A Mortar, A Rocket, A Question

This past week, a kassem rocket slammed into Ashkelon and exploded. It hit the ground a mere 7 meters from a kindergarten. By the grace of God alone, none of the children were injured, but a 15-year-old girl was lightly wounded from exploding shrapnel and two others were taken to the hospital suffering from shock. Several mortars were fired at Israel this week, the latest only moments ago.

If you didn’t hear about it, you are to be forgiven. How could you hear what wasn’t reported? How could you know what the media refuses or can’t be bothered to divulge?

This week, the army bombed seven tunnels that were being dug in order to enter Israel and attack – similar to the attack that led to the agonizing captivity of Gilad Shalit for the last 1,600+ days. Shots were fired at an IDF patrol near the border. You might not have heard about these incidents. How could you hear what isn’t reported.

In the last few minutes, a rock attack was announced near Maale Shomron. Last night around midnight, there was a rock throwing attack near Beit Illit, just south of Jerusalem. Yesterday, in two different places, Arabs threw large, sharp objects at Jews in cars – several cars were damaged, though thankfully the drivers were able to maneuver their way around to safety. How could you know what the media refuses or can’t be bothered to divulge?

On and on it goes, the tensions mount. We are waiting for the rocket we can’t ignore, the mortar that strikes true. Not if…but when it does, someone will die or be injured for life. Once it was a young boy, the only child of a couple that had waited 15 long years to have him. Once it was a mother, a father. Each time these rockets slam into our country bringing terror and panic in the seconds before, in the moments after.

I was once walking in Jerusalem with my two daughters when we heard a loud boom. We stopped walking – as those around us did. Frozen. Uncertain. There was this horrible feeling that we knew ahead of us something had exploded. It hadn’t. It was a bus traveling too fast that had hit a large rock at an angle and somehow sent it flying into a metal sheet – I can’t explain the sound – but I wasn’t the only one who reacted that way. Security men came running past us down the street. I stood for too long. Unsure if I should go forward or back.

Within a short period – perhaps seconds, though it felt so much longer, people began walking and the noise began again, though it had been strangely silent while people waited to see what had happened. It’s that way after a rocket attack – the waiting to see what had happened.

This is what happened yesterday and the day before. This is what happened this morning.

So I have written of a mortar and a rocket and now the question…no, it isn’t about the media for I long ago surrendered to the fact that they care what Israel does (or their interpretation of it), not what is done to Israel. The question is – where is the outrage? Where?

A child, for 15 is still a child, was injured in her city, meters away from a kindergarten by a rocket that suddenly came flying at her city. Where? Where is the outrage? The horror? The international demand that it stop.