Two phone calls today:
First, I called my cousin in Beer Sheva. I hadn’t managed to get through to her last night when I first heard about the rockets falling there. She'd just returned home from work, she said, because a GRAD missile had fallen next to her office. “It was absolutely terrifying. I’m still shaking. Now I have some idea of what people in Sderot have been going through on a daily basis over the past few years. There will be a whole generation of traumatized children in Sderot for certain - and everywhere else if these attacks don't stop.”
She said her family is apprehensive, but for now they prefer to stay together at home. She promised they would come to stay with us in Ra’anana, if necessary.
Second, a friend called from London to check that we are all OK. “I don’t know what to say; I’m so horrified by the terrible scenes in Gaza,” he said. Almost as an afterthought he added, “I suppose the rocket attacks must also be horrible.”
I couldn’t disguise my surprise at his priorities. “There have been thousands of rocket attacks aimed at civilians over many years. It’s nothing short of a miracle that there haven’t been more fatalities. Just this morning there was a direct hit on a school in Beer Sheva. Can you imagine the casualties if the building hadn’t been empty? Would an equivalent body count make our actions in Gaza all right?”
I paused briefly and reminded myself that this was a close friend who had called out of concern for us. Then I carried on: “What about our human rights in all of this? Don’t the people of southern Israel have a right to live in peace and quiet? Why wasn’t the barrage of 100 rockets that hit Israel in one day last week headline news? Where were the demonstrators outside Arab embassies, protesting against these attacks, demanding that they cease? Why are Jewish demonstrators only showing their faces only now, against Israel’s response?”
By now I was unstoppable. “Where is Gilad Shalit? Why hasn’t there been one visit by the International Red Cross? Why isn’t he allowed this most basic human right? At a Hamas rally the other week a young Palestinian boy in IDF uniform masqueraded as Gilad Shalit, saying in Hebrew that he missed his parents. Where was the worldwide condemnation of that grotesque spectacle?”
Our conversation more or less ended on that note, by which point I’m sure my friend was wishing he hadn’t called.
Now that I had got everything off my chest, I thought things through. I felt disturbed at his initial comments because I had expected him to be more empathetic. On the other hand, as my cousin in Beer Sheva pointed out, even here in Israel it’s impossible to appreciate the terrible fear these rockets engender – until one day they hit your own home town.