Operation Protective Edge

On June 12th 2014, three Jewish Israeli boys were kidnapped. Their names were Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah.

 Israel responded with Operation Brother's Keeper, and arrested hundreds of Hamas members. Ten Palestinians were killed in the operation in the exchange of fire between the forces. In response, terrorists started to launch rockets at an increasing rate from the Gaza Strip towards Israel. On the second week of Operation Brother's Keeper, Israel was under rocket attacks on a daily basis, but luckily most of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome.

The Iron Dome is a missile defense system. It was developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Currently Israel has nine Iron Dome missile batteries throughout the country.

The bodies of the Israeli boys were found on June 30^th, and on August 20^th Hamas officialsfinally admittedthat Hamas's military wing wasresponsible for the kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli teens.

OperationProtective Edge officially started on July 8^th 2014. It was a military operation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) inside theGaza Strip. The operation ended with a temporary ceasefire that lasts until today.

The operation started as a responseto thecontinuousrocket attacks from the Gaza Strip towards Israel that started because of Operation Brother's Keeper.

At first, the operation mostly consisted of heavy bombardmentsby the Air Force, Armored Corps and Artillery Corps, as Israel suffered heavy rocket attacks and terrorist infiltrations that came from the Gaza Strip by sea and through underground tunnels.

The second phase started on July 17^th, when Israeli forces began a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in order to find and destroy the underground tunnels the terrorists used to get into Israel.

The third phase started on August 5^th, all the IDFground forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip but the fighting went back to the first phase, where there were aerial attacks.

During Operation Protective Edge there were 12 attempts to reach a ceasefire that were mostly accepted by Israel but rejectedby the Hamas.

After 50 days of fighting a ceasefirewas signed.

At the beginning of the operation a number of Iron Dome batteries were spread throughout the country to protect its civilians.During the operation 4,594 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel, of which 735 were intercepted by the Iron Dome, 64 fell in residential areas, 188 of them have failed and fell inside the Gaza Strip, and 3,607 fell in open areas. The IDF attacked 6,231terror targets in the Gaza Strip, 10,590 buildings were severelydamaged, 4,024 houses were completely destroyed and 32 terror tunnels were destroyed.

On the Israeli side 67 soldiers and fivecivilians were killed, and 1,620 soldiers and 837 civilians were wounded. Onthe Palestinian side, 2,203 Palestinians were killed during the operation, out of them, between 1068 and1408 terrorists were killed and over 11,000 Palestinian citizens were wounded, and over 200 terrorists were captured by Israel. In addition, dozens of Palestinians were executed by Hamas because they collaborated with Israel. Between 300 thousand to half a million people were left without a house.

I don't live near Gaza Strip so I didn't hear many sirens, in fact the only sirenthat we did have was at 3am, but my cousins that live near Beersheba had many sirensand they had to run and find a shelter in order to stay safe. I couldn't go to visit them as I do every summer.

My uncle is a military doctor inthereserves. Even though is already in his 40s, he has to do a longer reserve service because he is a doctor. During Operation Protective Edgehe got called to build a temporary cliniconthe border. He told me that they could see the rockets before they heard the sirens, and when they saw a rocket they had to lay down, cover their heads with helmets and put on a blanket, and just pray that they wouldn’t get hit. After a while he came home for his son's Bar Mitzvah that was partiallycanceled because of the security risk. After that the army realized that they are demanding too much from a 40 year old guy that is the official doctor of his kibbutz and the area and is a father of 4 little kids,he was too needed in his own life.

Every summer the Scouts have a summer camp. All year long we wait anxiously for and prepare for the camp which is the big closing eventof the year. This year was supposed to be a bit different for me because it was my last year at camp before I become a Scouts counselor. But because of the security risk our camp got canceled. We were very upset because we had already prepared structures that we wanted to build and we even bought the food but the camp was canceled atthe last minute.

The whole world covered Operation Protective Edge from both sides involved in the conflict. Most of the world was against us, blaming us for being the mean occupiers of the Gaza Strip, saying that we killed them unstoppably and bombed innocents in an inhuman way. The social networks were filled with hate towards Israel and the media was full of pictures of the dead bodies in the Gaza Strip, showing lonely, confused kids and houses turn into dust. On the Israeli side the world saw the amazing Iron Dome in action, but you could only see it from a few miles away. Although the IDF was asked to have a reporter join every unit that wentinto the terror tunnels, they refused. If they would have agreed the world could have seen the Israeli side and the IDF's actions might have been viewed differently, and then perhaps the world might have understood us better and maybe would have even supported us.

Most of the spotlight and the mess it created was caused from the biggest celebrities that had to pick a political side, and most of them supported the weak- the Palestinians. Although most of the social networks were against Israel and #freePalestine was always one of the most talked subjects on Twitter, there were a few celebrities that supported Israel and had to deal with negativecomments. The most prominent was the late Joan Rivers. She was an amazing ambassador for Israel that always protected us with sharp but exact words. Unfortunately, she died recently when something went wrong during a routine operation.

Israel, unlike the Palestinians, had problems explaining its goals and actionsto the world and this is why they think we are the occupiers of the Palestinians.