[A-List] Israelis Watch the Fighting in Gaza From a Hilly Vantage Point

[Leighm]

3 word... Not very bright.

But IF they get killed, I'm SURE it'll be blamed on the Gazans or Hamas.


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123136613816062175.html>
> JANUARY 8, 2009
>
> Israelis Watch the Fighting in Gaza From a Hilly Vantage Point
> They Come With Binoculars and Lawn Chairs; Nurse Znaty: 'I'm Sorry,
> but I'm Happy'
>
> By CHARLES LEVINSON
>
> GAZA BORDER -- Moti Danino sat Monday in a canvas lawn chair on a
> sandy hilltop on Gaza's border, peering through a pair of binoculars
> at distant plumes of smoke rising from the besieged territory.
>
> An unemployed factory worker, he comes here each morning to watch
> Israel's assault on Hamas from what has become the war's peanut
> gallery -- a string of dusty hilltops close to the border that offer
> panoramic views across northern Gaza.
>
> He is one of dozens of Israelis who have arrived from all over Israel,
> some with sack lunches and portable radios tuned to the latest reports
> of the battle raging in front of them. Some, like Mr. Danino, are here
> to egg on friends and family members in the fight.
>
> Others have made the trek, they say, to witness firsthand a military
> operation -- so far, widely popular inside Israel -- against Hamas,
> the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.
>
> Over the weekend, four teenagers sat on a hill near Mr. Danino's,
> oohing and aahing at the airstrikes. Nadav Zebari, who studies Torah
> in Jerusalem, was eating a cheese sandwich and sipping a Diet Coke.
>
> "I've never watched a war before," he said. A group of police officers
> nearby took turns snapping pictures of one another with smoking Gaza
> as a backdrop. "I want to feel a part of the war," one said, before
> correcting himself with the official government designation for the
> assault. "I mean operation. It's not a war."
>
> The spectators share hilltop space with an army of camera-toting
> Israeli and foreign journalists, who have so far been banned by the
> Israeli military from entering Gaza to report on the conflict.
>
> Mr. Danino has a personal link to the fighting. His 20-year-old son,
> Moshe, is a soldier in an infantry unit fighting somewhere below his
> hilly perch. From the sidelines, he is here to root for his son the
> soldier, he says, just as he once sat on the sidelines of soccer
> fields cheering for his son the high-school athlete.
>
> "The army took all the soldiers' cellphones away before the attack, so
> this is my way of staying in contact," he says.
>
> On another hilltop overlooking Gaza, Sandra Koubi, a 43-year-old
> philosophy student, says seeing the violence up close "is a kind of
> catharsis for me, to get rid of all the anxiety we have inside us
> after years of rocket fire" from Hamas.
>
> Jocelyn Znaty, a stout 60-year-old nurse for Magen David Adom, the
> Israeli counterpart of the Red Cross, can hardly contain her glee at
> the site of exploding mortars below in Gaza.
>
> "Look at that," she shouts, clapping her hands as four artillery
> rounds pound the territory in quick succession. "Bravo! Bravo!"
>
> Ms. Znaty lives in Sderot, the immigrant community on Gaza's border
> that has long been a target for rockets fired from Gaza by Palestinian
> militants. Her daughter lives on Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, an Israeli
> community even closer to the Gaza Strip.
>
> Last year, Gaza-launched rockets struck Ms. Znaty's home twice in a
> single week. She escaped both attacks unscathed but has a simmering
> anger for those living on the other side of the Gaza fence.
>
> She acknowledges an uncomfortable, self-conscious awareness that she
> is cheering on a deadly war. Israeli planes, ships and artillery have
> blasted the small, sealed-off territory for more than a week, killing
> more than 680 Palestinians and injuring about 3,000. Ten Israelis have
> been killed, including three civilians, according to U.N. officials.
>
> The weekend ground assault has sent civilian casualties climbing,
> overwhelming hospitals and triggering the International Committee of
> the Red Cross to declare a humanitarian crisis inside the small,
> seaside enclave of 1.5 million.
>
> On Tuesday, the UN said one of its schools in Gaza was hit by an
> Israeli strike, killing 43 civilians who had sought refuge from the
> attacks and injuring about 100.
>
> "It's weird that we have to take lives in order to save lives," Ms.
> Znaty says. "But we were held hostage by Hamas while our government
> ignored us, and now we fight back. I am sorry, but I am happy."
>
> War watching is not a new phenomenon. Up until World War I, when more
> powerful weapons began to be used on the battlefield, it was common
> for civilians to perch on grassy lookouts on a battlefield's
> periphery.
>
> Nor is it unique to Israelis in the current conflict. On the Egyptian
> side of the border, across from southern Gaza, Arabs, too, were coming
> from miles away to watch the aerial bombardment.
>
> But at Gaza's border crossing in the dusty town of Rafah, the mood was
> of anger and somber resignation amid the punishing Israeli attacks.
> Egyptians in Rafah, and many of the Arab aid workers who have flocked
> there to help evacuate Gaza's wounded, share deep ethnic, family and
> economic ties with the territory.
>
> Over the weekend, as ambulances ferried out bloodied Palestinian
> casualties, plumes of black smoke, accompanied by dull thuds and
> trembling earth, rose across the border, just a hundred yards across a
> no man's land marking the border with Egypt.
>
> "We feel helpless. We feel like we are so close but we can't do
> anything," said Rami Ibrahim Shahin, a 20-year-old mechanic, whose
> family is originally Palestinian. His brother lives on the other side
> of the border, now under Israeli fire. They talk every day, when phone
> connections work. Each evening, Mr. Shahin walks several miles to
> reach the border crossing, where he can get a better view of the
> attacks.
>
> "All day long, it's like this, we see the attacks with our own eyes,"
> shrugs Rafah resident Osama Al-Beyali, a 51-year-old porter in torn
> gray coveralls. As blasts ring out across the border, onlookers swear
> at Israel or offer prayers for victims.
>
> A father of six, Mr. Al-Beyali says he thinks of the Palestinian
> children suffering in the cold, with little food or safety, under the
> barrage. "When I see my children, I feel ashamed and guilty. I feel
> like I should find a way to go over there and fight the Israelis."
>
> "Injustice, injustice," he mumbles.
>
> Many Israelis see the Gaza offensive as a welcome change. "I come here
> because our army is finally doing something, showing the world that we
> are not weak," says Mr. Danino, the unemployed factory worker. On his
> hilltop overlooking Gaza, Mr. Danino has taken to quarterbacking the
> assault from his folding chair.
>
> Having sat here for much of the past week, he now fancies himself
> something of an expert. He says, for example, that Palestinian
> militants are fond of firing rockets from the cover of a distant block
> of greenhouses.
>
> When a plume of smoke -- the result of an Israeli attack -- rose from
> what appears to be empty farmland Monday, Mr. Danino shook his head.
> "No, no, no," he said. "We should be hitting the greenhouses."
>
> —Farnaz Fassihi in Rafah, Egypt and Margaret Coker in Tel Aviv
> contributed to this article.
>
>
>