I learned a great deal during my five months spent studying abroad in Israel. Whether it was making Israeli friends or eating authentic falafel in Israeli homes, my experience there gave me a real taste of life in the Middle East’s only true democracy.
Few experiences, however, were more powerful than my visit to Sderot, an Israeli city that directly borders the Gaza strip. Since Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005 in a gesture of peace, Israel has been bombarded with more than 6,300 terrorist-launched rockets and mortars. Their rockets can land anywhere and can be launched at any time. And you don’t know where the rocket will strike until it hits.
The families I met in this small town spoke of the constant fears and anxiety that I, an American with friendly neighbors in Canada and Mexico, have never experienced. I saw pain in the eyes of every parent I met in Sderot. They build their days around their proximity to bomb shelters, making leaving home even for the shortest errand or playground visit a nearly impossible task. Why? Because in Sderot, you have 15 seconds. Fifteen seconds from the time the rocket warning system sounds to the moment that rocket hits the next home, school or playground. Fifteen seconds to gather your family and try to run to the nearest shelter, feeling helpless when you can’t find a loved one in time. This is the painful reality for the nearly 500,000 residents of southern Israel. And with Hamas’s newest technology, an estimated 900,000 Israelis are now in range of their rockets, according to the Jerusalem Post.
During an Egypt-brokered “cease-fire,” Hamas periodically sent rockets into Israel and allegedly continued smuggling weapons into Gaza. The end of the cease-fire brought a declaration from an emboldened and Iran-supported Hamas that the rocket attacks would increase substantially. And unlike the cease-fire, this declaration was a promise Hamas kept. After days of deliberation and restraint, Israel was forced to retaliate and defend her citizens.
This is a defensive war-even Egypt condemned Hamas for offering Israel a reason to attack on a “silver platter”- but Israel has still gone to great lengths to minimize civilian casualties, including treating injured Palestinian civilians in Israeli hospitals. As the Associated Press reported on Dec. 27, Israel even disseminated “Arabic-language cell phone messages…urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.” No civilian deaths should be celebrated. Israeli citizens (both Jewish and not) publicly condemn and mourn the deaths of Palestinian civilians-the same cannot be said for Hamas.
On the other hand, Hamas pursues a policy of using the Palestinian people as human shields, storing weapons caches and rockets in schools and mosques. It is the Hamas government that is at war with Israel, not the Palestinian civilians-yet Hamas puts the women and children of Gaza on the front lines of a war it started. Hamas’ human-shield policy is directly responsible for a significant number of civilian Palestinian casualties.
While speaking with an Arab cab driver during my time in Israel he said, “It is the extremists on both sides who have killed the peace process, Hamas has hurt the Palestinians as much as the Israelis.” Hamas puts hatred before peace, compromising its people, and forcing the Israelis to play their hand. No sovereign nation would stand by while its citizens were targeted, and Israel should not be expected to be the first.
