
Israeli soldiers seen at the entrance to a massive terror tunnel near the Gaza border. (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)
Israel has sovereignty over Gaza and controls 85% of the water and electricity supplied to Gaza.
Throughout this latest situation, Israel continues to supply water and electricity to Gaza. When Hamas sent a rocket towards civilian targets in Israel that missed its mark and instead took out its own electrical supply to 70,000 Gazans, Israel sent its own technicians – under Hamas rocket fire – to restore power to Gaza!
What government and military in the world would do that?
Israel sends hundreds of trucks each day to Gaza filled with humanitarian supplies, such as food, medicines.
Israel continues to accept wounded Palestinians into Israeli hospitals for treatment and in fact set up a field hospital near the border.
Israel also continues to call Gazan civilian cellphones and to drop leaflets in Gaza, giving advance warning of impending Israeli defensive strikes in response to Hamas rocket attacks. These warnings are neighborhood-specific and give street names and strike times.
This is necessary because Hamas hides its weapons caches and rocket launchers and sends rockets from civilian areas – private homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques. Hamas terrorists rely on the knowledge that Israel will abort rocket strikes or deflect rockets already sent if its aeriel surveillance shows that Israeli attacks will likely kill innocent civilians caught in the crossfire because Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields.
IDF Abides by Strong Ethical Principles
Do you think the Palestinians in Gaza, the US military or anyone else would do this — warn its enemies of coming targeted strikes in specific areas, or provide its enemies with utilities, food, supplies, and medical treatment in its hospitals?
Israel has strong ethical principles expressed as military orders by which it makes military decisions, and this ethical code prevents Israelis from acting like any other military in the world.
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrives at Ben-Gurion airport on Wednesday morning to push for a ceasefire. (Photo: Matty Stern/Flash90)
I’m so proud to be a Jew living in the sovereign state of Israel. I wish I were young enough to join the IDF and defend Israel. Since I am not, I am doing my best to help Israel get the message out to the American public and international community about what is really happening here in Israel.
My father, his memory should be for a blessing, was a teenager in Nazi Germany and a member of Habonim, a Zionist organization. Having experienced Jew-hatred and anti-Semitic discrimination, his dream was to come to pre-state Palestine and to build a Jewish sovereign state; a safe place for Jews to live at peace.
I am living my father’s dream. Regrettably, it is a dream that we Jews are still defending to the world.
The world accepts over 20 Islamic states, and supports the proposal for a Judenrein (Jew-free) apartheid “state of Palestine.” Why won’t the world accept one tiny Jewish sovereign state – a safe haven that Jews the world over still clearly need?
Anti-Israel activists, radical Islamists and anti-Semites are demonstrating against the Jewish state in the streets of American cities; they are destroying synagogues and threatening Jews on the streets (see what just happened in Paris, for example), taking over neighborhoods in European cities and imposing sharia law.
Do You Want Terrorists on your Borders?
There are at least 24 known shariah-compliant, Muslim-only neighborhoods in the U.S., including one very close to the large Jewish community just across Wabash Avenue in the Baltimore area (where I lived until I made aliyah almost three years ago).
Hamas graduation ceremony from school that promotes hate and violence. (Photo: IDF blog)
Radical Islamists are committing internationally recognized “crimes against humanity” in every Arab country, as well as in several European countries where they live by their own medieval laws, including honor killings, female circumcision, beheadings, and a sharia-compliant social code that they try to impose on citizens in their host countries.
Do you want terrorists on your borders, attacking your democratic and pluralistic society and raining rockets on your civilian population hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, without end? We do not!
Do you want to live in peace and freedom, enjoying civil rights? We do!
Do you believe Israel has a right to exist as a sovereign state, with defensible borders? We do!