Posted on 02/04/2011 6:41:24 PM PST by Ari Bussel
Missiles Aimed at Tel Aviv by Ari Bussel
Israel is now and will undoubtedly be under further attacks. There are more missiles today in Lebanon and Gaza than possibly anywhere else in the world, all stockpiled and ready to be launched against Israel. Not exactly a statistic countries like to boast about: “We have the highest number of missiles per capita.”
Modern Israel has seen a tremendous buildup in recent years, skyscrapers of the most beautiful kind add an aura to a new skyline against the deep blue of the Mediterranean. There is a road infrastructure that would be suitable in any country, although it is often a parking lot – there are so many cars. These roads, buildings and millions of people on this tiny piece of land are all within missile range.
In the summer of 2006, about a million people escaped from the Northern part of Israel toward the center and the south. The missiles from Hezbollah reached only to Haifa. Life dynamics changed for many as they were either being hosted or acting a host, often to complete strangers.
Two years ago exactly, the missiles from Gaza forced the people in Southern Israel to escape to the safety of the center and the north.
In recent months, those damned “settlers” of the “Occupied West Bank” were trained in opening their homes to embrace and absorb hundreds of thousands from the center and elsewhere in Israel. Immediately after these exercises took place, the Carmel Mountains Inferno put the system to a test. But there were no missiles launched. It was terror of a different type.
As we review this cycle, from North to South to Center, two things become evident:
First, escape is the wrong course of action. Israel must go on the offensive. Israel is a tiny country, and running out of places to hide. In a news report this week, plans have been disclosed to start building massive underground holding structures for strategic infrastructure and enormous shelters in the belly of mountains.
Israel has become very proficient in construction, although even if expedited, these plans would not be completed for the next few years, a time span that is too long for any upcoming attack on the Jewish State.
Second, the aim of these expanding concentric circles is to reach where it will hurt most—the greater Tel Aviv Area—the very “Center” of Israel. More than Jerusalem, Tel Aviv is considered the “unofficial capital” of the State of Israel. Here is where Members of Knesset come for meetings, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs holds events and the embassies of nations are found.
I do not know if such a survey was conducted, although I would presume based on the results of related surveys that a majority of Israelis will be unwilling to give up any part of Tel Aviv (the municipality that includes Jaffe) under any circumstances. This is approximately the same percentage that is willing today to split Jerusalem into two, one part Israeli (maybe even under international oversight) the other the capital of the Palestinian-country-in-formation.
There, in the Greater Tel Aviv area, life at the cafes, theaters, beach and restaurants does not stop for a moment. There is the very heart of liberalism, beauty and culture. There is where people do not understand what eight years of constant bombing have meant to the people of Sderot (15 seconds away from launch in Gaza), what peaceful living side-by-side with one’s Arab neighbors means in Judea and Samaria and the sleepless nights and nightmarish days a mother whose child was kidnapped experiences.
Thus, some (although admittedly not all) go to the streets calling for peace, waving Palestinian flags, calling to avoid military service and protesting the military’s “atrocities.” Others teach or learn at the universities that Israel is Apartheid and must be boycotted and sanctioned, and then go out to defend the “academic freedom” of Post-Zionism.
There is where Ha’aretz (“the country”) newspaper is based, from which most of the international propaganda machine against Israel is deriving information and evidence (“Ha’aretz reported that …”).
Those in Tel Aviv have not experienced the fear and consequences of being in missile range, at least not since Saddam Hussein’s First Persian Gulf War twenty years ago. A whole generation has passed, and the memory of those of us who experienced that War in the Home Command tend to push these memories away, as something unpleasant and bothersome.
Why worry about missiles when life in Tel Aviv is so glorious? Concentrate on the present, for the future is unknown and the past better forgotten.
Why worry about stockpiles of missiles when many of those serving in the Israel Defense Forces today are yarmulke-wearing religious fanatics? Most of them are from the “Occupied West Bank,” and they have too many children anyway.
Let them go door to door, from one entrapment to the next booby-trap and fight a “moral fight.” We, here in Tel Aviv, have a much greater mission on our hands: WE ARE THE MORAL COMPASS OF ISRAEL.
