From the point of spirit, Israel’s Gaza operation is overdue

December 28, 9:51 AMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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Israel’s agonizing incursion into the Gaza region, reminiscent of ancient Israel’s recurring quandary with the inexorable Philistines (of the same area), represents a painful predicament for a democratic government trying to protect its citizens from rocket fire and suicide bombings.

One might have actually hoped that after the residents of Gaza, a strip of misery along the Mediterranean that is historically Egyptian, had chosen the Hamas party in a free election, some civic and cultural restoration would have begun.   Hamas is an organization burned onto the official United States list of banned terrorist organizations, along with Al Qaeda and other such Islamic outfits.  Hamas proved its mettle by a subsequent bestial takeover of the entire Gaza government that featured mass killings of Fatah (its Palestinian opponent) families and the throwing of men and women from rooftops.

Hamas has since seized the opportunity over the past couple of years not to rebuild schools, hospitals, and infrastructure, but to launch unending missile attacks into Israeli cities, kidnap Israeli soldiers, and remain a poster child for the international Islamic holy war against Americans.  America is still intact, Israel will be criticized for doing whatever a sane nation would do to pacify its borders, and—here is the saddest thing of all—all those innocent children in Gaza who’ve never really gone to school, enjoyed fresh water, hot meals, and a chance to dream will be further robbed of any prospect of childhood.

But Israel is uniquely quarantined in the international circle of hypocrisy

If a similar pattern of terror and shock had been festering along the U.S.-Mexican border all these years (and this is not a model frontier), and San Diego, Nogales, AZ, and Laredo, TX were being bombed and bloodied relentlessly, not too many folks would have questioned an American response on behalf of its citizens. But Israel is uniquely quarantined in the international circle of hypocrisy: Its capital, Jerusalem, is constantly being turned over hypothetically to Palestinians, Jordanians, or UN commissions, even as nobody is asking the Canadian parliament in Ottawa to give the Hull section back to a Quebec cut-off, nobody is petitioning that we return Ohio to the Mohicans or Florida to the Seminoles, or that Northern Ireland be restored to the Irish.

Meanwhile, I want my little niece in Ashdod, Israel to stop having to worry about Ketushya rockets burning her skin and I’d like my cousin in Tel Aviv to run his hotel and enjoy his family without the specter of an Iranian nuke.  But in my heart I’d just as soon like the little kid in Gaza, who lives in mud and ignorance, not to be used one more day as a pawn in some jihad fanatic’s war against normal civilization.