When I heard that Israel had begun the bombardment of Gaza, as a supporter of Israel and as a Jew, I said, "At last." After so many years of unanswered rocket attacks from Gaza, the Israeli government has at last taken responsibility for the safety of its citizens. I realized that it is the military-grade Katyusha rocket attacks that 'persuaded' the Kadima-Labor government toward action against Hamas. At the same time, having had experience of the previous Lebanon War of 2006, and knowing the political ineptness of the current government, I restrained my optimism and expectations. It took only a couple of days for my limited optimism about this operation to evaporate completely. I realized that: 1) Air strikes have lasted for too many days. 2) The Hamas leadership has remained untouched. 3) There was, as usual, no coordinated effort to present Israel's point of view to the world in the press - the "media war" has been lost again. 4) The ground offensive was delayed for too long, incursions were too limited and there was no real objective to clear Gaza of its terror-infested enemy population, which is the source and breeding ground of anti-Israel terrorism. As a result, the Israel-'friendly' press and international community of anti-Israel 'comedians' have had time to prepare and launch their usual anti-Israel media campaign and political assault. The International Red Crystal (which is still calling itself the Red Cross) and the other relief organizations immediately joined this hypocritical mob. Most of the reports from Gaza are being submitted by Palestinian 'journalists' employed by the international press agencies with the approval of Hamas. A few days ago, I saw on TV one of these so-called reporters informing the world about the "humanitarian disaster" - from the safety of a hiding place at his home. As usual, no one has even tried to discredit or question the factual validity and legitimacy of such reports. Jews are well used to this type of behaviour by anti-Semitic world organizations. During World War II, the New York Times blamed Jews for the trouble in the Warsaw ghetto during the uprising, and the Red Cross made whitewash reports about the conditions of Jews in the camps and ghettos. Recently, there were no condemnations in the press while rockets from Gaza continued to terrorise Jews in southern Israel for several years. Nobody is concerned about the suffering of Jewish children and adults in Sderot from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (among up to 75% of the people). The emergency sessions of the UN Security Council were not calls to condemn Hamas. This is absolutely the same ugly behaviour the international community and press exhibited both before and during the last war in Lebanon, when Hizbullah was firing Katyusha rockets at Israel and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. They began to scream only after Israel entered Lebanon. Israel is able to end terrorism within the country quite easily. However, the biggest problem Israel has is the Israeli government and its chronic unwillingness to deal with the core source of the problem: Israel has lost its vision. What is our national goal, the one that guided Zionist pioneers toward establishment of the Jewish state on the What is our national goal, the one that guided Zionist pioneers? land of our ancestors? Why are we afraid to pursue our rightful goals? Why don't we have the leadership to guide and inspire us? On the other hand, our enemies are still actively pursuing the same goals they had 60 years ago - the destruction of the Jewish state and killing Jews. We are not living in a ghetto anymore. It is time to realise this and become masters of our own destiny. They say that Jews are smart. One would think that after the military, moral and political fiasco of the 2006 Lebanon War, the present Kadima-Labor government would have learned the lesson. It would be easy to end all hostile attacks from the Gaza by clearing this little block of Jewish land of all enemies. But, regrettably, there is no government in Israel that is ready to put the interests of its own people first. It took Israel only six days to defeat Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria in the 1967 war. In 1973, Israel forced these enemy countries to stop pestering Israel. They still are playing anti-Israel political games, but not once militarily since then. In those days, Israel did not have the sophisticated weapons it has now. The main ingredient of its success was the patriotic, Zionist ideological enthusiasm of the Jewish citizens - not the Muslim ones - of Israel, and their will to survive. Where are those qualities now? The main question is: Why did Israel start the current Gaza operation? And the answer is disturbingly simple. The leader of the Labor party (Ehud Barak) and his comrades in the Kadima party realised that an election is coming up and most of Israel's voters are fed up with the corrupt and self-hating attitude of the existing governing coalition, which has done nothing to protect the people from their enemies. Likud and other pro-Zionist parties have started receiving support from the public, which could bring them election victory. Therefore, this retaliation was launched not to destroy Hamas or reduce its power and rocket arsenal, nor even to temporarily end the terror experienced by the Israeli population. The pure, unadulterated selfish goal of political survival was the main reason for it. The plan was to make a pretense of war to show that the government is fighting our enemies; and then obtain a temporary 'lull' that would last until the election in order to manipulate public opinion. After the election, if they win it, the status quo will be restored and the sale of Jewish land will go on. There are no plans to clear the enemy population from Gaza, even though it would end the terror attacks irreversibly. There is no political will to end the terrorisation of Israel's citizens by its enemies once and for all. Why? Because the ugly reality of Israel is that most of the politicians in Israel are self-serving, corrupt, disloyal individuals who do not care about the people and the future of Israel. They have been using the threats of the enemies as a tool for voter manipulation in order to stay in power, and as a justification and a smokescreen to hide their shady deals. It has worked for quite a while. When people are constantly living in fear of war they do not care about a 'little' governmental corruption, which has become the main business of the Israeli government. This must end. Vote these traitors out of power.
