31-Dec-11: Wishful thinking, self-delusion and the Hamas threat

Haniya of Hamas and Gazan soldier in training: His message of
hatred and jihad is so straight-forward, even children
understand it. Sophisticated editors, political analysts and foreign
leaders, not so much 

Those of us forced to think a good deal about the terrorists around us and among us have noticed an uptick in these last two or three weeks of stories asserting that the Hamas terror organization has somehow sworn off violence (one of many examples: "Hamas calls for ceasefire on Israel"). Thursday's Haaretz, in a story co-penned by Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel ("Hamas forces ordered to cease attacks on Israeli targets, Palestinian sources say") attributes the embrace of peace to the Damascus-resident Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal "based on understandings between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Meshal during their recent talks in Cairo". Meshal is said to have given this order in "late November".

Yesterday (Friday), an official Hamas spokesperson told UPI the Haaretz piece was trivial and undeserving of a response. But the fact that Haaretz ran with it, and that several other media channels have echoed it, invites some thought as to why so many on the liberal end of the political spectrum keep wanting to have us reconsider the terrorists of Hamas and their real objectives.

We have frequently quoted the Palestinian Arab analyst Khaled Abu Toameh here. He writes well, he avoids adopting what's politically correct, he speaks with all parts of the Arab world and he seems amazingly unafraid to express clearly what he thinks even when this probably places him in personal danger.

Yesterday (Friday), Abu Toameh published a characteristically thoughtful comment on the website of the Hudson NY Institute under the title "Has Hamas Really Changed?":

"Some naïve Israelis and Westerners have misinterpreted Hamas's readiness to accept a cease-fire with Israel as a sign that the Islamist movement has abandoned its desire to destroy Israel...  [The Mashaal declarations publicized by Haaretz] have thus far appeared only in Western media outlets. Mashaal's statements in Arabic, which were published in Hamas media outlets in the past few days, do not talk about accepting a two-state solution, recognizing Israel's right to exist or abandoning the armed struggle. On the contrary, Mashaal and other Hamas leaders have made it clear that the armed struggle remains their most important strategy in the fight against Israel. And they have also made it clear that they will never recognize Israel's right to exist even though they are prepared to accept, for now, a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 lines."

As has happened so often in the past, the Arabic-language versions of statements by Arab leaders who are quoted in the West as being suddenly in favor of peace, brotherhood and laying down arms

"are being ignored by Haaretz and other Western media outlets, which continue to insist that Hamas has changed...  Hamas will change only on the day it abandons its dream of replacing Israel with an Islamist state, and renounces violence. Hamas needs to do this in Arabic, and not in English. This is not the first time that Haaretz and others have misinterpret Hamas's true intentions. In 2006, when Hamas participated in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, some Israelis and Westerners took this cooperation as proof that the movement had changed and was in the process of transforming into a political party. Hamas has perhaps changed its tactics, but definitely not its ideology and aspirations."

Abu Toameh's Hudson article continues here.

And in a report he published in the Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Khaled Abu Toameh says "the rocket and mortar attacks over the past few days could not have happened without the acquiescence of the Hamas leadership". He quotes an unnamed Israeli official saying "Hamas is not a political association that uses terrorism as a tactic. Hamas is terrorist to the core.”

How much has Hamas not changed? This is from Thursday:

Gaza: Palestinian Rights Group Accuses Hamas of Harassing Fatah Members    By REUTERS Published: December 29, 2011
An independent Palestinian rights group said Thursday that the Hamas authorities in Gaza were searching the homes and questioning members of the rival Fatah party. A report from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said one Fatah activist was held for 15 days, during which Hamas officers placed a plastic bag over his head during interrogation and subjected him to loud noises. On Monday and Tuesday alone, the report said, Hamas summoned about 50 former members of Fatah security forces, questioning them at length.

This is from Friday:

Hamas cracks down on fortune-tellers, mannequins    GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The Hamas-run government has launched a series of campaigns targeting fortune-tellers, mannequins and cigarette vendors in the Gaza Strip. 142 fortune tellers were forced to sign an agreement at the Ministry of Interior pledging that they would not practice their craft... Another campaign targets boutiques displaying lingerie on mannequins. Police officials told Ma'an that security forces inspected clothes shops across the Gaza Strip and warned owners not to display naked mannequins, lingerie or "indecent advertisements." ...In a crackdown on car and motorcycle theft, police have distributed a database of stolen vehicles to all police stations across the coastal enclave. Meanwhile, owners of taxi firms have been warned not to allow any former security officers to work as drivers.

