From JPost, by Isi Leibler, May 22, 2008:
Alas. Our fears have been realized. A missile landed in a crowded shopping mall in Ashkelon, a city with 120,000 inhabitants. Although fatalities were miraculously averted, there were over 90 casualties, including a number of seriously wounded.
... Yet it seems our leaders consider that unless it is accompanied by numerous fatalities, the bombing of a crowded shopping mall does not qualify as a sufficiently grave offense to warrant a harsher military response.
It is surely unconscionable for them to continue abandoning their citizens. Yet these leaders have the gall to urge residents to stoically accommodate themselves to further onslaughts in order to promote a make-believe peace process.....
...The founding fathers of Israel, who vowed to ensure that Jewish blood would never again be shed with impunity, would turn in their graves if they were aware of the behavior of their successors.
...There is also an element of surrealism when our leaders babble endlessly about peace, implying that all that is required is to haggle over real estate and divide the land between two peoples.
Such attitudes deny the reality that, to this day, the overriding Palestinian objective remains to deny Jewish sovereignty. This applies no less to our duplicitous partner for peace, Mahmoud Abbas, who speaks with a forked tongue, than to Hamas, which at least is open about its intentions....
It is thus bizarre when, despite undeniable evidence to the contrary, we endorse the chorus of international leaders promoting the mirage of the feasibility of creating a Palestinian state, today, one that would live peacefully side by side with Israel...
...If we...repeat failures like Oslo or unilateral disengagement, we merely pave the way for more Israelis to die in vain. We must also stop hallucinating and recognize that our "peace partner" is an impotent, unpopular leader without a constituency who, moreover, like Hamas, denies us the right to Jewish sovereignty. Otherwise we will pay a bitter price for living in Wonderland.
With the barbarians at our gates, the time to act is now. Matters can only get worse. Our military intelligence chief predicts that Kiryat Gat, Ashdod and even Beersheba will soon fall into the range of the Hamas rocket launches. Must we wait to act until the Knesset is targeted? Or, God forbid, until there is a mega-bloodbath involving hundreds?
The vast majority of Israelis are willing to make great sacrifices to achieve a genuine peace, if they could achieve security. They would also dearly like to live in peace side by side with the Palestinians, or at least be separated from them. But creating false illusions simply undermines any possibility of achieving genuine peace.
...The road to peace lies in strength and determination and the application of deterrence. History consistently shows that appeasement only encourages further aggression.
We have one of the most powerful armies in the region. It is now abundantly clear that we cannot coexist with this evil Hamas regime and, unless a dramatic change occurs, there is no alternative. We must put an end to them.
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