6-Nov-11: Rocket attacks from Gaza again; southern edge of Ashkelon is hit

A midnight report says a rocket fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip crashed to earth just south of Ashkelon, a southern Israeli city, a short time ago. No reports of injury or damage at the present time.

UPDATE: Sunday morning 3:30am - a second Gazan rocket, seeking Jewish Israeli civilians like all the other jihadist missiles before it and those to come, crashed into the same general area on Ashkelon's southern flank. This time there is a victim: Ynet says it caused shrapnel wounds to a foreign worker who is now hospitalized at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon.

5-Nov-11: Israel successfully and surgically pre-empts yet another Islamic Jihadist rocket attack

AP is reporting in the past hour that a targeted Israeli airstrike on terrorists in the Gaza Strip "preparing to fire rockets into southern Israel" has killed an Islamic Jihad terrorist and wounded three others. A spokesman, Adham Abu Salmia, speaking for the Health Ministry of the terrorism-addicted Hamas regime, confirms the death and injuries and says the four were hit by shrapnel.

For its part, the Islamic Jihad terror organization, quoted by AP, acknowledges not only that the men belong to IJ but that they were members of the same IJ gang that fired rockets into Israel a week ago. We reported two days ago ["Raining rockets, and as always Israeli children are in the terrorists' sights"] that Moshe Ami, a grandfather and resident of Ashkelon, was killed in that attack.

Note that no one - other than the terrorists, caught in the act - was injured in the Israeli attack from the air.

5-Nov-11: Tentacles again in west Africa, and the toll is shooting upwards

Boko Haram terrorists: their doctrine declares
wearing pants a sin, but evidently not really

Back in August, we blogged about the Islamic terrorism that is increasingly gripping Nigeria. We wrote:

Like jihadists everywhere, the Boko Harams seek... to create chaos and terror, and to create a vacuum of stable governance, and then move to fill the void with Sharia, the only "solution" they will accept to the problem of their own deliberate making.

Tonight, there are reports of a massacre carried out by the Boko Harams:

A series of bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Damaturu has killed at least 63 people, the Red Cross says [but the BBC quotes witnesses who saw more than 90 bodies in the local morgue]. Witnesses said the bombs hit several targets, including churches and the headquarters of the Yobe state police. Many people are reported to have fled the town after a night of violence. The Islamist militant group Boko Haram told a newspaper it was behind the attack and that it planned to hit further government targets.

An Indonesian news report adds that "in a mainly Christian neighbourhood of Damaturu called Jerusalem, six churches were bombed in addition to a police station". It's reported that the Boko Harams want to see the establishment of an Islamic state in northern Nigeria. The name of their terrorist organization means "Western education is sin" in the regional Hausa language. Proving that they really mean it, they forbid the wearing of shirts and pants and voting in elections; reject Darwinism and the claim that the earth is a sphere ("contrary to Islam"); and are enraged by the suggestion that rain comes from water evaporated by the sun [BBC]. They may be lunatics, but their weapons don't know that.

UPDATE: Saturday night, 11:25pm - The unofficial toll of victims killed by the Nigerian terrorists is now said to be 150 [source].

5-Nov-11: Friday night rocket attack on southern Israel, and the threat of consequences

Damage to a home in southern Israel from one of last week's
Gazan Palestinian Arab terrorists rocket attacks on civilian centers

With the Sabbath just ended, we're catching up on news of the past 24 hours. And not so surprisingly, there is more rocket-borne terrorism from Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Ynet reports that a missile fired from Gaza Strip landed in an open area in the Eshkol region of southern Israel on Friday night around 9:00pm. No injuries or damage are reported. That was not the outcome sought by the terrorists, and inevitably their hopes and prayers - meaning Israeli casualties - are likely to be realized, to which there are two responses in today's news: one from Israel, the other from Egypt.

An Egyptian government official quoted in the London-based al Hayat paper (he's un-named in the report we saw) warned the Gaza regime today that continued escalation and rocket fire directed at Israeli cities could prompt a military operation in the Strip. Egypt, he said "cannot continue pushing the Israeli side and prevent it from striking Gaza, especially when the other Palestinian factions are not committed to keeping the lull."