Leaving wishful thinking aside, there are reasons to think Hamas is being forced by changing circumstances to review where it's going. Avi Isacharoff, again, in Friday's Haaretz offers an overview of changes which we now summarize:

• "The [forced] move away from longtime patron Syria [whose regime is disintegrating] and toward the new Egypt has pushed Hamas to adopt a more pragmatic line", leading to a "search for an Arab state that will agree to accommodate the Hamas leadership instead of Damascus..."
• "The huge wave of protest sweeping the Middle East has made it clear to Hamas that it cannot continue to rely solely on its bayonets to maintain control over Gaza".
• "Hamas' financial situation in recent months has become increasingly dire... Tehran has slashed cash payments to Gaza, and revenues from smuggling activity via the Strip's tunnels have fallen off, due to the lifting of the Israeli siege of Gaza."
• Hamas said 150 members of its security forces were dismissed because of moral problems but in reality this is due to the terrorist organization's diminished economic situation.
• Hamas forces recently seized control of several branches of the Palestine Bank and the Palestinian Islamic Bank in Gaza and "withdrew" money by force. It has also recently raised taxes.
• "More and more senior figures in the movement have become entangled in corruption scandals... rarely reported in the media. The most prominent person involved is Ayman Taha... A few less-senior figures in Hamas - some of whom were suspected of corruption, and others of whom tried to report such affairs - have undergone peculiar accidents. For example, Ahmed al-Mamluk was killed two weeks ago, according to Hamas, "while carrying out a jihad mission." His family says he was supposed to be meeting with a senior Hamas official to discuss a number of corruption cases. A similar "accident" befell Ali Nayef al-Haj, who was killed in an "internal explosion" in November; Mohammed Zaki al-Hams, who died in a road accident in early November; Mohammed al-Mahamoum, who died last June from electrocution in a Hamas outpost; and Ashraf Faraj Abu Hana, who drowned in a swimming pool last March. Hamas says this is a chance series of accidents, but the families have radically different versions."

As plain as the chaos, duplicity and sheer bloodthirstiness of Hamas is, there remain relentlessly-optimistic voices that somehow manage to turn away from what their eyes see and respond instead to some inner calling. The Haaretz editorial board, for instance, this week called on Israel "to listen to Hamas, and take notice" (Haaretz editorial 29th December). The Turks, via their foreign minister Davutoğlu, proudly welcomed the head of the Hamas ruling clique in Gaza to his land saying "We welcome any visit from Gaza in principle. We have no hesitation on this”.

We respect the Turkish determination. But we also want to keep sight of what it is that the head of the Hamas ruling clique said that evidently made him so welcome in Istanbul. Here's an extract of "prime minister" Ismail Haniyah's speech on the 24th anniversary of the founding of Hamas two weeks ago:

We say today, explicitly, so it cannot be explained otherwise, that the armed resistance and the armed struggle are the path and the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and for the expulsion of the invaders and usurpers [Israel] from the blessed land of Palestine. The Hamas movement will lead Intifada after Intifada until we liberate Palestine – all of Palestine, Allah willing. Allah Akbar and praise Allah. We say with transparency and in a clear manner, that Palestinian reconciliation – and all sides must know this – cannot come at the expense of [our] principles, at the expense of the resistance. These principles are absolute and cannot be disputed: Palestine – all of Palestine – is from the sea to the river. We won’t relinquish one inch of the land of Palestine. The involvement of Hamas at any stage with the interim objective of liberation of [only] Gaza, the West Bank, or Jerusalem, does not replace its strategic view concerning Palestine and the land of Palestine.”

The arch terrorist is speaking plainly enough. Who's listening?

30-Dec-11: Life-saving invention of the year

Israel's Iron Dome counter-rocket defense system has intercepted rockets from Gaza in 75 percent of the cases where it was used to stop them, according to an analysis published today by the Jerusalem Post. “Seventy-five percent is impressive, but we would still like to see it perform better,” an IDF officer is quoted as saying.

The system was first deployed in southern Israel in March 2011. It has been activated during the three significant rounds of violence between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip – in April, August and October. During April, it intercepted and destroyed eight of 10 rockets. In August, the score was 22 of 28. In October, 3 of 9 - an IDF inquiry that month found radar failure caused some of the misses, and the radar problem was then repaired. The system usually fires two interceptors at each incoming missile. Each interceptor costs around $50,000.

Israel has three Iron Dome batteries in operation. A fourth is planned for installation in the coming months and a total of nine batteries will be in the field by mid-2013. Few people in this country are under any illusions about the intentions of the terrorists on our southern and northern borders.

30-Dec-11: About oil stains and stains of a moral nature

It's December 2008 and this Israeli boy's home in Ashkelon,
Israel, has just been destroyed by a Hamas rocket,
one of the thousands fired indiscriminately by
the jihadists of Gaza. Their official representative
to the UN called them "Xmas firecrackers".  [Source]

We've been writing about rockets from Gaza and now we want to ask: how often do you hear or read of them failing to reach the Israeli side of the fence and exploding among Gaza's 'teeming masses'? Probably not very often.

