Search our Archives:

How Much Longer?

by Joe Yudin

Yasser Arafat is condoning and encouraging the murder of our children and we (we meaning you who are reading this and me) are letting him get away with it.

War sucks. That’s right it sucks. I would use even harsher language if I thought it would get printed so let’s stick with the adjective “sucks”. I think most civilized people try to stay out of war because they realize that it sucks for those people sent off to war, it sucks for those people on the receiving end of an invasion, it sucks for anyone in the immediate area of a battle, and it sucks for the people and the families of everyone who gets killed. As a soldier I can tell you that the very last thing I want to do in my life is spend one second at war. I have been at war and it just sucks.

I sound like a broken record but as you know we Israelis did not start this current war and we do not want it. The war sucks for all involved as well as the innocent bystanders and we Israelis wish that it would simply go away.

We announce to the world that we will be withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and that the Palestinians have a chance to implement the Road Map by collecting the terrorist weapons and ending terror. But as usual they openly refuse to do so. Meanwhile they continue to purposely attack our civilian population.

On the morning of June 28, 2004, Palestinians purposely launched a missile into a nursery school inside Israel killing a four year old boy and another civilian. Are you kidding me? A four year old boy not even close to any military installation was targeted and murdered in cold blood. Who’s next - my three year old daughter?

Do you understand what is happening here? Israel pledges to withdraw from territory captured in a war it did not start. That’s right. Despite all the propaganda that you have heard to the contrary that makes Michael Moore look like Honest Abe, we did not start the war that gave us the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan.

Leading up to the Six Day War, between 1949 and 1967, there were over 3,000 attacks on Israel from all neighboring states including the Jordanian West Bank and the Egyptian Gaza Strip.

We offered to withdraw in 1994 and we do so from a large swath of land. In fact we withdrew from 90% of the Palestinian population centers. Arafat pledges to fight terror. We allow the PLO into the territories and we arm them ourselves.

And what happens? In 2000 we offer to withdraw from up to 95% of the territory captured including half the Old City of Jerusalem and all of the eastern neighborhoods of the same city, our eternal capital. And then what happens? Terror increases and increases and increases to a point that over 1,000 Israelis are dead over the last four years.

So what do we do? We say fine. If you Palestinians do not want peace we will separate from you. We will build a wall/fence and you take that side we will take this side and we will withdraw to our side. And what happens? Tunnels to smuggle missiles are built and Palestinians launch missiles into kindergartens.

Do you know what is going to happen next if this barbaric terror continues against our children? Well let me tell you what is going to happen. This 36 year old tour guide, and hundreds of thousands other Israeli reservists like me, are going to be screaming at the Israeli government to please allow us to don our olive drab uniforms, grab our rifles and leave our families for God knows how long in order to go off to war - which really, really sucks. And this time, I swear by God, we won’t stop the war until the Palestinian people beg us to stop and there won’t be anything France will be able to do about it.