16/01/2009
Seeing my six-year old boy with his tears unwilling to run out of his eyes was not a rare scene. He’s always trying to act like a ‘big guy’ who can take up pressure. But seeing Gazan children suffering to this extent was more pressure than he can tolerate. He cried for them.
My boy experienced the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. He was three, but he still remembers it in details.
He often asks me, while interestingly watching News instead of Barney, “is this the Israel army? Is this man with Israel? Is this Israel’s flag that’s burning? Did Israel kill those people?
He once told me that he’s “talking politics” with his classmates in the school’s playground and that he and his friends have concluded that “Israel is bad ‘cause it kills children.”
A six-year old kid remembers war in details and already despises Israel…what can be said about generations across the globe watching the carnage in Gaza?
Thinking it over, Israel will never succeed in fixing its image anywhere in this world.
“Someone has to stop this rampant madness…Right now.”
These are not my words; they are an Israeli journalist’s.
Even in Israel, shelling UN headquarters, hospitals and media buildings is called madness.
Some Israeli politicians are reminding us of the old, delusive, unfounded Arab leaders’ perception of “achievements” in the past century. “We’ve made great achievements,” says Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer. But who dares in Israel to ask what is great about these achievements except the 1,100 people killed so far, the testing of new lethal bombs, the use of phosphorus ammunition and the destruction of the most populated area in the world on the heads of its inhabitants. Livni arrogantly states that the fire will stop whenever Israel decides on the basis of daily situation evaluations. In Israel, they say that rockets falling on Beersheva and Gedera undermine every possible achievement claimed.
Madness has also found its way to Israel’s media centers.
While Israel shelled the media building in Gaza, TV studios in the Jewish state were rejoicing. “Is this war a corrective experience, asks Rafi Reshef, who seems diabolically delighted by the fighting.”
Madness, madness everywhere and Israel’s shredded image can never be repaired.
“…When Israel's international legitimacy is being ground to dust, such an attack is nothing but madness.”
This is a clear reflection of the “cut-the-losses-before-it’s-too-late” new trend in Israel. “This is beyond lunacy. This is destroying Israel on world television screens, in the living rooms of the international community and most importantly, in Obama's America.”
Insanity is to bomb a UN facility anywhere, anytime. But Israel went even beyond insanity and shelled a second UN facility the same day UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was in Jerusalem.
Ban broke protocol and denounced Israel with uncharacteristic vigor for its attack on the UN compound.
Israel’s carnage has forced tears out of my valorous son’s proud eyes. It has also emboldened some world leaders to speak out, condemn, accuse, abstain from voting, isolate and sever ties with this entity.
This is how Israel now looks to the outside world; it’s killing civilians destroying properties, being ruled by a corrupt PM, a defeated MoD and an appallingly haughty FM…and of course facing ‘a growing clamor of condemnation and disgust from all over the globe.’