This is not because it does not happen. It happens routinely. The terrorists of Gaza are animated by such single-minded hatred of Jews, and the reporters who cover their exploits have so incredibly little regard for the value of the lives of Gaza's non-terrorist population, that such matters simply (for the most part) go unreported.

Our thanks to Elder of Ziyon whose cogent, articulately-formulated blog focuses on some of those 'accidents' you haven't heard about during the past few days. Such 'accidents' as the UNRWA school in Gaza taking a direct hit by one of those Gazan Palestinian Arab missiles. We mean the Gazan injuries and Gazan damage that followed. We mean the condemnations by UNRWA officials in Gaza that resulted. Try finding them mentioned in the news media that reach you. And good luck.

Elder also reminds of this past week's third anniversary of the Hamas all-out rocket campaign on Israel that they called Operation Oil Stain: in a single day, 31 Qassam rockets, 54 mortar rounds, two Soviet-made GRAD missiles. And that 'proud' total, coming from the Palestinian MAAN newsagency, includes only the firings from Hamas. Other terror gangs fired their own additional weapons, the purpose being to fling anything explosive over the fence at anything Jewish or Israeli. This was a major barrage even by the standards of the ongoing Gazan Palestinian Arab war of terror against Israeli civil society. 

Operation Oil Stain, you ask? Surely we mean Operation Cast Lead? No - those opening salvos, literally, were the initiative of Hamas, but almost no one remembers, and almost no one even noted it at the time (December 2008). Rockets from Gaza into Israel is a matter of routine. Rockets from Israel into Gaza is major headlines. 

Which is why most people will have failed to see that the first victims of those Gazan rockets were a pair of Gazan girls, sisters aged five and three. Their deaths came from Qassam rockets, fired by the heroes of their own community on December 26, 2008 - rockets that fell short and failed to kill Jews. A spokesthug for the Palestinian Authority told a UN forum that such rockets are mere "Xmas firecrackers". But they are not. They are the weapons of terrorist warfare, and they kill children. What makes this an 'accident' is that the children killed were not Jews. But we can't accuse the jihadists of not trying, even if the results were less good than their hearts desired. 

We can't blame them because it's what their society has programmed them to do for generations. But what can we say about the professionals in the news media who are tasked with framing, captioning, photographing, reporting and presenting the news to other people too far away to see these events with their own eyes?

30-Dec-11: Stopped them this time

News wire picture, one of many now syndicated
and online: "Palestinian  relatives gather
around the body of Palestinian
militant Abdullah Telbani, 22, during
his funeral in Gaza City".

Against a background in which a variety of terrorist gangs in the tightly-packed, Hamas-run Gaza Strip fire deadly missiles into Israel on an almost daily basis, Israel's defence forces struck back this morning.

Haaretz says a team of Gazan Palestinian Arab rocket-launchers were spotted in the act of preparing their latest rocket for firing at anything Israeli earlier this morning (Friday). The pre-emptive strike succeeded in killing one of the rocket men, according to Gazan sources. Five others were wounded; inevitably, they are described as 'farmers'. Perhaps they were. Perhaps they were rocket men.

For its part, the IDF's Spokesman's Office (Dover Zahal) says the people hit by this morning's fire are those who carried out the other rocket attacks on Israel on which we reported in the course of the last few days.

Ynet's report leans to the view that the terrorists were part of the Islamic Jihad organization, and that the five wounded were cell members. Reuters names the deceased as Momen Abu Daf and his gang as the Army of Islam which it calls "a part of a loose network of Palestinian groups that profess allegiance to al Qaeda and which have been reinforced by radical Salafi volunteers from neighbouring Egypt."

Next step in the non-Israeli media's news coverage: wall-to-wall photos of the Gazan funerals, the wailing, the images of 'students', 'farmers' and 'innocent children'. It amounts to more of the usual fare - the constant reinforcement of Gaza as the home of pathetic, victimized, innocent folk caught up in some kind of cross fire with the neighbourhood bully. This entirely disguises the reality that hatred-driven men with rockets and death on their minds have sufficient freedom of action/movement there to launch whatever they like, pretty much whenever they like, with the sometimes-explicit, sometimes-implicit approval of the terrorists who run Gaza.

29-Dec-11: Two more incoming rockets around midnight

From Ynet: Two more rockets, in addition to those we described earlier this morning, fired at Israeli targets by the Gazan Palestinian Arab terrorists around 11:30 pm Wednesday night, exploding in fields in the Sha'ar Hanegev region. We don't know of any injuries or significant damage, but this is irrelevant to the jihadists who will certainly keep trying until stopped.

