The fighting could have been over by now if we would use the same tactics our enemies use.
July 18. Just came out of the secure room. The longest siren since the beginning. Three interceptions of the Iron Dome above us. Thinking of the absurdity of this round of violence. We started the ground offensive for humanitarian reasons. Yes, it sounds crazy but hear me out.
We have the ability to flatten the Gaza Strip from the air (remember what happened to Dresden in the Second World War?), but we do not do it because it is morally wrong. Thousand of uninvolved civilians can get killed, after all they are serving against their will as human shields. Since we cannot and will not do it from the air, we are now putting the lives of our soldiers on the line in order to save the lives of uninvolved Palestinians by searching for the tunnels on the ground and engaging the Az A din El Kassam terrorists on the ground, while they keep on targeting our cities with their missiles.
If this is not madness, I do not know what madness is. I am proud to be an Israeli these days more then ever. Perhaps others can take some morality lessons from us, including the Russians, Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Serbs, and even some western democracies.
July 20. Life is made of small things and sometime when we are surrounded by big tragedies we tend to put aside our “small world” problems as they look petty and unimportant.
Well, to me, what is important today is that my daughter and grandchildren that came to Israel for their summer holiday from Amsterdam cut their stay short and are returning. They did not have summer holiday with their family.
What is important to me is the fact that my son was out for a short breather with his youngest daughter in the park near their home and when the siren sounded, he ran with her to the nearest building trying to find shelter while a debris of the rocket fell just half a mile from him.
What disturbs me today is the fact that when he was seeking shelter, his two other daughters were with us in the secure room and his wife was panicking not knowing if we were all well.
Yes, I know that in comparison with the pain of the families who lost their dear ones on both sides it all seems irrelevant, but this is my daily reality now and it also hurts, even if in a different way.
I am just looking for different days that are filled with blossoming flowers and not smoke and fires.
July 21. Took our daughter and grandchildren to the airport. They went back to Amsterdam. On the way back home, on Highway 1, I noticed the digital sign that is supposed to report traffic jams. The notice read: “When sirens sound, stop your car and lie on the ground.” We live in a surreal reality.
Just heard that today we lost another seven officers and soldiers which totals the number of our fallen soldiers to 25.
There is heavy fighting in Gaza, discovering attack tunnels leading to Kibbutzim around Gaza in order to perform massacres of children and women, and possibly kidnap some.
We are very lucky that our soldiers discovered most of the tunnels before they could use them.
The fighting could have been over by now if we would use the same tactics our enemies use.
The pictures you see on your screens are of uninvolved Palestinian citizens forced by Hamas to stay in their homes or risk destruction of their homes by Hamas.
We do not intentionally harm civilians and if they get hurt or killed it is because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, despite repeated Israeli warnings to vacate the area.
Hamas has no regard for the lives of their own people, who are held hostages as human shields. They say that they love death more than the Israelis love life.
My hospital (Assaf Harofeh) started to receive wounded soldiers from the battlefield today. We had a couple of sirens today but could not move them to a protected space.
We do need to build the underground emergency hospital and we need your help to do it. Maybe we will be able to raise the funds for the emergency underground hospital with the help of many.
Please respond to:
American Friends of Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, 12367 E. Cornell Ave., Aurora, Colo. 80014.
We are in dire need of an underground emergency hospital to be ready for the next round, whether from the north or the south.
Please help us save life and protect life.
July 22. We just heard that the Hamas snatched the body of one of our soldiers a couple of nights ago after the fierce battle in the Sagaiya neighborhood. How low can one get and how far can hate carry a human being to desecrate a body of a soldier in order to negotiate a return of a body which is what they intend doing.
How low can a whole society get when hearing about it in the Palestinian towns at the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) by going out to the streets to celebrate? No value for life and no respect for the dead.
As for Israel, the soldier Shon Carmeli who was a “lone” soldier and was killed a couple of days ago was buried last night in Haifa.
His parents came from the States for the funeral to be with his two sisters who live in Israel.
The good people of Israel who felt that he deserved more than a small funeral with only his immediate family called the public to come to the funeral.
Over 20,000 Israelis came to pay their last respects. People who did not know him — from all over Israel and from all walks of life.
This is our strength!
July 23. The last siren echoed last night at 10 p.m. for the third time. Today it is still quiet around here but not around Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod. We had a quiet night, waking up to another day of fighting in Gaza. During the night we lost two more officers, may they rest in peace.
This brings me to yet another difference between us, the Israelis who try to protect our citizen by spending a fortune on passive defense (Iron Dome, shelters and secure rooms) and the Hamas terrorists who hide behind civilians to protect them. Our officers are always in the front of the fighting unit, while the Hamas officers hide underground and send their orders to the lower ranked terrorists to face our soldiers.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
