I do feel like a broken record here sometimes, but the so-called international community will not let me rest.
Last week an anti-tank missile’s laser targeting system was locked onto an Israeli school bus driving near the Gaza border and launched out of the Gaza Strip. The Hamas terror cell that targeted and fired the missile could have little doubt that it would hit its target, as a school bus is the largest, softest target in the world of moving vehicles. This blatant disregard for any form of human life on the Israeli side of the border is beyond outrageous, and is a heinous crime in all forms. Furthermore, these hi-tech missiles are definitely not being manufactured in the Gaza Strip, and are one of the main items being smuggled through underground tunnels or in shipments of materials and humanitarian aid currently being allowed into Gaza by Israel.
The Israeli schoolbus directly hit by an antitank missile fired from Gaza
Daniel Aryeh ben Tamar, a 16 year old student on his way to his Grandmother’s house after school, was critically injured in the head and remains hospitalized fighting for his life. The only other person injured was the driver, who took heavy shrapnel to the leg. The reason that only two people were injured is that 10 minutes prior, the bus had just unloaded the rest of its 35 highschool-age passengers. That is the miraculous part. This tragedy truly could have been considered the worst in Israel’s horrid history of terror attacks had the bus simply been hit 10 minutes earlier.
Undoubtedly, Hamas considers this a miss. Throughout our rough dealings over the decades with Hamas, they have always made civilian targets their top priority for attacks in Israel. Despite this fact, and the fact that Hamas’ charter calls for the complete destruction of Israel and yearns for a future world that contains no Jews, Israel is repeatedly deemed the war criminal in this conflict by the international community.
I ask again… what country would tolerate such a neighbor? This is an issue that would have been easliy and brutally dealt with a long time ago in any other country. The disproportionate amount of media and international attention on Israel, coupled with the extremely high moral standard that pervades in Israeli society, has made this a very protracted and difficult conflict. Israelis are no fools to the reality of what Hamas is trying to bait them into. Another war on the ground in Gaza plays directly into the strategy of Hamas, who actually thrive on the potentially high death count in their own densely populated strip of land. Hamas knows that it can basically do whatever it wants to the Israelis, as last week is a clear example of, and still have almost complete world favor if Israel decides to attempt another offensive aimed at stopping the terror.
This is the situation. How many more school buses must be blown apart for Israel to have world support in its struggle against radical Islamic extremists?
For the full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/world/middleeast/08gaza.html?scp=1&sq=israel%20school%20bus&st=cse