UPDATE Thursday afternoon: And another rocket-firing from the Gaza Strip brought terror, once more, into the lives of tens of thousands of Israeli living in the vicinity of the border with the Gaza Strip. This afternoon's rocket crashed into open fields (again) in the Sha'ar Hanegev region. There are no reports of injuries or damage to property. It's a certainty that the jihadists will keep trying.

29-Dec-11: Who decides on the stories that get major headlines and prominence? And why?

This Reuters news photo service picture is a contender for news image
of the year for 2011: A boy searches for shrapnel after a rocket fired from Gaza
exploded next to a home on Moshav Sde Avraham, March 26, 2011. [Source]

Few people, even among those who follow the events in the Middle East closely, will be aware of the state of the frequent and ongoing rocket attacks on southern Israel. No, we don’t mean those of last month or last year, but this week.

Fewer will be surprised to see what the major news media consider to be the really important news from Israel this week. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

On Friday, two mortar shells fired into southern Israel exploded in open areas in the Eshkol region.

This past Saturday evening (Xmas Eve), it was reported that terrorists from Gaza were active again with their deadly missiles. They fired two Qassam rockets into Israel that crashed into the western Negev region, with one exploding in an open area in the Ashkelon Coast region, and the other in an open area in the Sha’ar Hanegev region. No injuries or property damage were reported, but this was certainly not the outcome the terrorists intended.

Then on Monday, this report says there was another Qassam rocket attack on southern Israel’s Gaza Belt region, a few kilometers from the Hamas-run Gaza terrorist enclave. This one crashed into open land in the Sha'ar HaNegev region and again – to our great fortune - no one was injured and no damage was reported.

Today (Wednesday), a Qassam rocket once again crashed into open space in Israel’s Sha'ar Hanegev region during the morning. Initial reports said the rocket was misfired and landed inside Gaza but it now appears it did in fact make it across the border and into the lives of ordinary Israelis. Then late this evening, a second Qassam rocket struck in roughly the same place. Fortunately, there are no reports of injuries or damage which means, in the eyes of those who did the firings, they were a failure, and therefore simply prelude to more and more and more attempts at a better, more bloody outcome.

Meanwhile the BBC via its website and the BBC World global radio service has been focusing to an astonishing degree for the past several days on an Israeli story that, in its own words, is about a tiny handful of malefactors and the response they are encountering from Israelis of every stripe. We’re not saying the reports of a certain extreme kind of orthodox Israeli Jews being rude and offensive to people living in the same town as them is not newsworthy. It is, or would be if the coverage included any journalistic insights. Reports of young Hassidic men in Beth Shemesh acting boorishly (yes, boorishly – no guns were fired, no punches were thrown, no houses burned down and no crowd-control devices were needed by the authorities) are interesting if you place them in a context (we won’t do it here or now). But there is precious little insight or understanding in the reports we have seen. Meaningful analysis of the socio-demographic or even political kind is far more challenging and much, much less interesting to the people who edit the BBC’s news than statements like this one:

“Many Israelis believe the country's character is at stake. They resent the fact that most ultra-Orthodox men don't work or serve in the army. Instead, the government gives them subsidies to carry out religious studies. One man here told me Jewish religious extremism posed a bigger threat to the country than Iran.”

Now do we know why BBC’s widely heard World Service news featured this as its main world news story for most of yesterday? Does its gravity come anywhere near to any of the following other stories of the past week, basically chosen at random?

