I’ve been asked to share some thoughts and feelings about Operation Protective Edge. It’s been hard for me to write about this, since over the past year I’ve grown more and more opposed to violence. I am certain, beyond doubt, that violence only yields more of the same. And war, we know, is the epitome of violence.

But after listening to interviews with politicians, army officials, and leaders from different ends of the political spectrum, I can now write, with a heavy heart, that we had no choice. We go to war with a heavy heart, we go to war knowing that the end, be what it may, will be painful. We go to war knowing that the end will only be a beginning of something else. But we go to war, because terrorism cannot prevail.

As a citizen of Israel’s south, living less than 40 KM from the Gaza border, I’ve been living this war for almost six years. Other neighboring villages, for even longer. Six years of sirens, of shrieks, of explosions, constantly reminding us that someone is intent on, and capable of, destroying us. Me, my husband, my friends. Each child born into this chaotic and incomprehensible experience. My two-year-old can barely speak and knows how to say “boom.” My (not yet) six-year-old still finds it hard to grasp that there are some places, some children that (up until yesterday) have never heard a siren, don’t even know what a “miklat”–a sheltered room–is. This war has been going on long before the IDF dropped the first bomb Sunday night, marking the beginning of the operation. The problem is, and we all know it, that you can’t fight terrorism. You can’t fight people who don’t cherish human lives, not even their own. They have nothing to lose; we have everything.

For me, the fact that my children have lost part of their childhood to terrorism is obvious, and it is a tremendous, indescribable loss for me. How many of you have children growing up knowing that someone wants to hurt them? Because that’s what missiles do, you know. And they know it too. You can’t fool these children. Do you know how hard it is to grant them a sense of security? Do you know how many endless discussions–theological, psychological, sociological, political–I’ve conducted with my son on “why this is happening”? Think of the lexicon, the words a four-year-old hears: missiles, shelter, siren, soldiers. Think of the limitations, the days when it’s too dangerous to go outside, when day-camp is cancelled, when you can’t play in the park. Imagine the music of the siren these children play repeatedly in their head. And how do they picture, in their innocent little heads, those evil people with the missiles? So yes, being the liberal, humanist I wish I could truly be, we know it’s not everybody there. That there are some (too many) really, real ly bad people who do really, really bad things. That’s called terrorism. And it’s got to stop.

So this war is not going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I’m afraid it won’t contribute to the internal Arab-Jewish conflict our country is bleeding over, exacerbated over the past months by the horrible kidnappings of Naftali, Gil-Ad, Eyal, Shelly and Muhammad, may they rest in peace, either. This war says, first things first: terrorism cannot be part of our life. We cannot negotiate with terrorism, we cannot strive for peace with terrorism. The Hamas terrorist regime is destroying two nations, and we can’t move on like this. Once terrorism is out of the way, we can discuss territories, refugees, nationalities, histories. That too, will be painful. But for now, for the future of both Israeli and Palestinian children, we need to do whatever we can to eradicate terrorism and not allow it to control our lives. And for that, I thank the Israeli government and specific ally, the Israeli Defence Forces, for once again showing the world how much we treasure lives, and long for peace.

Danielle Schreiber Rubin from Netivot, Israel.