Webloggin » Thoughts from Israel

Since Israel is at the epicenter of events right now, I wanted to share with you two emails that I’ve received. The first one is from an Israeli — an old Leftist — writing about the battle in Lebanon. I’ve redacted it for privacy, and edited it for spelling (no criticism is intended here, since I can’t write in any language but English):

Hizbollah is the proxy of Iran here and both are fanatic Islamic people who believe that Palestine is a sacred ground and Jews should not stain this land and they have one common interest, which they say it openly - the annihilation of Israel. The only reason why they have accumulated near the border 12,000 rockets of mid and long range, threatening the whole country, is to deter Israel, deter from what? From self defence when Iran is ready to attack us and achieve their goal.

They have turned the border with Israel into a fortress full with underground tunnels, ammunitions and rockets, and for the last six years since we left Lebanon there were quite a number of provocations, in which they shelled the Galilee with rockets, kidnapped and killed soldiers and civilians and Israel hardly retaliated. That way the deterrent force of Israel was reduced to a dangerous level.

At this stage, our deterrent force is the only guarantee to our existance here and I pray for the day that it will not be required any more. The situation reached to a level that after the last provocation we had to retaliate, with the goal to reduce the force of Hizbulla as much as possible, otherwise we can close the shop here, and this is also the reason that more than 80% here are unified and prepared to go through the destruction and shelling of their villages and town and risk their lives, in order to end this threat once and for all. So this is the situation here, how a leftist person like me sees it, as most of the the leftists in this country do.

The second is an email that intermittently surfaces when Israel is in the headlines. It predates the current conflict, but does spell out well Israel’s (and the Jews’) sense of history and at least one Jew’s growing disdain with world opinion:

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