Two months before the
That prediction was a bit off, as was Olmert’s assurance to the Knesset, the day after the
is prepared for an ongoing campaign against Palestinian terror. In this campaign, we have no intention of compromising with terror, or negotiating with it. We will not surrender to terror, we will not yield to terrorist organizations. We will continue to thwart terror and act against every target. Not a single terrorist will be immune. Israel
Within six months, Olmert was negotiating for Shalit’s release (and is still negotiating today). Late last year, Olmert ended the “ongoing campaign” without the return of Shalit and entered into a “cease-fire” that left the terrorists immune.
Two days ago, the Jerusalem Post reported on this week’s results of the “cease-fire” in Sderot:
On Monday, a rocket barely missed a kindergarten, though it did slam into a home next door. . . . On Sunday, two people were wounded by a Kassam that exploded alarmingly near a gas station. A day earlier, another Sderot home took a direct hit.
In all, 10 rockets have been fired at
An Israeli man examines the damage to his home after it was hit by a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in
Israeli police officers comfort a woman at the scene after a Qassam rocket landed in the suburbs of the Israeli town of Sderot May 6, 2007. . . . [A] rocket fired later . . . slammed into a petrol station [and an] Israeli woman was moderately injured by shrapnel from the falling rocket . . . REUTERS/Amir Cohen
According to the State Comptroller’s annual report released yesterday, 1,914 Qassam rockets have been fired into
The Sderot municipality released a statement in response to the report, stating “the lack of IDF preparation regarding Qassams is nothing compared to the complete lack of action by the government of (Prime Minister) Ehud Olmert and (Defense Minister) Amir Peretz, [and] Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni:
"Our amazement only grew after the direct hit this week in which two houses in the city were damaged and the government’s insistence on a policy of restraint and inaction. . . . "
Similar sentiments ring out from every neighborhood in the city, where it’s always easy to find a family who has suffered from an attack.
Resident Zimru Yakobob, whose brother was killed in a Qassam attack, wrote a letter to the prime minister in response to the report, expressing his outrage at the lack of response from the government and the army.
"At last someone said what we already know, think and feel," Yakobob said of the state comptroller. . . .
"I think there is no other sovereign nation in the world where rocket attacks could continue for six years non-stop, without anyone doing anything. This is exactly what the comptroller is saying — how does a strong nation allow something like this to happen?"
Can you imagine living in Sderot, with your family, while all this is going on?
The invaluable One Jerusalem held a bloggers’ conference call today with Noam Bedein of the Sderot Media Center to provide some perspective. The audio of the call is here.
Bedein told a story of rockets all the time, usually in the morning to terrorize the kids on their way to school (half the kids in Sderot are clinically traumatized), no governmental support (much less retaliation), no media coverage in the absence of blood (but the entire city is terrorized by anxiety every time there is a 15 second Red Alert) — just sports, weather and seven seconds of “rockets again in Sderot, no one injured.” But the injury is the demoralization of a city, the traumatizing of a generation, and the encouragement of terrorists, who suffer no penalty and import weapons for the coming war, free of the promised “ongoing campaign”.
“Israel is not doing anything, and it’s very easy not to do anything, because there’s no blood, and when there’s no blood it doesn’t bring the media down here, it’s not a big story — rockets, no harm done, and on to the weather report. There’s no reference to the human crisis over here, to the trauma, to the fear, what people have to go through every single day. This is what we’re dealing with. This is the Israeli government. This is Israel, 2007. . . . The ground is shaking here.”
Sderot is only one hour from Tel Aviv and one hour from Jerusalem. Rockets will eventually get there in less time. Olmert has yet to visit Sderot.
[Further reading: Atlas’s must-read report from Sderot; JCI’s report is here; Anne’s essential posts — here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and — in a post that could be posted on any given day — here are, both individually and as a group, stunning. They are a portrait of a government failing in its first obligation.]