• Iraq: 57 were killed, at least 179 people wounded, in simultaneous terror attacks on Baghdad this past Thursday. 14 locations were attacked simultaneously.
• Syria: More than 200 people including many women and children were killed by their own defense forces in a single day late last week on the eve of a visit by international observers monitoring Syria’s compliance with an Arab League peace plan. Syrian troops rounded up and shot civilians, and looted and destroyed houses according to The Washington Times. This was the deadliest week so far in a rebellion against Assad that started in March. The UN says it has exacted more than 5,000 lives so far. Nine more Syrians were killed by the Syrian Army today (Wednesday). Yes, the international observer group is there but so what? It’s an unfolding story drenched in blood, evil and intrigue. Yet most people in most places have only the vaguest sense, if at all, about what is going on. Foreign news agencies like the BBC are forbidden by the murderous Assad regime in Damascus from reporting directly from Syria. Most people don’t know this either.
• Gaza: The head of the Hamas terrorist organization, nominally the prime minister of the Gazan part of Palestine (the result of a forced and bloody power grab in 2007), has embarked on a grand tour of the Arab world. It’s the first time a Hamas leader has done this. Such minor news coverage as there is paints this as a kind of triumphal celebration of the new standing of the officially-outlawed Hamas terrorist regime in a post-Arab-spring world… a world in which repressive Arab rulers are replaced by Islamist, Moslem Brotherhood organizations – like Hamas. He will be feted in Sudan (today), then Qatar (which owns Al Jazeera), Turkey (the subject of this dismaying Christian Science Monitor expose of its current slide into authoritarianism), Tunisia and Bahrain at least. We’re wondering if any of the reporters who interview him will ask Ismail Haniyah to explain what he meant in a speech last week when he said that Hamas is working for interim objectives that include the “liberation of Gaza, the West Bank, or Jerusalem" the long-term "strategic" goal of his terrorist movement is, in plain language, eliminating all of Israel:
• Saudi Arabia, a family-run business/state featuring fantastical wealth driven by fossil-fuel riches and a despotic, misogynistic ruling family, announced an unexpected budget surplus of more than $80 billion for 2011. (The finance ministry was expecting to post a deficit of $10.7 billion.)
• Nigeria: Islamists murdered no fewer than 39 people in Xmas Day attacks on two churches. We have blogged (“Tentacles again in west Africa, and the toll is shooting upwards” and other reports) about the admitted perpetrators, the horrifying Boko Haram, after some of their previous massacres. Most people, including most reporters and their editors outside of Nigeria (population: 170 million), have never heard of them. They need to know. There’s a process going on, and it extends far, far beyond Nigeria.
• Somalia: Again and again, the gang-raping and stoning of women by Islamist thugs gets reported, though not often enough and not with adequate prominence. But where is the journalistic analysis that lets readers see the close connection between these bestial practices and the religion professed by the perpetrators? Does this being an African story make thoughtful reporting superfluous and un-needed? 

And if our focus is on how various societies treat their women, do the street protests in Israel's Beth Shemesh community rank higher, lower or at the same level in news reporting terms compared with, say, reports about how the military in Egypt has been routinely carrying out forced virginity tests on women arrested in the Tahrir Square protests? Yes, the BBC mentioned it. And it might stop now that a court has condemned it. But given the widespread journalistic enthusiasm for the events in Cairo this past spring, the virginity test practices got nowhere near the news prominence of the absurd Hassidim-taking-over-Israel confection.

We’ll close with an image (below) that, to our minds, got less exposure than it deserves. Additional words are not really needed. It’s an image captured in Gaza this week: a graduating class of young women, the future of their community, the wombs that will create the next generation of Palestinian Arabs. 

Graduating class of women in Hamas-controlled Gaza this week

22-Dec-11: Oh, seeker of peace - who is that murderer with whom you're sharing Turkish coffee?

Earlier today, we wrote ("Know them by their actions. Oh, and by their smiles") about yesterday's meeting in Ankara between Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, and a convicted murderer who was sprung from an Israeli prison as part of the extortion price paid in October by Israel for the release of a hostage, Gilad Shalit. Now, here, below, we share a photo of the tete-a-tete enjoyed on Wednesday by the two with so very much in common, so many past and future exploits to celebrate.

And lest anyone jump to the wrong, wrong, wrong conclusion that Abbas hangs out with terrorists and convicted, unrepentant murderers and drinks coffee with them in the middle of his overloaded itinerary because he doesn't believe in peace with the Israelis, well - wrong, wrong, wrong. Have a quick glance at a sample of some of the things he says or others say for him.

• October 2009 - A professional "peace" activist says this is who Abbas really is: "Abbas is not a man of the people. He lacks charisma. He does not do well on the streets, working the crowd. He doesn’t like to go into villages and meet the common people. He doesn’t seek the photo-ops that most politicians go out of their way to create."
• September 2010 speaking to the BBC: "Our wounded hands are still able to carry the olive branch from the rubble of the trees that the occupation uproots every day." 
• September 2011 speaking in Ramallah: "We have told the world that there is the Arab Spring, but the Palestinian Spring is here. A popular spring, a populist spring, a spring of peaceful struggle that will reach its goal."
• September 2011 "In his address [to the United Nations General Assembly], President Abbas said the Palestinians would continue peaceful, popular resistance to Israeli occupation".
• November 2011: “We are extending our hand for peace; peace based on justice. We believe that we can achieve peace through talks, but we do not want endless talks, running in endless circles, without any real outcome... We seek peace, we demand peace, we will continue to cooperate with international efforts to achieve this goal.”

And on and on. The trouble with those many, many speeches about Abbas' passion for peace is that photos like the one above show what the man does, as very distinct from what the man says. What he does - where he stands on the subject of terror and its practitioners - has nothing to do with peace... other than to totally contradict it.

22-Dec-11: Know them by their actions. Oh, and by their smiles.

The head of the PA speaks [picture source] to a celebration rally
in Ramallah on October 18, 2011 when the first 477 murderers
were released by Israel. "Every prisoner
from every faction is holy to us and we must exalt them", he said.

