Every few hours, the inhabitants of the southern Israeli city of Sderot hear the alarm “color red” and have only 10 seconds before another rain of rockets falls from Gaza. In these 10 seconds, mothers must decide which child to pick up and carry to the bomb shelter ““ 10 seconds is not enough time to take more than one child. Last week, an 8-year-old boy lost his leg because he could not run to the shelter quickly enough. Sderot lies a mere two miles from the Gaza Strip, an area densely populated by Palestinians and ruled by the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which is internationally recognized as a terrorist organization.
Israel withdrew all of its presence from Gaza in 2005 in hopes that the Palestinians would establish infrastructure that would lead to the beginnings of a Palestinian state. Instead, Hamas has used Gaza as a launching pad for daily attacks on Israeli civilians.
What is a country to do in this situation? What would the U.S. do if Canada was to fire even one rocket at Seattle, let alone over 7,000 rockets in seven years. Surely both Democrats and Republicans would agree that protecting U.S. citizens is the top priority for this country and would take all necessary action to stop the attacks.
Like the U.S., Israel has the duty to protect its citizens. Israel has been forced to send ground troops into Gaza to hunt for the terrorists who launch these rockets.
Hamas has proved to be the epitome of hypocrisy. They claim that the Palestinians of Gaza can’t leave their homes for fear of being targeted by the Israeli Defense Forces; however, after a terrorist shot and killed eight Israeli students as they studied in Jerusalem on Thursday, the streets of Gaza were filled with people celebrating the deaths and handing out candy to children.
On Thursday, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) came out to protest what they called “genocide in Gaza.” We find SJP’s use of the terms “genocide,” and even more so, “˜Holocaust,’ to be completely inappropriate and insulting to the memory of six million Jews and millions of others killed during World War II, and victims of genocide worldwide. We and many other students are disgusted that SJP would dare to call Israel’s acts of self-defense a holocaust.
Israel has never intentionally targeted civilians; its army has even canceled vital military operations when too many Palestinian civilians were in danger. On the other hand, Hamas not only calls for the complete destruction of the Jewish State of Israel, but it also puts its own people in harm’s way by firing these rockets from civilian areas. If Hamas would have its way, a real genocide would again befall the Jewish people.
There is no doubt that in this conflict, both sides suffer tragic losses of innocent lives. We call on the Palestinian community both at UCLA and around the world to engage in constructive dialogue rather than relying on loaded words to extort sympathy from an uninformed public.
Bogen is a second-year Middle Eastern and North African studies student and is the director of community relations of Bruins for Israel. Morad is a fifth-year human genetics student and is the president emeritus of Bruins for Israel.