TEL AVIV. – Just a few days ago, when Iran attacked with drones and missiles Israel, in response to the Israeli attack on an annex of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Life returns to normal in the Hebrew country, although there is a lot of tension and abundant military surveillance.
Alarm sirens sounded everywhere in the early hours of Saturday the 13th. Even the national airspace was closed to the world for a few hours and hundreds of commercial flights were postponed. Many were cancelled, but DIARIO LAS AMÉRICAS decided to continue with the trip and here we are.
Yosef, a boy from Tel Aviv, who lives near the sea that bathes the city’s coast, the eastern Mediterranean, felt the weight of the Iranian threat and ran to one of the many shelters that exist in the place.
“I trust the military protection we have, but you never know what can happen,” he said.
According to the official Israeli report, more than 200 drones, with the capacity to at least damage targets and cause death or injury, and some 300 missiles, with a similar power, were launched over Hebrew territory, but the anti-aircraft security system, Seconded by the support of the United States, Great Britain, France and even Jordan and Iraq, it was able to destroy at least 90%.
“At first we thought it was just another threat. But then, when we heard the deadline of hours we thought it was not a joke. But we Israelis are used to this,” the young man stressed.
No deaths were reported, but there were about 20 injuries who were quickly treated by health authorities.
Now everyone is waiting for the Israeli Government’s response to the frustrated Iranian attack.
“It must be moderate. Don’t make things more complicated,” said the young man.
What’s going on
Israel is once again in the news in the midst of a terrorist and military escalation that forces us to analyze why a good part of the world fails to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict, or rather the Jewish Islamic confrontation.
“Some wash their hands and throw the ball onto the playing field, while others stand next to the less strong without fully taking into account that there is no reason to kill civilians, children and the elderly,” the emeritus professor of Law from the University of Lleida, in Spain, Ferran Espaser.
In fact, the Palestinian armed group Hamas, which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2006 and does not recognize the existence of the State of Israel, launched more than 3,000 destructive rockets and attacked towns in Israeli territory on October 7, 2023.
The images narrate Dantesque episodes of Hamas soldiers who set fire to homes to force their inhabitants out and slaughter them without mercy.
Some 1,140 people were killed by Hamas, around 1,000 were injured and 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip, including 30 children.
Israel’s response was immediate.
The Israeli government responded with an unprecedented military attack to combat Hamas and, as humanitarian conditions worsen in Gaza, Palestinian authorities say more than 30,000 civilians have been killed by Israeli bombing.
Even before
Since the immemorial times of the Roman Empire, the Jews first and then the Palestinians have not been able to do without confrontation or religious prejudices that blame each other.
Centuries ago, when the Romans practically evicted the Jews and the Muslims arrived later.
Later, the Ottoman Empire succumbed to the First World War, beginning a conflict that, a century later, is still alive.
Eretz Israel, the land promised to the Jews since biblical times, and later Palestine, the place of Muslims, is the territory that the British proposed to divide between both parties and that the United Nations (UN) awarded in 1947 to create the two states. .
Why Iran attacks
Israel and Iran were allies until the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979, which led to a regime that has used anti-Semitic sentiment as a key part of its ideology.
Iran does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and calls for its eradication.
The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”
On the other hand, Israel perceives Iran as a real threat, financing and guiding terrorist forces, such as the Hamas and Hezbollah military groups.
And if we add to this what half the world thinks, that Iran secretly seeks to create nuclear weapons, although it denies it, the situation becomes even more complicated.
“The building attached to the Iranian consulate in Damascus was the headquarters of an Iranian terrorist group that runs the government in Tehran,” said the young Israeli taxi driver Matías, Argentine by origin, who arrived in Israel 13 years ago.
“Now we are attentive to the sound of sirens. When they ring you have to look for shelter,” she noted.
There is no shortage of those who believe that here, in the precise place where a good part of the human species began its great civilization and Jesus Christ was born, another great world war will start.