For almost as long as there has been organized human society, awards - often in the form of medals - have been given to those whom the society considers to represent its core values.

The Palestine Liberation Organization has such an award. It's called the Jerusalem (or Al-Quds) Medal, and the decision to give it to someone is made only after the head of the PLO signs off. The head of the PLO, for years the appalling Yasser Arafat, is today Mahmoud Abbas, who in his day job is head of one of the two Palestinian Arab governments, the one called the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas made the decision two years ago to award his organization's Al-Quds Medal to five Arabs who were all, at the time, incarcerated in Israeli prisons, having been tried and convicted for murder. One was a woman called Tamimi, convicted on 15 counts of murder, including the murder of our daughter. Another was Amna Muna, sometimes called Mona Najar; sometimes called Mona Jaud Awana; always called terrorist and convicted murderer. She earned those labels not through her political views but by reason of the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed Jewish boy of sixteen which she engineered and which took place in front of her eyes. (The background is here.) Why engineer a murder? Turns out that Mona had been present at the Ramallah lynching in October 2000 when two Israelis were ripped apart, literally, by a mob of frenzied Arabs. And she was "excited" by what she saw.

Abbas and the murderers on
Wednesday in Ankara, Turkey

It was reported back in April 2008 that Abbas was going to present those medals in a ceremony timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the deadliest suicide-bombing of this Arafat War, the massacre in Netanya's Park Hotel on the first night of Passover 2002. Thirty-three Israelis were murdered on that festival night. Thus April 17, 2008 was a propitious date on which to honour persons who embody the highest expression of current Palestinian Arab values.

A day before the 2008 ceremony, Abbas "decided" to give in to pressure from the US government and canceled the award. But plainly that was not a reflection of how he felt. Damn, he was proud of that woman. And today (Wednesday) in Turkey, in the middle of a packed and politically important visit to the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regime, the Palestinian president found time to show it ("Abbas Meets Woman Who Aided 2001 Murder Of Israeli"). And for good measure, the convicted mastermind of the Netanya massacre,  Nasser Yateima, who had been serving 29 life terms when released from Israeli prison in October's terrorists-for-Gilad-Shalit deal, was in the deal too. What sparkling conversation this tight little group must have had!

When, like us, you follow closely the media reports of convicted murderers who got free as a result of a massive act of extortion ("A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices", you tend to pick up things that less-interested people might miss. For instance: we noticed that the two women mentioned here are almost always smiling broad teeth-baring smiles when they appear in the newspapers. This might be considered odd given that they are, and always will remain, convicted murderers even if they currently walk the streets free as birds.

In this picture, above, Tamimi is snapped inside her Israeli prison cell a moment after the interviewer told her, evidently for the first time, how many children died as a result of the actions she carried out and for which she was sentenced to sixteen life terms. The picture appears in many places on the web, and it's often noted that her face bears a beatific smile. Hard for us to argue. This is one very happy woman. Dead Israeli children evidently have that effect on her.

This is Mona aka Amna on March 18, 2001. Another killer who displays genuine, straight-from-the-heart happiness as she smiles for the media at a court appearance during the trial ten years ago for which she was convicted of murder. You see her deep regret over the loss of an innocent young life, right? 

And here's Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo recently. He's smiling broadly. This is unusual for the man. 95% of the published news pictures in which he appears show him scowling. Here, he's happy. Why so? Perhaps because his fingers are intertwined with those of Khaled Meshaal. The latter may be the head of Hamas, his arch-foe and competitor in the business of executing and encouraging terrorism. But he's someone who understands the central importance of killing the children of your enemy when you're engaged in jihad to the death. Someone you can work with. Someone you can like.

As to why Mahmoud Abbas is routinely called "moderate" and a seeker of peace, that's a tough one. Perhaps the question could be directed at the two women above.

19-Dec-11: Here's a switch: rockets intercepted in Lebanon before being fired at Israel

A report from our northern neighbor, today. Note that UNIFIL, whose troops are stationed in the region mentioned below for the singular purpose of ensuring weapons like rockets are not stockpiled or fired from there by the jihadists of Hezbullah, are not mentioned.

Lebanese army discover 4 rockets near Israel borderOfficials say military intelligence uncovered four projectiles near the Lebanon-Israel borderLebanese officials said army troops have discovered four rockets near the country's border with the Israel, a Lebanese paper reported on Monday. The officials said it was not immediately clear whether the rockets were primed to fire. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that the rockets were found by military intelligence near the village of Majidieh, where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet. Monday's discovery comes a week after a rocket directed toward Israel fell short in Lebanon, injuring a woman in the southern region. Security sources said the rocket was fired from the Wadi al-Qaisiyeh area, about 2 km (one mile) from the frontier and landed in the village of Hula inside Lebanon.

