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Israeli Tourism in Recovery Mode

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- Israel's tourism industry is scrambling to recover after Palestinian rocket barrages on Israeli cities and towns took a tremendous toll on summer tourism.

Hopes to continue record tourism in the summer months vanished, with the numbers dropping to lows not seen since the summer of 2006.

Israeli Tourism Minister Uzi Landau and Director-General of the Tourism Ministry Amir Halevy didn't waste any time addressing the loss.

"We are investing in marketing in order to increase the numbers of incoming tourists," Landau announced.

With an estimated 200,000 people working in the tourism sector, Halevy predicted that additional funding would "generate several times as much in revenue for the economy."

One Israeli paper blamed the "Israeli operation in Gaza," but in fact the summer trouble started earlier.

In late June, Hamas terrorists carried out a pre-planned and well-financed abduction of three Israeli teens as they headed home for the weekend. The IDF immediately launched Operation Brother's Keeper, an intensive effort to rescue the boys.

In the IDF's sweeping searches of Palestinian Arab areas in Judea and Samaria, tens of Hamas convicts, swapped for former IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who returned to their terror careers, were rearrested. (Hamas is demanding their re-release as part of the ceasefire agreement with Israel.)

It took less than three weeks to uncover the bodies of the three boys in a shallow grave near the P.A.-controlled city of Hebron. An autopsy confirmed they were murdered shortly after their abduction.

Next, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists in the Gaza Strip quadrupled the daily rocket barrages, a proven tactic that worked in 2009 and 2012, to elicit targeted airstrikes on the terror infrastructure. Then the terrorists upped the ante again with attempted attacks using tunnels dug under the Israeli border.

Meanwhile, the pinpoint airstrikes provided ample opportunity to use the populace as human shields and provide photo journalists with heart-wrenching images of injured innocents.

Some say the IDF was caught off guard by the tens of attack tunnels that opened inside Israel. In any case, the tunnels were the deciding factor to launch a ground incursion. Israeli troops were tasked with uncovering and destroying more than 30 of them, built with the cement meant to provide housing and improve the lives of the residents of Gaza.

U.S. and European air carriers also briefly halted flights to Israel, claiming rocket fire from Gaza was a threat to incoming and outgoing flights. Some said that move was also politically motivated to force Israel to back down from its military operation.

But there have been some bright spots. Many Christian groups continued with plans to visit Israel despite the trouble.  And others planned special trips to show their solidarity with the Jewish state, like a group from the National Religious Broadcasters that included Billy Graham's daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, and Bible teacher Kay Arthur, and another group that came with Senator Rick Santorum.

It's not the first time that a war took a toll on Israel's tourism industry and the economy and sadly it probably won't be the last.

But just like what happened when Pharaoh oppressed the children of Israel in the Book of Exodus and it made them increase and get stronger, so the tourism industry and the economy only rebounds stronger after such a challenge.

That's the blessing of God and the Israeli way.

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About The Author

Tzippe
Barrow

From her perch high atop the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, Tzippe Barrow tries to provide a bird’s eye view of events unfolding in her country. Tzippe’s parents were born to Russian Jewish immigrants, who fled the czar’s pogroms to make a new life in America. As a teenager, Tzippe wanted to spend a summer in Israel, but her parents, sensing the very real possibility that she might want to live there, sent her and her sister to Switzerland instead. Twenty years later, the Lord opened the door to visit the ancient homeland of her people.