Defining war crimes
Type in 'war crimes' in Google and you get both the Wikpedia definition and examples of countries associated with the term including Japan, US, and...Israel. The coupling of 'war crime' and Israel is not new, and indeed much of the international media and foreign leadership favors using the term to describe Israel's current offensive operations in the Gaza Strip. The Wall Street Journal on January 10, published an article entitled "Israel is Committing War Crimes" by George Bisharat. Bisharat writes that "Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes." The impact of Palestinian rocket terror on Israeli children
There have been many questions bouncing around in the media this week. Why is Israel at war? Why are there so many Hamas men dead? Why are Hamas firing rockets at Israel? A war of resistance, some say. Israel is holding a siege against Gaza. Palestinians are starving and suffering. And who is to blame? Israel of course. At least that is the conclusion that emerges within the headlines of AP and Reuters news reports, European news media, and countless Internet blogs on the current fighting. For those who seek objective answers to those questions, the unfolding tragedy of Sderot and the western Negev must be taken into account. No plans to leave Ashkelon
The writer came to Ashkelon from Brooklyn, NY in 1976 and teaches at Achva Academic College (students who are studying to be English teachers) and at Ashkelon College. She also freelances for the Metro section of The Jerusalem Post. She and her former paratrooper husband have three children; one who lives out of range of grads and one who lives in Ashkelon but is staying with friends in Tel Aviv. He's in his 3rd year at Sapir College in Sderot so is really getting a double whammy. Their daughter lives here in Ashkelon and works in Kiryat Malachi. December 31st. Wednesday, 11:05 It was a rather quiet night in Ashkelon but not a quiet morning. I was much calmer than the night before, maybe because my son gave me a physics lesson and I understand the projectory of one of these missiles. But then maybe not. The important thing is that I'm calmer, at least for now. We live across the street from the sea and about 3 minutes before Gaza air space. The rainy morning skies are filled with air traffic, something we haven't seen from this vantage point. Sometimes, the wind sounds like the beginning of a siren and we jump. We hear "booms" from Navy ships and sometimes don't know if it's a missile or one of ours shooting at them. This too is a bit scary. Psychological trauma increasing among Sderot residents
"Rockets scare me," says Niv Chen, an 8-year old elementary school student who goes to school in Sderot. As Niv gets into the car, on his way to school, he asks his older brother, Eliran, to lower the car windows, so that he can hear the Tzeva Adom. The Tzeva Adom, or Red Color alert is the siren that warns Sderot residents of impending Palestinian rockets and allows residents 15 seconds to escape to shelter. Niv and countless other children in Sderot have been living with Palestinian rocket fire for almost 8 years. Many have trouble concentrating in school and suffer from anxiety attacks. Expectations from Sderot
December 19 is a significant day for Israeli civilians living on the other side of the Gaza Strip. It is the day where the Hamas-Israel ceasefire officially comes to an end and the question to whether Palestinian rocket fire will resume on Israelis civilians living in the south, will officially be answered. The question has been answered - to some degree - a little earlier than expected. After Israel entered the Gaza Strip to blow up a Hamas dug tunnel intended for the killing or kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, Hamas fired a massive barrage of rockets-over 60--upon Israeli civilians last week through November 4-5. Who is fooling who?
The other day in Sderot, I made an astonishing observation. I was walking from the office after a long day at work to catch some sleep when I noticed I was not walking alone. Usually the city is deadly quiet once the sun sets, as parents refuse to let children play outside in the dark. Families prefer to remain at home together after a long day of siren alerts and rocket explosions. High school kids don't ride around as much with the music blasting and teenagers don't walk around listening to their Ipods in case the 'tzeva adom', red color alert sounds. There's not much to do at night except maybe watch a movie and hope that Hamas rocket launchers decide to go to sleep, so that those us living in Sderot can relax just a little bit. Al Jazeera and Sderot
On Thursday evening, May 29, 2008 a group of Israeli and Arab college students were aired live on Al Jazeera from Haifa where they participated in a special two-hour program. The college students, studying at Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion, Haifa, and Bar Ilan universities, were asked questions about the future of the state of Israel and about the history and present situation of its citizens. Netivot: The next Sderot?
This past Saturday, May 24, two red alert sirens activated throughout the western Negev city of Netivot. Two grad Katyusha rockets, fired at the city's population of 30,000, fell in open fields. Craters, glass and shrapnel
Throughout Saturday afternoon, I heard a number of alarms followed by a number of loud explosions as several rockets hit Sderot. I did not know where they had hit and I decided to go looking for them when the sun went down and the Sabbath ended. A constant problem here is that we hear the loud KABOOM! when the rocket lands, but we often have no way of knowing exactly where the explosion occurred - unless, of course, the rocket went through the roof of someone's house. We too are dependent on the news media to learn exactly what has happened, but the TV and radio do not mention the address where the rocket fell, because most of their audience does not live in Sderot. Breaking the calm during Passover
It seemed that Sderot residents were going to experience a rare day of quiet on Tuesday, April 22. Around eveningtime at 19:30 pm, however, two Kassams fired from northern Gaza, broke the calm. One rocket hit a Sderot home, damaging the building and sending several people into shock. The owners of the home, Michael and Evgenia Zaretskay, who immigrated from Belarus 17 years ago, were downstairs when the rocket hit. "I was upstairs when the second siren of the evening went off," says Evgenia. "My husband told me to come down immediately. I went down and seconds later we heard the awful explosion. I knew our home had been hit." |
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