By SHARON ROFFE OFIR
In a meeting I held as a Knesset Member with a foreign parliamentary colleague I told him that the difference between us is that when he comes to visit me at home, in addition to the living room and the bathroom, I will also show him where the rocket-proof safe room is. To be Israeli, I said, is to be intimately familiar with the sound of air raid sirens and to understand that as a citizen of the country, one is also exposed to an existential threat.
Yet nothing prepared us for the murderous terrorist attack we experienced on Saturday, October 7. The sights, the horrifying videos distributed by the Hamas terrorist organization, and the voices of my people whispering on the phone, telling me that terrorists are in their homes. It will take us time to heal and the moment for questions will come, but one thing is already clear – victory in Israel’s military campaign must be defined as the elimination of Hamas. We owe this to the hundreds of dead, to our children and parents who were abducted, and to the future of the State of Israel.
The ancient Midrash states, “He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.”
We must acknowledge the truth: The State of Israel has never really uprooted this murderous terrorist organization. What happened on 7/10 was the Israeli 9/11, and from this point onward, everything will be different.
The images and voices from the atrocities haunt me. The parents who hid in their homes with their children in the house and were murdered before their eyes; the elderly grandmother who was kidnapped to Gaza; the young girl who left the party with her boyfriend and was dragged away by terrorists while she cried and begged for her life; the cries of parents looking for their missing children; the rising number of dead. Those who committed these terrible crimes are not human beings. I write from the depths of my heart and hope that maybe now, finally, the world, as it sees the pictures and hears the voices, will understand what the State of Israel is facing.
In the weeks leading up to the mass murder, there were incidents in which Palestinians threw explosive devices, launched incendiary balloons that set fire to agricultural fields in border communities, and opened fire. These events join a long line of attacks, terrorist incidents, kidnappings of soldiers, and missile and rocket fire that have been occurring since the organization was established in the Gaza Strip in 1987—events that did not stop even when Hamas became the ruler of the Strip in 2007.
While the world saw the ‘return marches’ – violent rioting and attempts to breach the Gaza-Israeli border in 2018 as a legitimate event and criticized the Israeli military's response, and while the UN claimed that Israel was committing war crimes, Hamas continued to arm itself and attack Israel. In fact, for the last twenty years, the sound of Qassam rocket fire is something that every child living in southern Israel has been familiar with. Try to imagine another country that would agree to a reality in which its children sleep entire nights in a bomb shelter.
The policy led by Israel in the past decade, mostly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was one of containment. It allowed the transfer of suitcases of money from Qatar to the Gaza Strip and approved the entry of goods to the Strip. Although Netanyahu promised in 2009 to topple the Hamas regime, in practice, he refrained from attacking initiatives. This policy continued with a decision taken a month ago, after an assessment that took place in the Prime Minister's Office, not to respond to a new wave of border riots.
The massacre of hundreds of civilians and soldiers must lead to a change in the rules of the game. Israel now faces one choice: we must now strive to end Hamas rule in Gaza and destroy the organization, down to its very foundations. Attacking targets and damaging military capabilities will not provide the answer. It will merely buy quiet for a period and allow Hamas to return to another round that may be even more violent than what we are experiencing now. We must take dramatic steps to cleanse the Strip and recognize that Hamas is the enemy, even if the price to be paid is a painful one. The citizens of Israel give full backing to this move; this will be the image of victory.
Sharon Roffe-Ofir served as a member of the 24th Knesset and is a strategic advisor, as well as a lecturer in Israel and internationally on politics, government, and women’s leadership. Read full bio here.