 
|
Sivan 5, 5767, 5/22/2007
Dodging Missiles & My Trip To Sderotby Tamar Yonah
Ok, so I was in Sderot today. My daughter was worried, my parents didn't know, and my husband gave me a blessing for safety. But this is something I wanted to do. 
While speaking to random people in Sderot, I asked them, "What is the solution?"
 I went with two people I have the pleasure to work with, Yishai Fleisher and Ezra HaLevi. I had finished my morning show and was leaving the station when Yishai was coming up the walk and we briefly spoke and he mentioned he was going to Sderot in a little while, and asked if I wanted to come. I actually did. I actually jumped at the chance. I was supposed to go down to Sderot with my husband to bring a bullet proof vest and helmet to Shlomo Wollins but couldn’t do it this week because the Shavuot holiday was coming up and we would both be very busy. So I arranged for my husband to get the gear and drop it off with Shlomo when he came in to Jerusalem for the afternoon.
But fate had it that I come down with Yishai to Sderot anyway, and do a show. The city was a bit empty. Many stores were closed and just a few people peppered the landscape. We interviewed the residents as well as a very brave 11 year old girl. No red alerts came during the two hour show, yet afterwards when visiting with Shlomo Wollins, the missiles started coming. “TZEVA ADOM, TZEVA ADOM” (color red) – which is basically ‘red alert’ came over the loud speakers of the city. I was picking some notes on the guitar in the living room when the alert came on. Yishai, Shlomo and Ezra all left the living room area and told me to come to the sealed room which is a bomb shelter.
After a brief moment, I heard outside a giant THUD, but it was far away and I was not alarmed.
After this, we went out and Shlomo showed us a few other places that were recently hit by the kassam rockets that the Arabs were launching against this suburban city.
Sderot - Kassam hit
T. Yonah kassam hit on roof top in Sderot
T. Yonah This Kassam hit the roof top and plunged into the bathroom of a neighbor of Shlomo's as she was taking a shower. (See roof damage above). She was hospitalized and the home was abandoned by the family, and has someone watching it now as the owner comes and goes. To see this house actually get hit, watch this video.
Schools have had to have re-enforced walls and roofs as well. Notice this newer, outer wall added on to this school in Sderot. Re-enforced School in Sderot
T. Yonah It makes one enraged that all this is happening, and our government sits on its hands.
While speaking to random people in Sderot, I asked them, "What is the solution?" Most of them shrugged and said that Olmert should quit, and that we should make the Arabs in Gaza be afraid of attacking us. Others said that Israel should shut their electricity and water. Only one man who owned a small food shop said that we should go and clean up Gaza and throw the enemies of Israel out. Only one. When I suggested this possible solution to another store owner, he replied, "Well, yes, that would be the best thing to do." So I said to him, then why didn't you arrive at that answer yourself and tell me that this is the best solution? He replied, "Well, because 'that' solution will never happen. Our government won't do it."
Before leaving Sderot, I thought of the hardships these people were suffering. I told the residents we spoke with that we were from YESHA, and that we were praying for them everyday.
We left Sderot around 7:30pm. Soon after, another barrage of missiles rained down on Sderot. A woman, approx. 35 years old was killed when she was taking cover near her car. This happened at about 8:00pm. – Only one half hour after we left for home.
And then I remembered. I too, had been thru something like this before – dodging missiles. I was also under threat of missile attack during the scud war with Saddam Hussein back in 1991. We would get the alarms, loud sirens would go off and we would have to hurry to our sealed rooms and put on a gas mask. Infants were too young to wear gas masks. Instead, I had to put my baby daughter in a small, sealed, clear plastic tent which she would never want to go into. She screamed and cried and kicked until I just had to hold her and have a syringe of atropine ready to shove into her thigh if we got hit by the missile which was suspected to be bearing poison gas or germ (biological) war fare. This was our present then, from the Arab nations, courtesy of the guy with the big moustache. They’ve since hanged him.
And yet, life goes on.
Bride &Groom in Sderot
T. Yonah
On the way out of the city, a car carrying a bride and groom stopped alongside our car. We traded a few ‘mazal tovs’ and they showed us, as Yishai said, that they are still alive, still optimistic, and still going on with LIFE.
|
|
Iyar 29, 5767, 5/17/2007
Run, Jew. Run!by Tamar Yonah
Run, Jew. Run!
They must be laughing at us. A few pipe bomb kassam rockets fired from abandoned Jewish settlements, and the Jews go running. Help us Olmert! Help us Arcady Gaydamak! Save us from the Arab onslaught. Get us out of here! Evacuate us!
And you know what? Even though they are wrong in their thinking that the solution is to be evacuated, they are also absolutely right. Israel should be fighting back. We are more powerful then the Palestinian Authority and their terrorists, and we can clean out Gaza if we stopped worrying more about their civilians’ safety, then our own civilians. So, when the Sderot residents' own leaders refuse to respond to this onslaught of rocket fire on their community, what else can they do? - Except run for it!
Bush & Co. will NOT let Israel respond in any meaningful manner to stop the terror.
The Olmert government is a travesty. They have no right to hold on to power when their citizens are being bombarded by flying bombs and they make no move to eliminate this terror entity. It is akin to a community terrorized by the mafia and the police refusing to go and bust the criminals.
