Where were you?

There are people around the world, in western and eastern countries who seem to have this unshakable belief that theirs is the moral high ground, that they and they alone, truly understand what it is like to be an Israeli and what is truly holding up the peace process.

That their knowledge that one side of a conflict has superior force means that that side is the guilty party.

To those who stand on the sidelines, in foreign lands, no closer to Israel than the screen of your TV and condemn, I ask:

Where were you those nights?

Where were you when Israel left the Gaza strip?

Where were you when Hamas was elected?

Where were you when we walked to school with gas masks?

Where were you the nights we couldn’t sleep because we were afraid?

Where were you when we ran home every day after school terrified of what we might find?

Where were you the nights the siren came?

Where were you when they murdered children in their beds?

Where were you when the rockets fell on our homes?

Where were you when the buses exploded and the bodies had to be carried out?

Where were you when we were told never to use the excuse “That we were just following orders”?

Where were you when the draft came and we all went to serve?

Where were you when soldiers were ordered to disobey immoral orders?

Where were you when cars started ramming into civilians on the sidewalk?

Where were you when Palestinian children began stabbing innocents in the streets?

Where were you when the shooting started?

Where were you when people began calling you a monster for wearing a uniform?

Where were you when the world began to compare the use of civilians as shields with the use of shields as a war crime?

Where were you when a celebration was had on the streets of Palestine over the deaths of civilians?

Where were you when we were promised a 24 hour cease fire which was breached by Gazan missiles nine times in a row?

Where were you when “Summer War” just became something we expected?

Where were you when a country that went above and beyond any other country in history to avoid civilian casualties was put up on the gibbet for crows?

Where were you?