The former head of Israel's security services (Shin Bet chief) Avi Dichter (today a member of Knesset in the Kadima party) is quoted today saying "Israel will be forced to reconquer Gaza and disband the terror infrastructure if no other political solution is reached with the help of neighboring countries."

4-Nov-11: Quote of the day: Legendary former head of Israel's secret service on the Murderers-for-Gilad exchange

To us and some civilized societies, the released
murderers are thugs and barbarians. But to societies of
a different kind, most of them unfortunately located
adjacent to Israel's borders, they're celebrities, heroes,
figures worthy of emulation. 

The long-serving former head (2002-2011) of the Mossad (Israel's Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations), Meir Dagan, addressed the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap deal two days ago (Wednesday) at a media conference in Tel Aviv. Ynet has this excerpt:

"I'm not sure I was thrilled with the fact that Netanyahu greeted him back. It seemed problematic to me [that] he's being portrayed as a hero. I would beware of such definitions... Gilad went through terrible suffering and should have been brought back home, but a hero? This event does not strike me as quintessential heroism... I'm glad Shalit is back. We had no choice but to strike a deal, but not this one... I oppose the deal which was implemented. I thought it wrong to release 140 terrorists to the territories. Many of them will resume their terrorist activity. We bolstered Hamas and weakened the PA."

3-Nov-11: Raining rockets, and as always Israeli children are in the terrorists' sights

A family snapshot of Moshe Ami, killed
by Gazan Arab terrorists [source]. Father of 4,
grandfather of five, his death was almost completely
unreported outside Israel

Schools right across southern Israel were closed for the first three days of the school week, reopening yesterday (Wednesday). The decision to close down was taken in light of the intensive rocket attacks executed by the terrorist enemy forces based just the other side of Israel's border with the terrorism-addicted Hamas regime in Gaza.

Some 45 mortars and rockets were fired into Israel since the start of the week. They all originated in Gaza, and not one of them had a military objective. The goal of the terrorists was and is to attack civilians, the younger the better. Hence the defensive measures taken by the education ministry.

The degree of exposure suffered by about a half million Israeli residents of southern communities is frightening. Yisrael Hayom says this may soon change:

Many schools in southern towns and villages still lack protection from rocket attacks, a fact that was emphasized during an emergency meeting of the Knesset Education Committee on Tuesday. Col. Benny Shick, the Homefront Command's structural reinforcement chief, said that by the next school year, all educational institutions within 15 kilometers of Gaza would be protected. The estimated cost of the project is NIS 500 million.

From a distance, there is a numbing sameness about the reports of rockets fired on Israelis. Thousands of terrorist rocket firings have the character, over time, of sounding ordinary. They're not, certainly not if you live in the places they target.

Consider how things were just this past Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath: 26 incoming rockets and mortar shells in just one day, according to Ynet's count. One man, Moshe Ami, 56, a resident of the southern city of Ashkelon which has come under rocket attack from the Gazan Arabs numerous times, was killed after sustaining shrapnel wounds in one of the rocket attacks while driving in his car. Another person was injured.

3-Nov-11: The mass, premature release of hundreds of unrepentant murderers has triggered a debate about introducing the death penalty in Israel

Our child's unrepentant murderer, prematurely and immorally
freed despite being sentenced to 16 life terms, has become
a feted and honored celebrity in the Kingdom of Jordan,
the land of her birth, a country which has a peace treaty
with ours, and the land to which she was "exiled" in
the Shalit-for-terrorists transaction.

We're back this morning after a week traveling and speaking in the United States. Sadly, there are numerous reports of terrorist attacks here that need reporting and we'll get to that. Meanwhile, below is an opinion piece from a US source. We're not entirely convinced of the case the writer presents, but we're certainly hearing similar sentiments more and more in these difficult days. Deroy Murdock is a fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

Israeli Death Penalty the Answer for Hardened Terrorists

Tuesday, 01 Nov 2011
Deroy Murdock

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, previously counted among the toughest leaders in the civilized world, has become softer than the secretary general of the United Nations. Netanyahu recently ransomed a kidnapped Israeli soldier whom Hamas had held hostage since 2006. The price for Sgt. Gilad Shalit's freedom? Israel will free 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Many are hardened terrorists with Israeli and even American blood on their hands. This colossal breach of justice for these victims injects this toxic population back into society. Some of them almost certainly will express their gratitude with machine guns and dynamite.

