It hasn’t been the longest war.  The Hundred Year War in Europe between Monarchies over property and religion was longer.  And there were even longer ones if you count more ancient times.  But “bombs (that) keep falling on my head” in a war in the Middle East have been used against Israel since 1948.  Records have been kept about the rockets fired from Gaza onto Israeli towns. In 2007 there have been more than 2,000 rockets and mortar shells lobbed towards Israel in an unending murderous attempt to drive Israelis from their homes and continue a war that now has to contend with protective walls.  The Israelis are constrained by international consensus that they should take these attacks like men and do nothing to provoke additional excesses.

I write this as a personal memoir about rockets fired at ME as well as towards the Israeli towns of Sderot and Kerem Shalom by various non-military guerilla groups who are looked upon as patriots by Palestinians and surrounding Arab nations.  As a Jew I find the attacks to be against the nation of Israel and against the United Nations which created a two state partition of the land claimed by Jews who turned their half into a nation while the Palestinians (so-called) called upon their neighbors who promptly made war on Israel and vowed (and continues to do so till this day) to drive the Jews into the sea.  I take this personally. It is an affront to the international efforts to sensibly end World War II and to Jews everywhere who were attempting to heal from the cruelty of the Nazi war machine to eliminate them and other “sub-human” groups from among the family of nations.

I take it personally when anti-Jewish graffiti appears on a house and on the sidewalk in front of it in a Florida city.  Who are these people who would do such a thing?  They obviously applaud the attempt of Islamic extremists to loft bombs over the fences separating the two peoples to pound the Israelis into dust.  They have been ineffective although quite devoted to this cause that has not hurt large numbers of Jews.  They have invited retribution which has heroically been restrained by the Jews in answering the constant rain of rockets and mortars while trying to selectively kill the leaders (Hamas and Islamic Jihad) on the Gazan side.

I take it personally when a self-appointed group of humans try to slaughter another group and drive them into the sea.  Against all advice from the rest of the world, they continue their efforts to “keep bombs falling on my head”.  I take this very personally and would do so even if I were not Jewish and a veteran of World War II.  That war was fought to end the Nazi threat to the peace of the world. That peace has obviously not been achieved and my participation has been for naught.