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Israel Is Forced To Defend Itself

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 3, 2009

Updated: 01/03/2009 01:11 am

The key question in how to end Israel's attacks in Gaza cannot be answered by the Israelis. What must it do to convince the terrorist group, Hamas, which runs Gaza, to stop firing missiles into Israeli neighborhoods?

The missiles are small and inaccurate, but they have hit apartment buildings, playgrounds, even a kindergarten. The widespread condemnation of Israel for a disproportionate counterattack fails to say how Israel should respond.

Asked about calls for a balanced response, Israel's Consul General Ofer Bavly told us in a telephone interview from Miami, "It's not something a democracy does, to shoot 100 missiles into a civilian population."

Israel's goal in the fighting, he said, is to destroy the terrorist organization behind the missile and mortar attacks. Some of the missiles are homemade but the longer-range ones are believed to come from Iran and are smuggled through Egypt.

Egypt's government, too, fears the violence of Hamas and has kept its border with Gaza sealed except for humanitarian supplies. Egypt's foreign minister said any truce agreed to between Israel and Hamas must include a guarantee that Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel.

Arms have come under the Gaza-Egypt border through tunnels. Bavly said Israel in the past few days has destroyed 40 tunnels. "There are more," he said, "and we will destroy them all."

With the range and power of the rockets increasing, Israel has no effective alternative but to retaliate powerfully.

The worldwide criticism against Israel is based mostly on the scale of its response. In destroying Hamas headquarters and ammunition caches, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed. Only four Israelis have been killed recently by the Hamas rockets.

The imbalance seems unfair. Turkey's prime minister and many others are calling Israel's air assault a "crime against humanity." A Palestinian official in Gaza labeled the attacks a "massacre."

Yet civilian death is the last thing Israel wants. It continues to truck in medicine and food to Gaza, aid which Bavly noted is without precedent in the midst of combat.

Israel has begun making telephone warnings to occupants of houses it is targeting to give everyone a chance to evacuate to safety. In contrast, Hamas has been using women and children as shields, and turns collateral injuries and deaths into publicity weapons against Israel.

Such coverage leads to accusations that Israel is relentlessly destroying mosques and homes, killing children, and destroying Palestinian society.

Not mentioned are what the Hamas rockets have done to Israel.

About 250,000 people live within range of the missiles, which are fired from homes, schools and mosques. When a lookout spots a missile or radar picks it up, sirens are sounded. Upon hearing the alert, everyone has about 20 seconds to run to a bomb shelter or safest possible place.

The missiles come at all hours of the day and night, disrupting business life, ruining sleep, and terrorizing much of the nation.

Many calls are heard for Israel to agree to a cease-fire, but they ignore the reality that Hamas won't stop the launchings that began shortly after Israel pulled out of Gaza and allowed it to be policed by Palestinians.

An effective six-month truce expired last month and Hamas leaders refused to renew it. Their motive is to provoke Israel into fighting back so that they can enlist outside allies in their goal of destroying Israel, something they could never do alone.

It's an evil agenda made more effective by a worldwide unwillingness to recognize and condemn it.

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