Israel: UNRWA halting aid proves our position on Hamas is correct

Hello,

While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away.

I am that someone.

I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home. How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.

I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation. I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say. At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.

I spent many days in your home. You and your family's presence was felt in every corner. I saw your family portraits on the wall, and I thought of my family. I saw your wife's perfume bottles on the bureau, and I thought of my wife. I saw your children's toys and their English language schoolbooks. I saw your personal computer and how you set up the modem and wireless phone next to the screen, just as I do.

I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I wanted you to know that despite the immense disorder you found in your house that was created during a search for explosives and tunnels (which were indeed found in other homes), we did our best to treat your possessions with respect. When I moved the computer table, I disconnected the cables and lay them down neatly on the floor, as I would do with my own computer. I even covered the computer from dust with a piece of cloth. I tried to put back the clothes that fell when we moved the closet although not the same as you would have done, but at least in such a way that nothing would get lost.

I know that the devastation, the bullet holes in your walls and the destruction of those homes near you place my descriptions in a ridiculous light. Still, I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I decided to write you this letter specifically because I stayed in your home.

I can surmise that you are intelligent and educated and there are those in your household that are university students. Your children learn English, and you are connected to the Internet. You are not ignorant; you know what is going on around you.

Therefore, I am sure you know that Qassam rockets were launched from your neighborhood into Israeli towns and cities.

How could you see these weekly launches and not think that one day we would say "enough"?! Did you ever consider that it is perhaps wrong to launch rockets at innocent civilians trying to lead a normal life, much like you? How long did you think we would sit back without reacting?

I can hear you saying "it's not me, it's Hamas". My intuition tells me you are not their most avid supporter. If you look closely at the sad reality in which your people live, and you do not try to deceive yourself or make excuses about "occupation", you must certainly reach the conclusion that the Hamas is your real enemy.

The reality is so simple, even a seven year old can understand: Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, removing military bases and its citizens from Gush Katif. Nonetheless, we continued to provide you with electricity, water, and goods (and this I know very well as during my reserve duty I guarded the border crossings more than once, and witnessed hundreds of trucks full of goods entering a blockade-free Gaza every day).

Despite all this, for reasons that cannot be understood and with a lack of any rational logic, Hamas launched missiles on Israeli towns. For three years we clenched our teeth and restrained ourselves. In the end, we could not take it anymore and entered the Gaza strip, into your neighborhood, in order to remove those who want to kill us. A reality that is painful but very easy to explain.

You must lead a civil uprising against Hamas.

As soon as you agree with me that Hamas is your enemy and because of them, your people are miserable, you will also understand that the change must come from within. I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say is easier to write than to do, but I do not see any other way. You, who are connected to the world and concerned about your children's education, must lead, together with your friends, a civil uprising against Hamas.

I swear to you, that if the citizens of Gaza were busy paving roads, building schools, opening factories and cultural institutions instead of dwelling in self pity, arms smuggling and nurturing a hatred to your Israeli neighbors, your homes would not be in ruins right now. If your leaders were not corrupt and motivated by hatred, your home would not have been harmed. If someone would have stood up and shouted that there is no point in launching missiles on innocent civilians, I would not have to stand in your kitchen as a soldier.

You don't have money, you tell me? You have more than you can imagine.

Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, during the time of Yasser Arafat, millions if not billions of dollars donated by the world community to the Palestinians was used for purchasing arms or taken directly to your leaders bank accounts. Gulf States, the emirates - your brothers, your flesh and blood, are some of the richest nations in the world. If there was even a small feeling of solidarity between Arab nations, if these nations had but the smallest interest in reconstructing the Palestinian people - your situation would be very different.

You must be familiar with Singapore. The land mass there is not much larger than the Gaza strip and it is considered to be the second most populated country in the world. Yet, Singapore is a successful, prospering, and well managed country. Why not the same for you?

My friend, I would like to call you by name, but I will not do so publicly. I want you to know that I am 100% at peace with what my country did, what my army did, and what I did. However, I feel your pain. I am sorry for the destruction you are finding in your neighborhood at this moment. On a personal level, I did what I could to minimize the damage to your home as much as possible.

Instead of sinking into self-pity, build a flourishing and prospering country.

In my opinion, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. I am a civilian, not a soldier, and in my private life I have nothing to do with the military. However, I have an obligation to leave my home, put on a uniform, and protect my family every time we are attacked. I have no desire to be in your home wearing a uniform again and I would be more than happy to sit with you as a guest on your beautiful balcony, drinking sweet tea seasoned with the sage growing in your garden.

The only person who could make that dream a reality is you. Take responsibility for yourself, your family, your people, and start to take control of your destiny. How? I do not know. Maybe there is something to be learned from the Jewish people who rose up from the most destructive human tragedy of the 20th century, and instead of sinking into self-pity, built a flourishing and prospering country. It is possible, and it is in your hands.

I am ready to be there to provide a shoulder of support and help to you.

But only you can move the wheels of history.

Regards,
Yishai, (Reserve Soldier)

Had the graphic artist at TIME magazine had as his goal to upset the Jews by his cover for the January 19 issue, he couldn't have done a better job. A blue star of David hiding behind a cinderblock wall topped with barbed wire is so evocative of the Holocaust and the old canard that the Palestinians are the "victims of the victims" that it has stirred up the Jewish world and elicited accusations that TIME is (and has always been) anti-Semitic.

The bold title across the cover, "Why Israel Can't Win" has further riled a Jewish world intent on doing exactly that in Gaza. But the cover article by Tim McGirk, TIME's Jerusalem bureau chief, has more truth in it than those of us who love Israel would care to admit. I'll spare you my list of examples of Mr. McGirk's pro-Arab bias. The essence of the article is the contention that there is no solution to the conflict that will allow Israel to exist as a Democratic Jewish state-or even to exist at all.

