Live From Israel War Day 3

Who let this happen? Who do we blame? I have been hearing a lot of this on TV in the last few days. The answer: it doesn’t matter today.

They are saying this is Israel’s 9/11. I think that is true to some extent, but this might be worse. Like Saturday’s attack, 9/11 was a well-planned and funded attack that caught everyone by surprise. Like 9/11, the main target was civilians, but that is where the comparison ends.

The sheer barbarism of this attack was unknown in the Western world. Everyone was fair game: women, children, the elderly - they were all targets.

I will not rehash all this; it is difficult to think about it, to write about it.

I must be honest and say that I have not been able to watch any of the interviews of the families directly affected by this. How can you watch a husband talk about losing contact with his wife and young children as he tracks them being taken to Gaza? How can you watch the mother who saw her daughter's lifeless body pulled from a car while her murderers danced around the body?

As I sit at my desk writing this, I am waiting for the long ground incursion that we all know is coming. I wonder how we got to this moment and where we are going.

This has nothing to do with judicial overhaul or the protests against it. It has nothing to do with the 6 billion USD released by the USA to Iran. And it certainly did not happen because kids went to get high in the desert to blow off steam and were punished by God.

This happened because we forgot who we are dealing with. Yes, the timing was due to the peace deal that was being negotiated by the USA between Israel and Saudi Arabia. We should have known that Iran would do anything to stop this, but we were complacent and are now paying the price.

Let me say a few things, some of which are not nice. We are in the heat of the moment, but that doesn’t make this less true.

Hamas and the Palestinians have no desire for peace or a two-state solution. This is not what the Western world believed until now. Perhaps this will open their eyes. I doubt it.

We pride ourselves on being the most moral army in the world. We put our own soldiers in danger in order to avoid civilian casualties. This needs to stop. The Palestinians say since Israel has a people's army, everyone is a soldier. It is no less true for them. Parents pray their children grow up to be martyrs. They send their kids to camps to train to kill Jews. They have no civilians either. The Prime Minister warned the people of Gaza to leave any area which has a Hamas presence. The foreign news says that the Gazans have nowhere to go. Too bad. They are complacent and have been warned.

We love our children so much that we have been pushing off the inevitable for a long time, and we started to believe that our hopes for them were becoming reality. What is about to happen, what I think is going to happen, what everyone in Israel wants to happen, should have been done 10 years ago. Hamas had fewer weapons, tactical know-how, etc. We deluded ourselves into thinking they did not want another war and that they cared for their people. For the love of our children, we allowed ourselves to be deluded.

Within the next few weeks, several things will happen. The civilian casualties in Gaza will be very high. This will include many women and children. When your enemy hides in a school, there is little choice. The world, especially our new Gulf allies, will pressure Israel to stop. We must all pray that our government has the determination not to.

Once the full power of the IDF and the total blockade (not the fake one that has been in place up until now) takes effect, Hezbollah will join this war. This will necessitate us having to devastate an already destroyed country beyond recognition. We need to have the fortitude to do what is needed. The troops that the USA is sending to the area will never be used in defense of Israel, and we cannot live under the threat of Hezbollah anymore.

Our casualties will be very high. There will be a lot of pressure on the government from the people to stop the war. Hamas will parade the hostages. They will take our babies and use them as human shields. We need to be strong. There can be no half measure here. Hamas cannot exist after this next confrontation.

Until recently, I and many people in Israel were hurt when we saw civilian casualties in Gaza. I felt bad for them. My sympathies are completely gone. Watching crowds of people cheer the murder, rape, and kidnapping of civilians has woken me up to the reality of what we are truly dealing with. A reality I was trying very hard not to acknowledge. It is not only that Hamas wants to destroy us. They have been indoctrinating several generations of their people to hate Jews (not Israelis) and to wish them harm. Their entire population is jubilant with these actions. There will never be peace. We all need to accept that and this needs to be the last attack Hamas makes on Israel.