Israel Matzav: What if the terrorists hit my backyard?

What if the terrorists hit my backyard?

I have explained on numerous occasions that the reason that the government put up with rocket fire into Sderot and other areas within the 'Gaza envelope' for so long is that those areas are NotInMyBackYard. On the other hand, Tel Aviv and its environs are in my back yard. If Central Israel is hit, writes Alex Fishman in YNet, Israel will respond as if the Goldstone Report had never been written.

While Sderot sustained rocket attacks for eight years until the military and political conditions “were ripe” for a retaliatory strike in Gaza, Tel Aviv will not sustain such attacks for eight days; not even for eight hours.

In order to put an immediate end to missile attacks on central Israel – regardless of where they originated: Syria, Lebanon, or Gaza – we will see massive retribution that will make Operation Cast Lead appear like a tiny scratch in the Middle East’s violent history.

...

Israel’s enemies are counting on Goldstone: They will fire missiles at Tel Aviv, and the world will stop Israel from punishing them for deterrence purposes. Yet they’re wrong.

Israel would not be able to afford to wait for its ground forces to successfully operate in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, or any other site in order to curb the fire. Time is a critical element, and a successful ground operation is a matter of days or weeks, which means more casualties and more critical hits sustained by the home front. The hundreds of rockets that will penetrate through the Israeli-American defense systems will require Israel to respond immediately.

And here the formula is cruel and simple: The more effective the rocket terror war will be, the less “proportional” the response would be.

Under such circumstances, we will see a massive retaliatory blow, from the air and from the ground, targeting various infrastructures and sites and being painful enough to prompt the enemy to hold its fire. If the world expects Israel to only hit military targets and chase every rocket or launching site, it expects Israel to commit suicide.

Please God, when the time comes, let us do this pre-emptively, and not sit on our hands and wait to absorb a first-strike to keep the World happy, as was done in 1973.

Read the whole thing.

The picture at the top is an Iranian-made Zelzal missile (200 kilometer range) being launched. And yes, Hezbullah has them.

Israel Matzav: What if the terrorists hit my backyard?