The first wave of 477 prisoners swapped for Shalit include at least three terrorists who have slaughtered Americans.

• Ahlam Tamimi conspired to attack a Sbarro restaurant on Aug. 9, 2001. This Jerusalem suicide bombing murdered 15 — including Passaic, N.J.'s Shoshana Greenbaum, 31 — and wounded 130 more. Now carefree in Jordan, despite 16 life sentences, Tamimi has no regrets. "It was a calculated act, performed with conviction and faith in Allah," she told a Hamas website. "Why should I repent?"
• Abd al-Hadi Rafa Ghanim of Islamic Jihad grabbed the wheel of a Jerusalem-bound bus and steered into a ravine in 1989, killing 11 (including Philadelphia's Rita Susan Levin, 39) and injuring 27. Ghanim was serving 16 life sentences.
• Ibrahim Muhammad Yunus Dar Musa received 17 years for, among other things, helping to murder Detroit native David Applebaum, 51, and his daughter, Nava, 20, on her wedding eve. Five others were killed and at least 50 wounded in a Sept. 9, 2003 suicide bombing at Jerusalem's Cafe Hillel.
• Abd al-Aziz Yussuf Mustafa Salehi famously waved his bloody hands from the window of a Ramallah police station, in which he and other members of a mob fatally flogged and killed Israeli reservists Vadim Norzhich and Yosef Avrahami. These Oct. 2000 murders earned Salehi a life sentence.
• Maedh Waal Taleb Abu Sharakh, Majdi Muhammad Ahmed Amr, and Fadi Muhammad Ibrahim al-Jaaba of Hamas planned a March 5, 2003 suicide bombing of Haifa's Bus 37, killing 17 and wounding 53. These murderers received 19, 19, and 18 life sentences, respectively.
• Nasir Sami Abd al-Razzaq Ali al Nasser-Yataima planned a Passover 2002 suicide bombing that killed 30 and wounded 140 at Netanyahu's Park Hotel, earning him 29 life terms.

Ignoring 469 other prisoners released on Oct. 18, Israel soon will free another 550 dangerous characters — all to rescue one Israeli soldier. With all due respect and mercy for Shalit, this was a stupid, disproportionate, and likely deadly decision.

As Nadav Shragai wrote in Jerusalem Viewpoints, an estimated 50 percent of terrorists in previous Israeli prisoner swaps and "goodwill gestures" subsequently executed, plotted, or supported terror assaults. In fact, Israel previously freed participants in the aforementioned Passover massacre and Cafe Hillel bombing. Israeli officials twice discharged Ramez Sali Abu Salmim. He eventually blew himself up in Cafe Hillel.

In Oct. 2010, the U.S.-Israeli Almagor Terror Victims Association counted at least 30 attacks involving Islamic extremists liberated by Israel's government. Almagor reports that 177 people have been murdered, and many others injured, in attacks that Israel could have prevented simply by keeping these savages caged.

While Israel now has complicated its own anti-terrorist vigilance, America cannot rest, either. Some of these freed killers will remain in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, from which they can attack Israelis. That would be bad enough. Some of the more adventurous terrorists, however, might use their new and undeserved freedom to target Americans. As Israel's chief benefactor and staunchest ally, why not teach the Yanks a lesson by, say, blasting a U.S. bank branch elsewhere in the Middle East? Why not bomb Americans in Long Island or Los Angeles?

Rather than meaningless "life sentences," Israel immediately needs to enact and implement the death penalty. Terrorists neither can be demanded, nor exchanged, nor kill again while dead.
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Though Mr Murdock evidently does not mention it, the list of American victims of the first woman murderer in the list above should also include our daughter Malki. We'll write to him.