Some say rocket attacks justify Israel's reaction

By Owen Boss

Staff Writer

NORTHAMPTON - Israel's bombardment of Gaza has prompted a range of reaction from area organizations and residents, some of whom see the military action as a justifiable response to indiscriminate rocket attacks against the civilian population in southern Israel.

While the Ad-hoc Committee of the Outraged and the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace have spoken out against Israel's action, others such as the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts support the military campaign in Gaza.

The federation's associate executive director, Pearl-Anne Margalit, said she had the opportunity to be a part of a national phone conference Monday sponsored by the United Jewish Community featuring the Israeli minister of social welfare, Isaac Hertzog.

During the conference, Margalit said she learned that before attacking certain locations in Gaza, the Israeli government sent phone and text messages to the area's more than 100,000 residents telling them to leave where they were for a safe haven, a military tactic she said had never been used before.

"For the last few months there are certain towns in Israel that have been hit by rockets on a daily basis and it is something that nobody seems to care about or recognize," said Margalit. "Innocent civilians have been constantly terrorized by Hamas and for some reason or another that doesn't receive a lot of media coverage."

Margalit said she was surprised to see area residents coming together to protest the military actions against Gaza on the Coolidge Bridge, calling for the United States to facilitate a lengthy cease-fire, considering that it was Hamas that had broken the latest peace agreement.

"Currently, 900,000 Israelis are well within range of Hamas rockets. People should consider what it would be like if we had rockets falling between Amherst and Northampton," she said. "What is also discomforting is that people have reported that Israel is not allowing aid to cross the border to people in Gaza. There are trucks and trucks of aid being allowed through - the problem is once that aid is in the hands of Hamas, they have no control of how it is being distributed," she said.

Call for negotiations

Residents belonging to the Middle East Peace Coalition, who strongly oppose Israel's military action, went to the office of Springfield Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Mass., Monday morning. They called for his immediate assistance in ending the Israeli blockade on Gaza, instituting an immediate cease-fire, withdrawing all troops from Gaza and beginning face-to-face negotiations between Israel and the elected Palestinian representatives, including Hamas.

Rep. John W. Olver, D -Mass., was among the local politicians offering opinions on the matter, releasing a statement last week that offered strong support for "Israel's right to defend itself" and calling on "the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the broader international community to secure an immediate and lengthy cease-fire and encourage both sides to begin serious negotiations to avoid repetition of this latest round of violence." He added that "the United States must lead the effort towards achieving a permanent and sustainable peace agreement."

Dr. Mordechai Kamel of Northampton said he has often disagreed with the Israeli government and has been a member of Peace Now for more than 30 years. But he sees the recent attacks on Hamas as justified and said, despite the conflict, his son is traveling to Israel next week.

"I'll ask you this. If you are sitting in your living room and a person walks into your house with a very badly homemade gun and starts shooting at you and your family and it doesn't necessarily hurt them, are you justified in going into your room picking up a really well-made gun and shooting it at them?" he said.

Kamel disagreed with those who argue that Israeli attacks are disproportionate to those launched by Hamas by comparing the recent attacks in Gaza with the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden in Germany toward the end of World War II.

"The Germans were lobbing V-2 rockets into Britain and they were about as lousy as what Hamas is lobbing into Israel today, and the British responded by fire-bombing a medieval city called Dresden with a quarter million civilians," said Kamel. "At that time, that was what Great Britain considered to be a proportionate response."

Also supporting Israel is Williamsburg resident Oded Peri, a former member of the Israeli armed forces who lived his entire life in the country before moving to the United States 15 years ago.

"The Hamas agenda is to destroy Israel and fill it with an Islamic hard-lining new country," said Peri. "I love Arabs. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Palestinans and Israelis are not completely disconnected. What they do is because of their agendas."

Peri argues that many people are calling for Israel to stop their advances into the Gaza Strip because when they see the death-toll reported on the news it appears to be a one-sided affair. But numbers are misleading, he said. The reason rockets fired by Hamas aren't killing as many Israelis is because their citizens are well-prepared for the attacks.

"Israel developed a system. Every citizen of the country knows how long it takes them to get to the security area, no matter where they are. They can see the direction of the rockets and they know that they have about 15 seconds to run away," said Peri. "Nobody gets hurt but this doesn't mean that there isn't damage. Their damage to Israel is huge. The cities around the Gaza border have businesses that can't open, children that can't go to school and because of that, parents who cannot go to work. It isn't how many people they are killing, but how badly they are disrupting Israelis' lives."

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.