Israel Stories: Children of Hamas

"Bastards", I shouted in a rare display of road rage as a couple of cars ran over a crossing narrowly missing a school child. Then I realized with a small amount of embarrassment and guilt that I had my children in the car. You have to careful what you say around kids, sometimes they don't understand and sometimes they twist what you say.

A bit like the BBC.

I switched on the radio in time to hear the news. We are all news junkies these days and we listen to or read the news on the hour every hour and all the minutes in between in the hope that someone will announce 'it's all over, the boys are coming home and we are safe at last'.

The news reported heavy fighting and that many terrorists had been killed. Then they reported on the worldwide demonstrations against Israel. That was obvious. The world's Muslims really know how to whip up a crowd and become brothers in their fight against the Jews. They are united in rage because of their brothers in Palestine. Brothers, like the Sunnis and Shiites, hand in hand.

You can tell that all that happens is divinely led; the world's sympathy harbors the most violent, bloodthirsty people on the planet even when this violence occurs in their shops, stations and streets. 'It's OK, we forgive the suicide bombings in London, we understand using their children as human shields, because underneath it all they are pretty decent chaps, desperate, but decent and the Jews, well, they're bloodthirsty bastards.'

Then they announced that the schools in the South would remain shut. One of my kids started crying.

"What's the matter?"

"I just heard that there is no school in the South and I am scared if the rockets reach us they will close down my school. Are we safe in the 'merkaz', in the center of the country? They won't get us there will they, Abba?"

"Don't worry, " I assured her in the only way a parent can in these frightening and uncertain times. "We're OK and safe in the merkaz".

She stopped crying and I started thinking. Suddenly the war was only about protecting our children. Suddenly my mind went back to the faces of the kids in Sderot and the South. Can you imagine the terror they must feel every time they hear a siren, every time they feel the rockets impacting on their town, every time they nervously stray more than 15 seconds from their houses knowing that 16 seconds isn't enough time to dive into a bomb shelter?

I shouldn't have any sympathy for the Palestinian children, and I define children as any normal human being would and not to bolster the number of child fatalities - after all their parents made the decision to support and vote for Hamas, their fathers and brothers are fighting for Hamas - but I do.

Golda Meir once said 'peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.'

While I worry about my children, Hamas use theirs as another weapon. Alive they are indoctrinated into a culture of hate and blood, dead they are martyrs and propaganda weapons. To Hamas, as with all Muslim terrorists, there is no room for emotion and there is no difference between a child and a Kassam, both can be used in the 'struggle'.

They surround themselves with children at their rocket sites and strategic positions knowing there will be child fatalities, knowing the blind world will accuse, criticize, demonstrate and open the sluice gates releasing a rush of anti-Jewish hatred not experienced since Germany.

Hamas and the Arabs scream genocide and Holocaust. That's their insecurity, their propaganda and their delusional ideology. They do not realize that we have only one place to run, the sea. So we have no choice but to fight and no option but to win.

We fight so that our children won't be scared to sleep alone, wont wake up screaming with trauma, won't have to live in bomb shelters, won't have to be scared of Samir Kuntar and his protégées and won't have to see their parents and siblings killed in war or by Kassams.

We fight so that our children will have a normal and peaceful life.

And to the rest of the world who scream anti-Israel hatred at every opportunity, if you tolerate this, your children will be next.

"So", my daughter continued, "there is no school in the South because of the Hamas rockets?"

"Yes", I answered.

"Bastards", she said under her 7-year-old breath.

"Yes," I said under mine.