The Israeli Guernica

by Giulio Meotti

It’s humid on the plain leading to the town of Sderot. The houses are yellow and white in the Negev, the southern desert dreamed of by David Ben Gurion.

The largest Israeli town on the outskirts of the dangerous border with the Gaza Strip is emblematic of Israel’s dialectic situation in the Middle East: the psychological need for a kind of normalization opposed to the guillotine above its head.

At Givat, “the hill”, you see Hamas territory, just half a mile away. But houses with red roofs, tidy and comfortable, are today under construction on this hill. It’s the most incredible face of the new Sderot’s “normality”. Signs in local schools read, “hide under your desk in case the siren sounds”.

Sderot’s fate is becoming the fate of all Israel. Since the last “cease fire”, 530 rockets and missiles have been fired towards the southwestern part of Israel. Ashkelon, Sderot, Beersheba and Ashdod, these cities are now under the Islamist radar and have become missile targets.

The latest Israeli intelligence reports indicate that estimated warning time for a rocket attack on the greater Tel Aviv area has declined from two minutes to just 90 seconds.

Sderot represents the siege on the Jewish people and the resistance of Israel, but it also reveals the rest of the world’s indifference to the genocidal hatred that is Jihadism. Twelve thousand Palestinian rockets have fallen on Sderot and Ashkelon in the last ten years. The sense of death has pervaded the streets, the shops, the houses and the local clinic, where a wonderful and brave Romanian psychiatrist, Adriana Katz, takes care of these victims daily. She is a special character in the book "A New Shoah" about Israel's victims of terrorism.

In Sderot, the nightmare is the calm female voice of Tzeva Adom, the "Red Alert" alarm. "Seventy percent of the children in the Negev show symptoms of trauma, and these statistics are the result of independent research", Dr. Dalia Yosef, the former director of the Sderot Resilience Center, which specializes in caring for children, told me. "Thousands of children also have physical disabilities from Palestinian bombs. There are children who want to stay inside the bunkers, or in the safe rooms of their homes. There are children who don’t get out of bed anymore. We don’t know what will become of this generation born and raised under the Qassams".

“There are people who take the taxi to reach our clinic, in case the alarm will sound”, Dr. Katz told me a few days ago. “Many people lost hearing ability because they live close to the alarm. There are even those people who hear the alarm even when it’s silent. The heart is crying”.

Some of Sderot’s residents have moved to Netivot and Ashkelon in recent years, renting or purchasing apartments there, only to discover that the rockets continue to chase them. Now a large part of Israel is living much as those in Sderot do—running for shelter and fearing for their lives. Sderot is preparing for the next war. 5,000 additional shelters are under construction in the city. It’s a huge number for a small town of just 20,000 inhabitants.

Hezbollah and Hamas now have new Iranian missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

In the Galilee, the city of Kiryat Shmona is equipped today with new shelters. In the summer of 2006, Hezbollah launched thousands of missiles on roofs and roads. According to the new Israeli intelligence reports, Hezbollah could launch up to 600 rockets per day. The Dan area of Tel Aviv, where a quarter of the entire Israeli population lives, is the target of the next war. Nobody knows if and when it will begin.

The power of inflicting death in the region has risen dramatically. It has been estimated that four years ago, Syria had 300 missiles that could reach Tel Aviv, a dozen for Hezbollah, 50 for Iran, and nothing for Hamas. Two years later, Syria had 1,300, Hezbollah 800, Hamas a dozen, and Iran 300. Today it’s 2,300 for Syria, 1,200 for Hezbollah, 400 for Teheran, and a good arsenal of Fajr-5 for Hamas.

Tel Aviv today is not only extending to the sky with its beautiful skyscrapers, but also sinking into the ground because it’s a new target for Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. The Habima Theater, for example, will have four underground floors. Haifa, the third-largest city in Israel, is building “the largest underground hospital in the world”.

Drills have become a routine all over the country. Hospitals and emergency facilities have to be ready in case of necessity, and the municipalities have evacuation protocols.

The story of Sderot and Ashkelon lets us tell the parable of Western civilization. This is the only Western population forced to live with their eyes turned to heaven. This winter, the terrorists from Gaza launched phosphorous shells on Israeli civilians. These are chemical weapons able to burn the human skin. International newspapers and television stations didn’t report the news. The burned skin of the Jews have never interested the West.

Israel will rise and fall with Sderot. This is the Israeli Guernica that will never have its own Picasso. In 1937 the Basque town was the premature victim of the savage and merciless Nazi Blitzkrieg that was to sweep Europe. Sderot is the tiny symbol of Western civilization plunging into the very heart of the Dar al-Islam. They want to destroy Sderot because they want to destroy all of us.

Original URL: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/prospects_for_liberal_democrac.html

Giulio Meotti

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