Death from Above: Israel’s Hamas Nightmare Continues

Death from Above: Israel’s Hamas Nightmare Continues

07/12/14

Chuck Freilich

Security, Peacekeeping, Israel, Palestinian territories

"No country can allow its citizens to be repeatedly attacked by terrorists on its border. It is as if Juarez or Toronto were continually firing on most of the United States."

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are under Hamas rocket fire, people are hesitant to go to work, send kids to summer camps, go to the beach. Much of Israel has been largely shut down, most of the population is now within range. Insanity. The last time this happened, in November 2012, I was caught in a train in Tel Aviv. The train stopped and we were instructed to lie on the floor, awaiting the “all clear” signal. There was an eerie calm, some people laughing helplessly at the insanity of it all. This time I was in a sushi restaurant, returning home just as the alert sounded.

No country can allow its citizens to be repeatedly attacked by terrorists on its border. It is as if Juarez or Toronto were continually firing on most of the United States. No one would stand for it and there would be overwhelming public pressure on the U.S. government to respond with devastating force.

Some will immediately invoke the occupation, settlements, the Netanyahu government’s hardline positions, all partly true, but a separate matter. Terrorism, the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, is indefensible no matter what the reason. Furthermore, Hamas, which denies Israel’s right to exist and calls for its destruction, tries to have it both ways, targeting Israeli civilians, while intentionally embedding rockets and other military forces among its own civilian population. In so doing, it seeks both to make it harder for Israel to respond effectively and then to claim a PR victory when some civilians are killed in Israeli responses, despite the extreme measures Israel takes to avoid this.

The Netanyahu government sought to avoid an escalation and especially the need for a significant ground operation. Under the combined pressures of the massive rocket fire, however, along with public demands for an effective response, this may prove to have been an illusory hope.

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