Olmert is in trouble. The Winograd report has basically called him a failure and unfit to lead this country. Olmert has the lowest trust of any prime minister in the history of Israel. A recent poll taken showed him having only 3% of the people’s confidence. His defense minister, Amir Peretz, himself from Sderot, seems to show a disdain for his own town, by not acting to stop the carnage. Bush & Abbas - 2 State solution
Of course, it’s not only our leaders who are accomplices to letting Jews be attacked and chased away from their homes. Our puppet government won’t move unless America gives it’s 'ok'. Bush & Co. will NOT let Israel respond in any meaningful manner to stop the terror. Bush has plans to establish a Palestinian State (Road Map & two states living 'side by side in peace') and if Israel re-takes Gaza, this ‘vision for a New Middle East will not materialize. Bush has plans for this region, and they have to do with trade blocks and a centralized global power, as his father, George Bush Sr. has talked about during his time as president. Of course, our leaders do not HAVE to listen to Bush, but our leaders are weak. Lacking trust in the Almighty, they feel we need to bend to the world’s demands. And so, with the carrot and the stick in front of them, they will bow to the will of the world. ...And it is easy to do so. Our leaders are corrupt (just check all the police investigations going on against a number of Kadima party members). Our leaders are not patriots anymore; they are only beholden to themselves. If they can promote themselves, stay in power, get more power, and make more money, then they will most likely sell out to foreign powers and their interests. They may convince themselves that we need the world on our side, and that we can't go it alone. They are maybe told, "If you want us to provide defense weapons and airplane parts for you, get with our plan If you go along with us, it's true, you will be a smaller Israel, but we will help support you. And if you DON'T play ball with us, you will never see the outside of a jail cell again..." The carrot and the stick.  And so our leaders convince themselves that we are better off giving in, not fighting the world, and ‘better that we are a down-sized Israel, than no Israel at all'. But they are wrong. It's the rationalization of the weak. It is evil.
There is little, if any, integrity left in today’s world. There is no sense of shame, there is no sense of responsibility except to one’s self.
With the Winograd report, the unnecessary deaths from the last war in Lebanon, the north of the country in ruins, and now the south of the country under attack, with 150,000 people at a demonstration (representing millions of citizens) calling for Olmert’s resignation, Olmert still refuses to leave. For shame! But Olmert will not budge, because he knows that if he leaves office, he will most likely be on his way to jail. Too many sleazy deals and investigations are catching up with him.
Olmert may just do what Ariel Sharon did when he was prime minister. - Create and implement another ‘disengagement’ to focus the public attention away from his unscrupulous business dealings. Olmert is naming HIS plan, ‘Convergence’. Olmert has called for – not cleaning out the terrorist threat, but cleaning out the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria! He is continuing to build a new de-facto border in Israel called ‘The Security Fence”, which essentially cuts off most of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria from the rest of Israel and we see how small this state is becoming. Olmert will also look to give the Golan to Syria, and divide Jerusalem.
Run, Jew. Run!
What interests me, is the psyche of the Israelis who are interviewed on the radio. Gabi Gazit, a long time IBA radio talk show host was interviewing a woman from Sderot, on his last broadcast, May 16th, 2007. He was asking her what would she say to the Prime Minister if she could speak to him. I expected her to act with normal thinking, and demand the Prime Minister go into Gaza and clean it up once and for all. Instead, she said, Olmert should ‘resign’. She added that if the government could not help them in Sderot against the kassams, then ‘Get us out of here! Evacuate us!’.
Run, Jew. Run!
I asked my husband why the Israelis like the one we just heard on the radio choose the ‘run away’ mode. Why don’t we demand that the government take over Gaza and make the ENEMIES of Israel flee instead? He replied that most Jews don’t think like this woman. It’s just that this is the type of person the Israeli media choose to put on our air waves. He's right. I remembered the brave Jewish residents that lived in Gaza for years with kassam rocket attacks, -they never asked to leave. They never wanted to flee. They also demanded (like a rational thinking person) that the government go in and retaliate. The problem is, that the main stream media in Israel makes us LOOK weak. They choose to interview the people who say, “FLEE! Take us out of here.” They don’t want to show the brave and patriotic Jews who love the land and want to fight for it, because they know it is worth fighting for. They don’t show all the Jews who state proudly that this is our land, promised to us by G-d. I know there are many Jews in Sderot that want the government to crush the enemy, but you don't hear those people on the radio here. The media makes anyone who does get a chance to come on air and state these things, out to be war mongers, 'primitive' or crazy right wingers who incite to violence.
I believe that Olmert (and politicians like him) wants us to appear weak, so he can convince the country of the need to 'converge'… As he stated in a speech back in June 9, 2005, “We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies….” Run, Jew. Run! Make way for the Jew who loves the land above himself. We have plenty today. And we have a whole new generation of Orange Youth who will be ‘converging’ at the ballot boxes. Your weakness will not pull us down. Your media will not shut us up. Your bowing down to Bush and the International Community will not make us bow. Run, Jew. Run! See Olmert.
See Olmert run.
See Olmert run fast.
Run, Jew. Run!
|
|
The Tamar Yonah Show
by Tamar Yonah
A biting & sometimes humorous analysis of current events, Israeli politics & the Jewish World.
Join Tamar on TWITTER ! Tamar Yonah is one of Israel's most popular English-speaking radio show hosts. She made Aliyah from Southern California and after serving in the Israeli army began a prolific career in radio, including production, news and program development. She was the original creator and producer of 'The Aliyah Show' and still works whenever and however she can in that field. Tamar is a political activist, wife and mother residing in Judea and Samaria and currently hosts several top-rated shows, including Weekend Edition, The Tamar Yonah Show and TnT Dynamite. Her award winning blog covers current events, religion, politics and anything else that's on her mind. |
