Some things never change.

This month I got an update from the blog's site monitor, and I was quite surprised to see that people still go in and check if I've added anything. Given that I haven't added anything for I long time, I was actually quite flattered. I made a mental note to add a post this weekend, in which I would break away from the war theme and talk about the outrages in the education system in Israel as a whole, and Qiryat Gat in particular. And then a couple of things happened that made me change my mind.

The first thing was a report on the radio that said that since the "cease-fire", over one hundred rockets have landed in Israel. I wonder how many people knew that – both inside and outside of Israel? I, for one, didn't know that the amount was so high, and I live within the radius of the rockets! Now, I wonder if Israel had fired 100 rockets into the Gaza strip over the same period of time how many people would know… Half the world and its mother, I would imagine.

Our own personal link to Sderot, which has suffered the worst of the bombing, is the administrative head of our health centre. By chance, we were at the health centre this week, and we asked her how things are. She said, "Can you imagine being at home and suddenly hearing a 'boom', knowing that your child is on her way to the library?" Personally, I can't. How these people maintain their sanity is a mystery to me.

Then, this week, our son, Yonatan, got a letter in the post. Not just any letter. It was his first call-up for the army. In June, he'll go to the army centre in Be'er Sheva for the initial round of examinations. I'm pretty sure he'll go into some form of combat unit, provided he passes the medical. Who knows what his three years of military service will bring? I don't even want to think about it. I just tell myself that it is something that has to be done.

Altogether, it has been a pretty depressing week. We were called in to a meeting at my 'main' job, where the probable effects of the worldwide recession/depression (which hasn't really hit Israel yet) were explained very clearly. However, in addition to the general common-garden effects that everyone else has to face, we, being Israelis, have an added 'bonus'. The knock-on effects of the Gaza campaign. Employees in one of our European offices have even received hate-mail because they work for an Israeli company, not to mention one weirdo's call on his blog ("SOS palestina") to boycott our products. Also, apparently, every penny that we earn goes towards killing Palestinians… The fact that every penny the Hamas get their paws on goes towards rockets and suicide bombers is, of course, irrelevant, and probably quite legitimate in those people's eyes. There is not one Jewish family still living in the Gaza strip, so what more do they want? All or nothing, it would seem.

Finally, today was the last straw. An Arab tractor driver tried to drive his bulldozer into a police car and push it into a bus. Many of you who read this blog will know exactly what I am referring to when I say that it was like turning the clock back some eight months. In fact, when we heard the news, Sari and I just froze and looked at each other without speaking. This time we were lucky. This time there won't be a wife and children who get a call telling them that the husband or father that they said goodbye to in the morning won't be coming home again.

This is the first sentence of how it was reported on the BBC news site.

"The driver of a construction vehicle in West Jerusalem has been shot dead by police after he rammed a police car."

I'm willing to bet that if an Israeli had done the same thing in East Jerusalem, the semantics would have been slightly different.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the double standards in this whole messy affair are only making it worse. The more Israel feels its back is against the wall, and that no one will even listen to us, let alone give us a fair hearing, the more intransigent we will become. We obviously have nothing to gain by doing what the rest of the world would like us to do. In fact we have got a lot to lose. Our lives, basically... But then, Jewish/Israeli lives have never really been worth that much to the rest of the world, have they?