Israel Matzav

Dodging death in a Sderot playground

No child should have to live this way. But unfortunately, this is the result of a determined and reckless group of terrorists coming up against a weak-kneed government that does not believe in its country's existence. The 'yihyeh b'seder' (it will be fine) attitude in this country that forces people to 'get used' to living like the people in Sderot have been living for the past year is the result of decades of Jewish children having no clue of why they belong here and why they are living here. The average Jewish child in the Israeli public schools has no clue about the history of the Jewish people or what it means to be a Jew. I know most of you overseas find that hard to believe, but trust me, it's true. All they want is to live like a 'normal' country, and they cannot understand that our enemies will never allow us to do that. But as long as it's NotInMyBackYard....

The Kassam rocket just cleared the apartment block before slamming into the Sderot playground, less than 15 meters from the jungle gym. A child was wounded and another four individuals were treated for shock in Tuesday afternoon's rocket attack that could have been much, much worse.

"What a boom!!" exclaimed one boy, his lively black eyes opened wide with excitement as he gawked at the crater in his playground.

...

"You see how we live? I don't need an alarm clock, because almost every day the Red Dawn (warning system) wakes me up," said Ura Meshayilov, 22, who was playing basketball at a nearby sports complex when he heard the all-too familiar sound of an explosion inside this blue-collar town.

"It's not OK that we have gotten used to it. No one should have to live like this," Meshayilov said, shaking his head.

"The IDF needs to go in with whole divisions they did in Lebanon," chimed in his teammate Robert Pessako, also 22. "What's the difference between us and Nahariya?" Nahariya, on Israel's northern coast, was targeted by Hizbullah Katyushas during the war.

...

"We are playing by two separate rules. They launch rockets indiscriminately into our neighborhoods, and then we put our own soldiers at risk, sending them in there and telling them not to shoot if they think they may hit a civilian, while the terrorists shoot from behind them," said Pessako, recently released from army service, most of which was inside Gaza.

"We need to switch off the electricity we supply to them and then lob artillery shells into the middle of their villages until the innocent civilians decide to leave or stop the terrorists themselves. Once they are out of the way, the IDF should then go in and wipe out the bad guys," Pessako said.

This Pessako sounds like a smart kid. Maybe he should run for Knesset some day. Unfortunately, he'd have to get through a corrupt party apparatus to win. Because no one is to blame so long as it's NotInMyBackYard.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:17 AM