Two years ago during Israel’s war against Hezbollah, Richard Cohen wrote one of the most offensively stupid op-eds imaginable. He wrote that Israel was a mistake. I and others criticized his ahistorical vision.
Today, Cohen has an op-ed that is both serious and accurate – qualities lacking from his 2006 op-ed – A war Hamas caused. I know that I’d disagree with Cohen on many things concerning Israel still, but this op-ed is just about perfect. He starts off with his own experience and blasts Daoud Kuttab.
Nearly a year ago, I was in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, where, on almost any day, you could see the current war coming. “The next Middle East war may start over Sderot,” I wrote back then. I came by my prescience the hard way — in a bomb shelter. That day, three Qassam rockets had hit the city. It took no genius to see the imminence of war. It takes real stupidity to blame it on Israel.
On some days, dozens of rockets fell on Sderot. A blimp hovered over the town, and when it electronically spied an incoming rocket, the sirens went off. In Sderot, the sirens were virtually a single, long wail on some days. Everyone took shelter because shelters are everywhere — a constant reminder of the nearness of death or, at the very least, destruction. Even a dud can bust through the roof of a house.
I get the impression that Israel is expected to put up with this. The implied message from demonstrators and some opinion columnists is that this is the price Israel is supposed to pay for being, I suppose, Israel. I am informed by a Palestinian journalist in a Post op-ed that Israel is trying to stop “amateur rockets from nagging the residents of some of its southern cities.” In Sderot, I saw homes nagged to smithereens.
Two paragraphs in the middle are just about perfect in expressing what should be obvious to anyone who is capable of comprehending world events.
Three years ago, Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip. Good, the world said. Next, pull out of the West Bank, the world said. But then Hamas, which has vowed to destroy Israel, won the election in Gaza. Sderot soon became hell. The West Bank is controlled by Fatah, the moderate Palestinian organization, which once had control of Gaza, too. If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, will rockets come from there? If you lived in Tel Aviv, a spit from the West Bank, would you take the chance?
Anyone could have seen this war coming. The diplomats and demonstrators who are now so engaged in the problem and the process were nowhere to be found when rockets began raining down on southern Israel. The border between Gaza and Egypt is riddled with tunnels — some for food, some for weapons. The international monitors that are so evidently needed now were just as evidently needed then.
Maybe Israel needs to be in charge of the border between Egypt and Gaza as opposed to international monitors. But why are there so few advocates of disengagement who say, “Look we were wrong, Hamas’s war is a result of disengagement?” Cohen has the courage to say that and he deserves a lot of credit for acknowledging that.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Good article. For once, I actually enjoyed reading a WaPo editorial.