More than 10 days ago, on a Sunday morning, I got a phone call. On the other line was Miri Menahem and she said, “Mayale, my dear, you have a new family.”
In any other country that was the beginning of a joyful optimistic story, but in Israel that is the phone call that every Israeli diplomat dreads.
That is because Miri Menahem is the director of the unit for bereaved families, and having a new family means that we didn’t only loose a son or daughter in the state of Israel, but we also lost one from the state of Texas.
And that particular Sunday morning, we all lost one of the 53 soldiers that have been killed in battle, our hero Sean Carmeli. May his memory be blessed.
It has been 23 days since Hamas launched its attack against Israel. During that time, more than 2,500 rockets and missiles have been launched into Israel, raining down upon innocent men, women and children.
When you contemplate the numbers, it's important to consider the power just one rocket has when used - unprovoked - as a weapon against an innocent population. These rockets are aimed at communities - civilians who simply are trying to live their day-to-day lives.
There have been schools destroyed; now unfit to greet students at the start of the new school year. There is the recent death of an innocent civilian - a husband and father - who died while bringing food and candy to soldiers in a gesture of kindness and support. There are the many who have been injured, including two young girls who never will be able to walk again as a result of catastrophic injuries sustained in one attack.
Launching rockets at a civilian population is an act denounced by the international community as an act of terrorism and yet it is at the heart of Hamas' warfare tactics. They not only target our children, but they also use their children as shields. They are hiding rockets in schools, thereby making those schools targets. They launch rockets from civilian homes, from the windows of children's bedrooms and grandparents' living rooms, endangering those structures and the lives within. These cowardly acts can be described simply as evil.
Evil has no moral compass - it sees no right or wrong. While Israel continues to do all they can to protect its citizen and its children, Hamas would not even respect a humanitarian cease fire designed to allow their people access to aid in the form of food and medical care. Since the beginning of the ground operation, we faced evil at its worst. Many terrorists used underground tunnels to cross into Israel, carrying weapons including guns and bombs. Their intent? To murder babies and their mothers in their sleep - the kind of unspeakable bloodshed that belongs only in horror movies.
When evil knocks on your door, there is only one way to face it: by standing tall and firm and fighting back.
Two weeks ago, IDF forces commenced a ground operation in order to eliminate the terrorist tunnels that run from the Gaza strip into Israel. This is our way of fighting evil and protecting ourselves from further unprovoked and unwarranted attacks.
We are fortunate in that we do not fight this evil alone. The world stands with Israel and understands very well that this is the time for people who side with freedom and democracy to say, "Enough is enough!" Leaders from all over the world, including President Obama, the Prime Ministers of Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and France, stand with Israel. They realize what the people of Israel know all too well: this is the time to stand by what is right. This is the time we must fight the evil that exists underground.
(A Transcript of the Prepared Remarks)