You might want to read some of the background we posted here ("Up north, it's continuing to grow hotter") ten days ago.

19-Dec-11: Our Egypt problem: tenth pipeline attack and counting

Blast hits Egypt's gas pipeline to Israel
CAIRO | Sun Dec 18, 2011 5:13am EST
(Reuters) - An Egyptian pipeline carrying gas to Israel and Jordan was bombed Sunday, the 10th such attack this year, but no fire erupted because the line that runs through North Sinai was already disabled, a security source said. The blast took place in an area five km (three miles) south of the Mediterranean coastal town of al-Arish. "The attack was carried out using remote-controlled explosives by unidentified assailants who arrived at the scene using four-wheel-drive vehicles," the source said... The latest blast broke the pipe, but no flames were seen as gas pumping has been halted since the last attack on November 28. The government said in November it would tighten security measures along the pipeline by installing alarm devices and recruiting security patrols from Bedouin tribesmen in the area. Security in Sinai loosened after Mubarak's fall as the police presence thinned out across Egypt... Previous explosions have sometimes led to weeks-long shutdowns along the pipeline, run by Egypt's gas transport company Gasco, a subsidiary of the national gas company EGAS.

18-Dec-11: Freeing still more convicted terrorists, and unanswered questions

It's late Sunday night here in Jerusalem. In the dark, Israel is releasing 550 Palestinian prisoners from its jails. This is the second and final phase of the agreement between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization, brokered by the government of post-Arab-spring Egypt, by which the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit was freed from illegal captivity. Shalit is now safely at home, but hundreds more Palestinian Arabs, many of them convicted of terrorist offences, are being bused at this moment to various places: 505 of them to Judea and Samaria via Beituniya Crossing; two prisoners to East Jerusalem via the Atarot army base; two more to Jordan via the Allenby Bridge; and 41 to the waiting arms of Hamas in Gaza.

This lot will join the 447 Palestinian murderers and arch-terrorists who were freed by Israel in the first part of this appalling deal. Our daughter's murderer was sent to Jordan in October; it's the land of her birth, the country where she spent almost her entire life until she was convicted on fifteen counts of murder, and the kingdom in which her father and siblings live - yet it's called 'exile'. Since her arrival there, she has been feted as a celebrity and a hero.

Ynet is reporting that IDF forces and some 400 relatives of the Palestinian Arab prisoners being freed in this transaction clashed tonight at the Beitunia checkpoint near Ofer Prison, a few minutes drive from where we live in Jerusalem. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit reported that a soldier was lightly injured by a hurled stone.

Here are the questions that keep haunting us. We addressed them to a group of like-minded Israeli and pro-Israel friends some weeks ago, and got no satisfactory answers. We're experiencing another major step by the government of Israel - the wholesale release of convicted terrorists. If it's a bad one, we all get to pay the price. Is there some way to rationalize on moral, legal and/or pragmatic grounds the case for Israel handing over several hundred more convicted Palestinian Arab prisoners now that Gilad is safely at home? Is there a way to justify keeping our word when dealing with genocidal terrorist fanatics?

To those who would answer that the prisoners being bused to freedom tonight are mainly petty thieves, it's just not so. You can try to figure out what they did by looking at the English language version of the being-released list posted on the Israel Prison Service website this past Wednesday night. But you won't find any information there about the crimes these people did. The Hebrew version is much more helpful but obviously much less accessible. In reality, the list includes individuals convicted of attempted murder, conspiracy to intentionally cause the death of a victim or victims, shooting, manufacturing bombs, planting explosives in concealed locations where they were intended to explode, hurling explosives at Israelis, and a range of other acts of willful, deliberate terror. (We prepared a blended Hebrew/English version highlighting the many terrorists serving sentences of 7 years and more. We will make it available if there's interest.)

The response tonight of Hamas to the second stage of the prisoner deal is predictable. The Hamas spokesman is quoted saying "We've released 20% of the prisoners for one soldier. The Palestinian resistance's goal is to free all the prisoners from Israeli jails." 

Hard for us to see this prisoner release transaction as something other than a massively tragic mistake.

13-Dec-11: Does anyone think Monday night's rocket attack on southern Israel is the last?

Around 8 pm last night (Monday), a Gazan Palestinian Arab Qassam rocket exploded in an open field in the Sha'ar HaNegev district. Color Red sirens sounded throughout the south. INN notes that more than 240 Israeli cities, towns and communities across the southern half of Israel, home to a million Israeli civilians, daily face the threat of incoming, indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks. The terrorists occasionally succeed in killing or injuring civilians, but more often they miss. Evidently there are observers who see this as somehow mitigating the threat, minimizing the danger. They entirely miss the central truth of terrorism: it matters not at all whether their bombs and rockets hit their mark. What's important is that (a) the people on the other side are terrified, their lives disrupted, their society on the defensive or worse; and (b) everyone understands what didn't succeed today is going to succeed tomorrow, or the day after that.

