TIMES OF ISRAEL
by Benjamin Anthony
July 13, 2014

It was in this very month, in 2006, that I served as a heavy gunner in the Second Lebanon war. It was a difficult war. Troops went hungry and dehydrated. The IDF lost soldiers and soldiers lost limbs. Families of the fallen were left forever bereft of those taken from them in the zones of combat. I imagine that such realities are common to every war Those realities are what cause soldiers to seek out clarity in circumstances that are anything but clear. For me, inside Lebanon, that clarity came in the form of that week’s Torah reading – Matot.

There, within the pages of the bible I carried with me, an exchange is recalled just prior to the battle for the land of Israel. It recounts how the tribes of Gad and Reuben voiced their reluctance to participate as Moses moved to marshal the troops. Upon hearing the objections of these two tribes Moses asks of them, “Ha’acheichem yavo l’milchama ve’atem tesh’vu poh?” “Will your brothers go into battle while you dwell here?”

That simple exchange dispelled all doubts I may have had as to the importance and the legitimacy of we soldiers of the IDF completing our mission for the sake of Israel — the country and the People. It remains my belief that in Israel, each of us is responsible one for the other. I believe that as a soldier and as a citizen.

Today I write from my home in Bat Yam, a city located 10 minutes south of Tel-Aviv. It is a city whose citizens are becoming accustomed to the ringing of sirens signaling incoming rockets. Our bomb shelters are now opened, cleared out and utilized. Our stairways are intermittently filled by residents running from their apartments each and every time they hear that now all-too-familiar siren. It is an awful sight to see. Mothers clutch babies, fathers strain to turn the sound of the ‘booms’ into sources of laughter for their children. It is a city whose citizens now know war — or so it seems.

…..It is with an appreciation of those realities that I say that while the images of Bat Yam today are certainly disturbing, they do not trouble me nearly as much as the undeniable fact that for far too long, we in Israel have left the citizens of southern Israel; of Ashdod, of Beersheva, of Ashkelon and of Sderot, to live in the shadow of terror, of rocket fire, of victimhood, and of war, to a degree that no government should countenance and no people should excuse. Even in the midst of the current onslaught of Hamas rockets, reaching as far north as Zichron Yaakov and Haifa, the citizens of the south continue to bear the brunt of this terror to a degree far greater than anything experienced by the citizens of central and northern Israel. This fact must shape the thinking of our citizens and the strategy of our military and politicians. Citizens of Israel everywhere must proclaim that if rockets are not acceptable on our home they are not acceptable on anyone’s home. Not in the north and not in the south. Any military campaign must therefore conclude with sustained normality, security and quiet for all of our citizens.

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http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-a-ground-incursion-is-needed/