24 hours ago, almost everyone in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Ramallah, thought they had a deal for a long-range truce in Gaza. Just beforemidnight, Tuesday, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean experienced up close and personal what a promise from Hamas means.
Cooper, along with his wife and Ehud Yaari, Israel TV’s leading expert on Arab affairs had just pulled up to an apartment house in Jerusalem where the Coopers arestaying. Suddenly the alarm rang out across the city. Rabbi Cooper joined the others in jumping out of the car and hugged a low wall for about four minutes. Just as thesirens went silent a massive boom could be heard, the Iron Dome intercepted a rocket headed towards a neighborhood somewhere in Jerusalem or adjacent BeitShemesh.
“For nine years Israelis have had to put up with this? No country can survive when an entire section of its population centers has itsdaily routines upended. While they don’t want to do it, it appears only IDF action, not empty words of a terror group can definitively knock out Hamas’ military/terrorcapabilities. Then just maybe the people of Gaza can rebuild their civilian infrastructure under complete transparency and outside control and Israelis in the South canget back their lives.
This is very personal as my niece is in the Beit Shemesh area with her three day old infant girl and my daughter, just a few blocks fromhere, is in her ninth month, expecting her sixth child," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper.
