Tuesday, May 21st, 2024

Hey there, graduating students wearing keffiyehs with your caps and gowns. Congrats on your achievement and good luck as you move forward with your freshly-earned degree in hand. Too bad you have enormous holes in your education. I hear you’re siding with the Palestinians because they’re being attacked by the Big Bad Israel.

But guess what. Rockets are being fired into Israel. Yes, really. And this is nothing new. Last year at this time, in only April and May, there were 1,643 rockets fired into Israel from Gaza. Guess what. That was during “peace time”. No war going on. There were no Israelis in Gaza. At all. Why didn’t you hear about it? Because Gazans have been firing deadly rockets into Israel for so long, daily, that the mainstream media doesn’t even see it as news anymore. It’s like reporting that the sun is shining in Florida.

And guess what. The news also never reported how, in the three and a half weeks following October 7, another 8,500 rockets and mortar shells were launched at Israel. (10% failed and landed in the Gaza Strip.) And this is while Israel was still trying to deal with the massacre and the 240 innocent people who had been kidnapped and were being held -and-Gd-knows-what-else- in Gaza. (130 are still held there in captivity. Yes, I know. The news doesn’t bother to talk about that either.)

Guess what else. In November, more than 2,000 more rockets were launched at Israel, again with 10% failing and ending up falling in the Gaza Strip. The groups responsible were Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), Ansar al-Sunna, Force-17, the Army of Islam, Tawhid wal-Jihad, Abdullah Azzam Brigades, and Mujahideen Shura Council. I’ll bet you didn’t know that Israel had So. Many. Enemies. all wishing to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Oh, and guess what else. The rockets are coming from the north, too. From Lebanon. There’s a wide range of rockets and missiles, different sizes, designs and power: Mortar, Qassam, Al-Quds, Katyusha, Grad, Fajr-5. And guess what. Israel invented the Iron Dome to zap those rockets in the air as they approach so that they don’t reach the people in Israeli towns and settlements. That’s what Israel does. They do all they can to protect their citizens. They handle the situation. Then the rest of the world benefits from their innovation. You’re familiar with Israel’s innovations, right? Cell phones, Waze, the medical Pill-Cam?

Unless you’re merely a rabid anti-Semite, I’m assuming you didn’t know any of this as you demonstrated and protested against Israel in the past seven months. But here’s what I say to you, with my congrats on your graduation. You have a degree in something because you focused on that subject and learned what you could about it. Going forward, before you don a keffiyeh, before you protest against Zionism (do you even know what that word means?), before you join in shouting “From the River to the Sea” (again, do you know which river and which sea?), read a little bit of history. Study up. Fill the holes in your education about the Middle East. And guess what. I’d wager that you’ll take off the keffiyeh pretty fast. Go forth with your new degree and do positive things for the world. Like Israel.

Am Yisrael Chai!