Operation Protective Edge
My last night in Israel was spent with
the Rotarians at a club in Jerusalem. Rotary invites speakers. Very often it’s a representative of
a charity or some form of business person. The talk that October night had the
sobering title: “The ill effects of rockets on children.” Only in Israel would
a Rotary Club hear such a presentation.
Early this morning I was listening to a
BBC report saying that in one day: Monday July 7, ninety rockets had been fired
into Israel from the Gaza Strip. We are not talking July 4th
fireworks here, readers! When these missiles land walls fall down and shrapnel
flies. The wail of the sirens in Ashkelon, Be’er Sheva and Ashdod sent the
citizens, Jew and Arab, scurrying into the bomb shelters.
Most of us can’t imagine what it’s like
to live that way. One of the missiles was powerful enough to threaten Tel Aviv.
The “Iron Dome” missile shield brought it down before harm could be done. If it
were you, if you were holding your loved ones close in the air raid shelter,
what would you want your country to do in response? Israel is very “eye for an
eye”, and then some!
In philosophy class or at a Sunday School
convention some theorize about: “what if Israel just ignored the attacks?” Perhaps
you have heard a well-prepared speech about how Hamas just wants peace. Let me
put the 90 rockets in a day into a bigger context. There have been 450 since
the year began. Widen the focus even more: 8000 missiles flew into Israel since
2005. About how many rockets per month
do you think is bearable? At what point should Israel respond in force?
P.M. Netanyahu said: “We won’t tolerate
rocket fire on our cities and towns.” He
added: “We do not go joyfully into battle.”
It’s about now that some wailing voices at the U.N. decry the fact that
when Israel responds they do so with the full force of their military power.
Operation Protective Edge is done with F-16s and smart bombs. Whole blocks near
the border vanish. So far 38 Palestinians are dead. Many innocents will yet perish
as well.
Nobody should relish that thought. Nor,
however, should anyone be so naive as to imagine air force retaliation can be
done so surgically that only the Hamas terrorists who launch the missiles from
among houses in those very same neighborhoods can be eliminated. Israel’s
borders as they stand today are the spoils of war as much as what defines the
southern boundaries of California. The empires of Europe have adjusted their
domains by the sword. Who even knows what, say, Poland should look like.
The U.N. should recognize that Israel
holds the lands she does and has no desire to conquer an inch more. She certainly could have advanced the Syrian
border in recent days, but no. The Middle East isn’t any time soon going to
become the sort of place where the rules of Cricket – or at least the spirit of
the game – apply. My Jewish friends there send e-mails hoping for peace. I tell
them I pray for peace. Yet Israel has to drive its tractors with boys who are
just as at home inside a tank.
I don’t write to defend Israel’s actions
in every sense. The Jewish state isn’t some province of the kingdom of God in
that when you are there you meet all, from the ultra-orthodox modern Pharisee to
the strident atheist. Nevertheless, the thinking Christian must see through the
left-leaning, bash-Israel-every-day, attitude of those who cannot fathom why we
Christians see 1948 as one of God’s modern miracles. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
I am lifting them up in my prayers.
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