The article is peppered with expressions of despair: "...the many interlocking challenges facing Israel, some of which cast dark shadows over the long-term viability of a democratic Jewish state;" "...will require Israel and its defenders to confront excruciating dilemmas: How do you make peace with those who don't seem to want it?" "There's something tragic, too, in Israel's predicament: in any confrontation with its enemies, it is damned if does and doomed if it doesn't."

Israel cannot exist with hostile Arab states as close to it as the Bronx is to Manhattan.

Mr. McGirk's pessimism is based on a political reality and a demographic one. The political reality is that Israel has no way to get rid of Hamas, the overwhelming democratic choice of the civilians of Gaza, no matter how much it beats Hamas down militarily. In this, TIME is echoing a recent Wall Street Journal article by Max Boot, who contended that the only way Israel could eradicate Hamas is by fighting an all-out war like the U.S. fought against Germany and Japan. Since neither Israel's own moral scruples nor the international community would permit such combat, Israel can temporarily weaken Hamas, but can never defeat it.

The demographic reality is that there are nearly as many Arabs as Jews living in the total area between the Jordan River and the sea (which TIME readers may be surprised to learn is barely a distance of 40 miles). As TIME's handy chart points out, by 2020, the Arabs, due to their higher birthrate, will outnumber Jews at 8.5 million to 6.4 million.

In short, Israel cannot exist with hostile Arab states as close to it as the Bronx is to Manhattan. Nor can it reclaim those thickly Arab-populated territories and administer them without relinquishing its democratic ideals.

In this sense, Israel's victory in Gaza leaves us in a more desperate situation than our 2006 defeat in Lebanon. Then we could say that we lost due to poor performance by our governmental and military leaders. This time, both the government and the military have performed splendidly. Yet real victory -- the permanent cessation of attacks into our borders -- eludes us.

Israel is backed into a corner, with no exit. If I didn't believe in an almighty God who intervenes in history, I would give up all hope. But instead of groping around the floor for a trapdoor that isn't there, I look up and see a ladder. The only way out is up.

JEWISH HISTORY ACCORDING TO TIME MAGAZINE

Jewish history has always been a long shot.

Here is where TIME magazine is wrong. They fail to take into account what I call "the God factor." Jewish history has always been a long shot. The most dramatic proof of that is that I, a Jew, am sitting here in my home in Jerusalem, 2,595 years after my ancestors were banished from here by the Babylonian Empire, 1,939 years after my ancestors were again banished from here by the mighty Roman Empire, after 1,930 years of my ancestors wandering among hostile and often murderous European hosts, 60 years after five well-armed, well-trained Arab armies attacked the nascent Jewish state, and 41 years after Nassar, backed by superior Soviet weaponry, vowed to "drive the Jews into the sea."

The eternal survival of the Jewish people, which was promised by God through the Biblical prophets, is as unlikely as a cluster of grapes, thrown into an erupting volcano then being swept up into a tornado and pounded by a tsunami, surviving intact -- and returning to its original vineyard.

Just think how TIME magazine would have reported on some of the significant events of Jewish history:

Issue of 1737 B.C.E.:
Why Abraham Can't Win

Abraham ben Terach, the famous revolutionary preacher of the exclusionary divinity, has been promised by his God that his offspring will inherit the land of Canaan. This pledge is politically untenable, as the native Canaanites have no intention of ceding land to this recent immigrant from Ur Kasdim in Mesopotamia. Moreover, the promise is ludicrous, as the 75-year-old Abraham has no children, and, even more to the point, his wife Sarah is 65 years old and suffers from incurable fertility problems.

Issue of 1312 B.C.E.:
Why Moses Can't Win

Our Midian bureau chief has discovered that the former Egyptian prince Moses, for the last 40 years a fugitive in Midian, claims to have had a vision of God. The Divinity reportedly promised that He would rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and would "bring them to... a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivvite, and the Jebusite." Egyptology experts agree that the powerful Egyptian Empire, led by Rameses II, would never agree to release their formidable slave population. Nor has any slave ever succeeded in escaping Egypt. Even if such an unfeasible escape were ever to occur, the seven aforementioned nations, well fortified in walled cities such as Jericho, could certainly hold their own against an untrained, ill-equipped army of ex-slaves.

Issue of 701 B.C.E.:
Why Judea Can't Win

The army of Assyria, led by the invincible Sennacherib, has laid siege to Jerusalem. This is the same superpower that vanquished the Northern Kingdom of Israel and exiled its ten tribes 19 years ago. The siege of Jerusalem was preceded by the Assyrian army's total destruction of the Judean city of Lachish. Experts agree that Judea's King Hezekiah, a weak monarch ruling over a tiny kingdom, has no possibility of lifting the siege by the Assyrian forces, who number 180,000 strong. The many interlocking challenges facing Judea, some of which cast dark shadows over the long-term viability of a Jewish state in the region, lead us to predict a crushing defeat for Jerusalem.

{Note: A few days after this issue was published, the Assyrian camp was decimated by a strange plague. The few survivors, led by Sennacherib, fled in panic. Jerusalem was saved.}

No one will succeed in wiping out the Jewish People, because our survival was guaranteed by God.

I do not know how or when God will deliver the Jewish People and the Jewish state from our present predicament. But I do know that hordes of Islamic terrorists and their anti-Semitic allies will never succeed in their ambitions to wipe out the Jewish People, because God has guaranteed our eternal survival: "And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, throughout the generations, an eternal covenant to be your God and the God of your descendants after you." [Gen. 17:7]

And I also know that when God does decide what will happen to us, He will not consult TIME magazine