"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The fallowing is the voice of love in the time of hate from Israeli lonsme Doves ( By shoereporter )
It's quixotic, being a peace activist in Sderot, an Israeli town that has borne the brunt of rocket attacks from
Gaza. When Israeli air strikes on Gaza began last month, hundreds of people from Sderot swarmed to a
vantage point known as Horseman's Hill to watch the fiery spectacle and cheer. Nomika Zion was not among
them. "I listened to one of my neighbors telling Israeli TV that the sound of the bombing was like a symphony,
that he's never heard such powerful music before," she says. "And I was thinking, How many people are dying
because of that 'music'
Zion and a local entrepreneur, Eric Yellin, who is blogging and phoning peace-minded Gazans, are among the
very few people in Sderot--and in all of Israel, for that matter--who opposed the 22-day offensive into Gaza,
which ended on Jan. 18 in the shakiest of cease-fires. Lately, Zion has rarely gone out. When she did leave
home, she was often forced to dive into the bunker of her suburban house--Sderot was hammered by 203
rockets during the fighting. And if, despite the risks, she got to Sderot's flag-festooned marketplace, she was
often cursed for loving the enemy in a time of war. "I understand their anger and feelings of revenge after so
many years of helplessness," says Yellin of his neighbors. "But there are other ways to solve this than brute
force."
Israeli peaceniks are lonely people these days. The Gaza war may have sparked global protests condemning
the heavy number of Palestinian civilian casualties. But inside Israel, peace demonstrations gathered only a
few hundred protesters, who were swiftly shouted down by mobs yelling "Death to Arabs!"
Have Israelis given up on peace? It can seem that way. Polls show that more than 90% of Israeli Jews favored
the blitz on Gaza. But in truth, the demise of the Israeli peace movement has been a long, drawn-out agony. Its
main advocate, Peace Now, was once able to lure hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets. But after
the Oslo accords with the Palestinians in 1993, the steam started to go out of the peace movement. Israelis
became convinced that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat played a double game, talking peace but battling
Israelis from within the Jewish state and the Palestinian territories. In 2000, after the collapse of the Clinton
Administration's peace talks at Camp David, Arafat, claiming that Israel had failed to honor its commitments,
presided over a second intifadeh. Then came the wave of suicide bombings from 2001 through mid-2002,
which wreaked terror in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
All that was enough to make Israeli peace activists doubt their mission. But worse was to come. In 2005, just
after the last Israeli soldier left Gaza--which Israel had occupied since 1967--a Palestinian rocket arced its way
from the territory into Israel, and thousands more followed. Israeli leftists had always believed in "land for
peace"--the idea that if Palestinians had the real estate on which to create a viable nation, they would learn to
live side by side with Israel. But as Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, says, "In
the end, we didn't get land for peace. We got land for rockets."
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Pray for the Peaceby Ggdivhjkjl224 views
I wonder what would happen if Palestinians in Gaza demonstrated against the rocket shooting on innocent Israeli civilians.
Would they be killed by the Hamas?
Israel shouldn't sacrifice it's own civilians for tolerating terror attacks (already 8 years of rocket shooting) and avoiding of eliminating the enemy assults.
Israel must defend itself, therefore the war against terror is inevitable.
If the Palestinians can't stop the terror themselves - we must take action.
noamgreenboim 3 years ago 2