Iron Dome Over Conscience

Another great column at the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.  As usual, more protest of Israel's actions from those at home than from TV liberals and pundit and Democrats in the USA.

Restraint? I’d like to see how Israelis would act and speak if just once an F-16 squadron swooped down on a residential neighborhood and dropped a ton of smart bombs on it. Unity? Not far from that stairwell, the tenants of a luxury high-rise refused to let the residents of the nearby Givat Amal neighborhood into their shelters when they knocked on their locked doors with their children.

Only hatred still serves as glue. Many dozens of Palestinians have already been killed and hundreds wounded in this limited, compassionate and surgical operation. A complete city, the most densely populated one in the world, is being pounded. After all, the editor of Israel Today demanded “to return Gaza to the Stone Age.”

The casualty numbers will continue to rise. But Israelis will continue to wallow in their exclusive misery and self-pity. It doesn’t appear in the technical specifications, but Iron Dome does not intercept only missiles. Apparently it intercepts free thought as well. It dooms its users to blindness, deafness and dementia. Has anyone asked himself how and why the “present round of escalation” began? Who escalated it? Whom and what does it serve? Why are rockets suddenly falling out of the sky?

To the government’s credit, it made it clear to its subjects immediately after the youths were abducted that it was waging an all-out war against Hamas and the Palestinian unity. Despite this, Israelis continue to recite obediently, at the government’s behest, that the war was intended “to bring the quiet back to the residents of the south.” That is a lie. You can’t bring back something that doesn’t exist.

The residents of the south have been living under fire for 14 years. So have Gaza’s beleaguered residents. If our leaders really want them to have quiet, they must strive courageously and creatively for an overall solution. They must install above us all the iron dome of a negotiated political settlement. But apparently it doesn’t pay to manufacture such an item.