Reporter's Notebook: An emotional disconnect

[Mosby]

After three weeks of driving around a country at war, one thing about this time is abundantly clear. Just about every Israeli Jew supports the IDF operation in Gaza.

We already knew this from the polls, of course. A Wednesday survey by Tel Aviv University reported the support at a staggering 94 percent among Israeli Jews. But hearing this first-hand offers an insight the polls can't give: the rationale for that support despite international condemnation and images of carnage out of Gaza.

Over the past three weeks, as evidence of civilian suffering in Gaza flooded media outlets worldwide, I asked Israelis what they thought of the fighting in Gaza and the suffering of the local population.

From hi-tech entrepreneurs in Ramat Gan to social workers in Sderot, taxi drivers and graduate students alike, the responses were almost as consistent as the level of support for the operation. The responsibility for the conflict, and for the suffering in Gaza, rests solely on Hamas, Israelis say. They often added that there could be no peace with an enemy who placed their own children in the line of fire.

"I'm disconnected emotionally from what is happening in Gaza," said Yamit Shkolnik, a 26-year-old Jerusalemite and new mother. "It doesn't anger me or sadden me. It doesn't make me happy either." That's because "they use their dead to kill us. They shoot from inside houses, and we have to take out those houses."

Eli Magen, a graduate student from Modi'in, said he is on the Left, but insists, "We've tried everything to make peace. We pulled out of 85% of the territory we conquered in 1967, and it got us missiles on our heads. Then they went and elected Hamas. What are we supposed to do with a group that thinks and acts like the Ku Klux Klan? There's nothing Israel could have done to avoid this fight."

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