Ariga.com reports today that the Defense Minister’s wife published a front page story in one of Israel’s major dailies offering one way to end Qassam rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel. Here is the translation provided by a friend of this blog:
HEARTFELT PROTEST: Ahlama Peretz
The residents of Sderot need you today. I call on all the nation of Israel to stand beside those who I think are heroes of Israeli society. Anyone who has not experienced the fall of a Qassam right next to them does not know how great the fear is. More than any financial help or Apache helicopter attack, the people of Sderot need an embrace from the people of Israel, who once knew how to unite in times of trouble. Have we lost that Israel we once knew?…
The protest of Sderot is not politically partisan. It is a protest from the heart, from the pain. No effort to pain the anger and frustration of the residents with political shades will work.
For five years, the people of Sderot have lived an abnormal reality, under repeated attacks by Qassam rockets on the town. When a Qassam falls in the town and its explosion is heard everywhere, every mother and father feels anxious for their children. Amir and I have spent decades in Sderot. Our children grew up here and still go to school here. When a rocket falls in Sderot, like every mother I call Yiftah and Matan., to make sure they are okay. The heart skips a beat and when they answer the phone I resume breathing normally…
At that horrifying moment [when the rocket falls], all the mothers and fathers carry that prayer and hope for a miracle. But it is clear to us that we cannot county only on miracles. It is obvious that only through dialogue will it be possible to put an end to the cycle of violence. The army is the executive arm of the government, but the political echelon must do everything to speak with the other side, because that’s the only way to end the bloodshed. This is not a matter of miracles. To start a political process and reach results, we must find moral responsibility and leadership prowess within ourselves…
Ms. Peretz is no Martha Mitchell. She’s not a political wife with an axe to grind who spouts off in ways embarrassing to her husband. Ahlama is known to play a key role in Amir Peretz’s political decisions. So I say ‘Bravo’ to her for telling Israelis a difficult truth.
For it appears that the Palestinian rocket fire is causing a minor uproar on the Israeli political scene. Sedrot’s mayor has called for a city-wide protest ‘lockdown’ which would prevent entrance and exit from the city and bring the city to a virtual halt. He’s apparently trying to gin up a nationwide crisis mentality along the lines of what the militant settlers tried to do during the Gaza withdrawal. That’s why Ms. Peretz’s essay took some guts as it goes against the current political grain. One only hopes her husband is listening as his performance so far as defense minister has disappointed.
Ms. Peretz’s contrarian stance on this particular issue reminded me of Ehud Olmert’s daughter’s participation in a peace demonstration against the IDF chief of staff after the Gaza beach massacre. Now, if only we could get Ahlama Peretz to take her husband’s place in government and Dana Olmert to take her father’s. That government would show some promise of getting this conflict resolved!
