and that is why the libs blame Israel. stupidity. On Jan 6, 6:56 am, Cold Water <[email protected]> wrote: > A Conflict Hamas Caused > > By Richard Cohen > Tuesday, January 6, 2009; A13 > > Nearly a year ago, I was in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, where, on > almost any day, you could see the current war coming. "The next Middle East > war may start over Sderot," I wrote back then. I came by my prescience the > hard way -- in a bomb shelter. That day, three Qassam rockets had hit the > city. It took no genius to see the imminence of war. It takes real stupidity > to blame it on Israel. > > On some days, dozens of rockets fell on Sderot. A blimp hovered over the > town, and when it electronically spied an incoming rocket, the sirens went > off. In Sderot, the sirens were virtually a single, long wail on some days. > Everyone took shelter because shelters are everywhere -- a constant reminder > of the nearness of death or, at the very least, destruction. Even a dud can > bust through the roof of a house. > > I get the impression that Israel is expected to put up with this. The implied > message from demonstrators and some opinion columnists is that this is the > price Israel is supposed to pay for being, I suppose, Israel. I am informed > by a Palestinian journalist in a Post op-ed that Israel is trying to stop > "amateur rockets from nagging the residents of some of its southern cities." > In Sderot, I saw homes nagged to smithereens. > > While I was reading the online version of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz for > all the latest news about the war, a pop-up ad announced itself: "Camp > Kimama, Israel, 2009 -- What childhood memories should be made of." The > picture shows kids frolicking in the water. Placed next to stories about > battle, it was a jarring -- but vivid -- statement of war aims: the > expectation of normal life. > > The CIA's World Factbook says that Israel has a population of 7,112,359. Of > these, about 5,434,000 are Jews. That includes 187,000 settlers in the West > Bank, about 20,000 in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights bordering Syria, and > about 175,000 in East Jerusalem. It does not include, however, the > approximately 750,000 Israelis living in the United States -- some for a > brief amount of time, some for an extended period, some permanently. For a > variety of reasons -- and often with considerable pain -- they have given up > on the country of their birth. > > As the leaders of Hamas understand, the war in Gaza is about Israel's > incessant fight to be a normal country. Maybe that's impossible. The war > between Arab and Jew predates the founding of Israel in 1948. For the > Palestinians, it is a fierce fight for Arab justice, for Arab pride, for Arab > myth -- for ancestral houses and orange groves that few living have ever > seen. For Israel, it is so kids can swim in a lake. > > Three years ago, Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip. Good, the world said. > Next, pull out of the West Bank, the world said. But then Hamas, which has > vowed to destroy Israel, won the election in Gaza. Sderot soon became hell. > The West Bank is controlled by Fatah, the moderate Palestinian organization, > which once had control of Gaza, too. If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, > will rockets come from there? If you lived in Tel Aviv, a spit from the West > Bank, would you take the chance? > > Anyone could have seen this war coming. The diplomats and demonstrators who > are now so engaged in the problem and the process were nowhere to be found > when rockets began raining down on southern Israel. The border between Gaza > and Egypt is riddled with tunnels -- some for food, some for weapons. The > international monitors that are so evidently needed now were just as > evidently needed then. > > Conventional wisdom says that when Israel went into Lebanon in 2006, it lost > that war. Hezbollah stood up to the mighty Israeli army; Israel could not > muzzle Hezbollah's rockets. That may not be the way Hezbollah sees things, > however. After the war, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said he had > miscalculated. He was not prepared for the fury of the Israeli attack. He > apologized. Now, Hezbollah takes no role in the current war. It will be back, > but it still has wounds to lick. > > The horrors of war are not to be dismissed or demeaned. In 2006, Israel > accidentally killed 28 civilians in the Lebanese village of Qana when it > attempted to take out a nearby rocket site. In Gaza, innocent Palestinians > are being killed. The suffering is great and cannot be ignored. But what has > been ignored is the series of events that led to this war. Anyone could see > how it was going to start. As always, though, it's a lot harder to see how it > ends. > > [email protected] > > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/05/AR200... --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
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