Living On Tenterhooks
What must it do to a nation's collective psyche to fully accept that for their country, 'normal' is represented by living under a virtual state of siege. Confronted on all of its borders by populations who wish it ill. Relishing some relief that through a long series of experiences two of its neighbours deigned to sign treaties of peace. Knowing that the others have no wish to live in peace with them, but have every desire to drive them, as a nation, as an independent sovereign country with a different culture and religion. entirely out of the region.It cannot result in a very healthy sense of self-awareness, yet the people of Israel do feel and demonstrate a healthy appetite for living life to its fullest. The sword of Damocles may hang heavy over their heads, with the full realization that their geographic enemies have every intention of continuing to make life as difficult as possible, yet hope springs, as the saying goes, eternal. There is a rich cultural life, from the secular to the orthodox religious. Institutes of higher learning churn out scientists, sociologists, medical doctors, philosophers, writers of note.
The country is a vibrant laboratory of individuals striving in unison in support of a common cause. Even while accepting within it, as qualified citizens, non-Jews - Palestinian Arabs, Christians, Kurds; Israelis all. The country's economy is an engine of prosperity, one based not on oil riches but on its peoples' talents, determination, and efforts to make the most of what life has offered to them under trying circumstances.
It's a country of contrasts, a multitude of peoples from various backgrounds and cultures, striving to live together harmoniously, rewarded by the kind of prosperity that comes to those who struggle to succeed. From market gardening, the manufacture and export of goods, technological expertise like telecommunications, desalinization techniques, emerging new medical procedures, trade with some of its neighbours, the country builds upon its successes, reaching toward the future.
Yet the threat of violence from neighbours is never absent. While working toward a potential peace agreement with neighbouring Palestinians, it fends off deadly rocket attacks from others of its neighbouring Palestinian populations. The world looked on with disfavour when Israel finally resorted to the improbable yet productive erection of a giant wall to separate it from its neighbours. In the process, finally halting the numerous deadly suicide bombings that took so many Israeli lives.
Alone among its neighbours the country has, within its political ruling body, elected parliamentarians whose first pledge is not to the country that succors them and gives them opportunities not permitted them elsewhere, but to the Arab ideal of a Palestinian state sitting on the very geography that the state of Israel occupies. Israel is expected by itself and by the world at large to live to a far different standard than any other country on earth. When the country's armed forces take protective action to defend itself against violence from its neighbours the world is dismayed and judgemental.
And here is Israel, preparing for a 5-day emergency preparedness drill. To ensure that its population is prepared for the potential eventuality of an attack. Air raid sirens will alert the population, and citizens have been instructed where to locate to the nearest public bomb shelters. The country's National Emergency Authority has prepared government offices and hospitals to respond, implementing emergency plans in a mock catastrophic attack. To that end, all first-responders; rescue services, hospitals, police, the army and security services will participate in the drill.
Are there many other countries in the world, prospering, representing as an island of calm and security in a sea of chaos and revolt, who must thus prepare their citizens for the possibility of catastrophe visited upon them by the plans of hostile neighbours, and their proxy terrorists? A medical center plans to hold full-scale emergency exercises, simulating a direct hit resulting in a emergency patient evacuation drill, as though the entire structure was set afire, and further hazards represented by the presence of toxic chemicals.
It's an assessment mechanism as well as a practical test of the country's ability to respond to violence directly aimed to produce the worst possible civilian losses through a well-planned attack. This potential for attacks causing wide-spread and dreadful casualties, loss of life, destruction of vital civil infrastructure is no imagined nightmare. It represents the reality of the country's cities being targeted by GRAD missile attacks, those missiles becoming ever more sophisticated and powerful. Directed to do their worst by a determined enemy.
An enemy, moreover, for whom so much sympathy has been found elsewhere in the world that the country's military is constrained from carrying out military missions with a view to eradicating those ongoing and very real threats. Bombardments of rockets and missiles which do not necessarily hit their mark, but yet which instill a sense of fear and foreboding on an ongoing basis in that vulnerable population, merit a hard, negative response, but the world, looking on, is repulsed by such responses. It is not their citizens, after all, who must live in fear.
Sirens sound 30 seconds before rockets hit their target, leaving the population with a 15-second opportunity to reach safe rooms, shelters, or other designated places of refuge. The initially primitive-type home-made armaments fashioned by Hamas terrorists in Gaza have graduated, with much assistance from other terror groups like Hezbollah and Iran's military, to more finished products, with "improved" carnage capabilities.
That's one segment of the multi-faceted potential for attack alarms in the country; the other, perhaps more existentially serious one represented by the oft-repeated intention of Iran to eradicate Israel from the face of the Middle East. The drills therefore, are also in preparation for the eventuality of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack from Iran, possibly in co-operation with its client-state Syria - perhaps Lebanon's assistance would not be too far behind, led by Hezbollah.
Iran has made no secret of its triumphs in engineering its nuclear facility, with the estimable assistance of North Korea and Russia. Its determined drive to attain nuclear sufficiency for peaceful means does not quite explain its heady love affair with uranium enrichment. Its celebrations, loud and triumphant for the delectation of the world at large, at every step of its unfolding story of nuclear success, despite the UN's toothless sanctions speaks volumes about its intentions.
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad entertains himself by taunting the international community with each new step forward in the country's progress toward nuclear arms. Its affront against human decency by each repeated vow to destroy the "Zionist entity" bespeaks the Islamist state's progress as a celebrated nation of Muslim peace and brotherhood.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Technology, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Monday, March 17, 2008
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