We report to the world the various war crimes Israel is committing, we call for the youth to dodge service, we teach them “how to” and we—too—risk our lives, but for worthy causes. We go to areas under Palestinian control (something Israel considers unlawful) and bring Palestinians who have never seen the sea to a fun day in Tel Aviv.
We help them disguise themselves as Jews or tourists, and we drive them through the streets of Jaffe, their homes, to which they have keys, and we show them all that is theirs, the touch of sand, the feel of the warm Mediterranean water and the blue skies above.
Why worry about missiles when we, the human rights champions and elites of Israel, her moral compass and dedicated-conscience-soldiers stand guard between one party and another, always gathering in one café or another bar?
Possibly the only reason to worry, slightly, is that technology advances with time, our enemies learn, train and improve and the missiles today are longer range and much more accurate?
You, the Israeli “Left” and “Extreme Left,” Israel’s human-rights-moral-compass, use GPS like any other Israeli. You know that the Azrieli Towers (the World Trade Center buildings equivalent of Tel Aviv) are very well mapped, as is General Headquarters of the military you so despise just across the street, connected with a pedestrian overpass to the Azrieli Shopping Center.
You know where it is since you stand there so often demonstrating, and your cell phone then provides the exact position and location of the IDF’s GHQ.
The missiles will hit the area, obliterating it into a heap of rubble, and work their way in concentric circles outward, since there will be nothing more pleasing to the eyes and ears than the cries and grief-stricken shouts and moans of the residents of Tel Aviv when they are finally rained with bombs.
The very symbol, the very heart of Israel crushed, on its knees, begging for mercy, asking for forgiveness.
Add to the knowledge and experience advancements and stockpiling and the net effect is simple: accuracy, scale and mass will be devastating. If Hezbollah and Hamas, or each separately, decides to attack Israel today, Israel would have to make up her mind. More accurately, Israelis will have to make up their minds, and this is a very tough task.
The question will be very simple, and it is only to be determined if it would be asked before or after the first real barrage of missiles: Will Israel take her gloves off and respond as any other normal country would, striking at the very stockpiles, which deliberately were placed in the center of civilian populations, or would the armies of conscience and morality will still be waving their battle-cry: “Israel is committing atrocities—stop the brutal Israeli war machine!”
If Israel does not, her citizens will find out very quickly there is no where else to run and hide, unless of course the liberals-Ha’aretz-readers and intelligentsia will be willing to drive to the “Occupied West Bank.” Unlikely, of course, for they have just boycotted a new theater center in Ariel, and they would not change their skin, would they? Funny what fear or acute shortage may cause sane people to do. Even something as insane as going to Ariel!
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The series “Postcards from America—Postcards from Israel” by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager is a compilation of articles capturing the essence of life in America and Israel during the first two decades of the 21st Century.
The writers invite readers to view and experience an Israel and her politics through their eyes, Israel visitors rarely discover.
This point—and often—counter-point presentation is sprinkled with humor and sadness and attempts to tackle serious and relevant issues of the day. The series began in 2008, appears both in print in the USA and on numerous websites and is followed regularly by readership from around the world.
© “Postcards from America — Postcards from Israel,” January, 2011 Contact: bussel@me.com
First Published January 21, 2011
That might be true, but do you believe that our Muslim loving President would ever make such an offer?
Well, it didn't take you long to find my weak spot.
You're right, presidents rarely do as I suggest they do. The only hope for my proposal is that one of them comes up with the idea himself.
No one ever listens, but I keep talking. ;-)
And that is the point. Talk long enough and eventually people will listen. Been doing this for years. LOL!
Don't give up!
“The Jews are right where God wants them.”
It’s a big universe that God created. You would think that there is a nice, habitable planet somewhere where they could all be relocated.
God must be pissed or something to put them where they are.
Nah. God will be glorified via the Jews in the not-so-distant future. Prophecies in the Bible even state that there will come a day when Israel will have no allies.
It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that we are not too far from that day.
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