By: Hank Hardy

A hero is someone who does something heroic. Here are some examples of heroic actions:

• Someone who enters a burning building to save a child, an elderly or just about anyone else, sacrificing his own life and safety to save others.
• A person who runs across the railroad track to push someone out of the path of an oncoming train.
• In war, a soldier who goes behind the enemy line to blow up a bridge or a barrack or shoots enemy soldiers knowing that he could be killed any moment.

There are so many examples of heroism but let’s focus on the last one “the war heroes”.

In the recent Israeli bombing of Gaza, I was looking for people to call heroes on both sides. On the Israeli side I see wave after wave of war planes dropping bombs and firing missiles on the civilians below killing 1000’s of them indiscriminately. Men, women, children… makes no difference. If they are Palestinians, it’s OK to kill them. The war planes accomplished another objective which is destroying many homes, schools, hospitals and just about any buildings. After the war planes killed and destroyed their targets, the ground troops consisting of heavy tanks and artillery, not to mention thousands of soldiers, moved in, doing the dirty work on the ground as the planes did from the sky. Where’s the heroism in that. This action can best be described as cowardly!! The Israeli soldiers are nothing but a group of thugs and criminals.

On the other side, the Palestinians, having no war planes, no tanks, no regular army or heavy weapons, were trying very hard to just stay alive. Their weapons consist of guns and home-made rockets. They defended their territory with their lives and managed to kill many Israeli soldiers. Those Palestinians are true heroes because they sacrificed their lives to defend their land from the intruders.

The Israelis shamelessly claimed that they won the war!! Dahh. It’s like arranging a boxing match between Mike Tyson and a 10 year old kid, and Iron Mike brags to everyone that he won the fight.

Aren’t there any Israeli heroes? Yes there are. In the recent so called “war” in Gaza, which I call a senseless massacre, a number of Israeli soldiers refused to serve in the army and be sent to kill in Gaza, those are real heroes. A number of Israelis and Jews who have conscious and high moral value criticized Netanyahu and his group of thugs for committing all these atrocities and murders in Gaza. Those are real heroes. People like Meko Peled, Jeff Halper, Ann Baltzer and many other Israelis and Jews who stood up to the Israeli government and decided to speak out against the murders and destructions in Palestine are true heroes.