The jihadist terrorists have the resources and the ideological commitment to keep trying day after day after day. And not just in southern Israel.

12-Dec-11: Incoming midnight rockets

Katyusha rocket being fired into Israel from southern
Lebanon 2006

A little after midnight (Sunday night), a Qassam rocket fired by the terrorists of Gaza crashed and exploded in an open area in the Shaar Hanegev region of southern Israel. There are no reports of injuries or damages though this was, of course, not the intention of the people doing the firing or of those who directed them to do it.

Meanwhile on our northern border, according to Reuters, a Lebanese person was injured overnight when rocket fired by the terrorists of Southern Lebanon into northern Israel fell short and crashed into a house in Houla, a Lebanese village. The firing is said to have come from the Wadi al-Qaisiyeh area, about 2 km (one mile) from the frontier in the zone controlled and patrolled by  United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). That's the area in which the Hezbollah terrorists are forbidden from having weapons (hah!).

But in reality - as we noted just three days ago ("Up north, it's continuing to grow hotter") - the jihadist terrorists there, no less than those of Gaza, have their orders from their masters in Iran to escalate the pressure for reasons that perhaps you need to be a terrorist to fully comprehend.

UNIFIL, by the way, gives no sign of being perturbed. Its spokesman is quoted on Beirut radio saying "UNIFIL rejects reports suggesting any violation of UN Resolution 1701 and is working to restore normalcy." This is almost certainly true: being humiliated by the terrorists of Lebanon is, for the UN's representative forces, a return to the normal state of things.

11-Dec-11: Now this is interesting. Egypt says the report of Hamas activities in Sinai is baseless

We have a follow-up to our Egypt/Hamas report from this morning. It seems the government of Egypt takes exception to the Jerusalem Post's report about Hamas shifting assets into Egyptian-held Sinai to shelter them from Israeli attack. The story below, published this afternoon (Sunday), appears in the English language, on-line edition of Al-Masry Al-Youm (Egypt Today)

Egypt denies presence of Hamas missile bases in Sinai    An Egyptian official in Sinai has repudiated an Israeli report that Palestinian militant group Hamas has set up a rocket production line in the peninsula. The report, published earlier today by Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post, said that Hamas erected the alleged production line in Sinai because they are certain Israel will not bomb any targets on Egyptian soil due to the potential impact on relations with Cairo... "No one can ever bring in military tools or erect missile bases in Sinai. Egypt would not allow such a breach to its sovereignty," said the Egyptian source, who dismissed the Israeli report as false. The official said that the Sinai area is completely under control, adding that Egypt and Israel have a peace treaty. He also highlighted the existence of UN peacekeeping forces in North Sinai to monitor the borders with Israel, adding that they would not be unaware of any such development... Israel has long complained of weapons smuggling to Hamas through underground tunnels dug from Sinai."

This is pretty much true: Israel has long complained of weapons smuggling to Hamas via tunnels that originate in Sinai - because it's a fact. Injuries and deaths on the Israeli side are due to that smuggling, to those tunnels and to precisely this Egyptian failure to police its border as required by the Israel/Egypt peace treaty. Or as the JPost's Yaakov Katz (he's the author of the original report) tweeted a short time ago: "Egypt denies my story of Hamas Sinai bases, says weapons not allowed. I wonder how they explain 10,000 rockets in Gaza".

And how about the claim that "the Sinai area is completely under control"?

In July 2011, two hundred men attacked the El Arish police station in North Sinai in broad daylight, according to this Egyptian news report. The attackers intended to commandeer and destroy the facility. Four people were killed, 19 injured.

In August 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported on

"a steady unraveling of Egyptian control over the vast Sinai peninsula since the popular revolt that unseated former President Hosni Mubarak in February. In the ensuing months, there have several attacks on a natural gas line supplying Israel, and there have been reports in the Israeli press citing an uptick in smuggling over the border to Gaza." 

The Chinese newsagency Xinhua put the matter more bluntly four months ago:

"The minimal control over Sinai that Cairo asserted since the signing of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, dropped even further with former President Hosni Mubarak's downfall in February, and the apparent inability or even abdication of responsibility towards policing the peninsula."

To see this in a more concrete way, consider the Arish Ashkelon pipeline. It's 100 kilometres long, built at an investment of $300 million to carry natural gas from the Arab Gas Pipeline to Israel. Starting on 4th February 2011, a series of attacks were carried out on the pipeline, some of them in broad daylight, making a mockery of Egyptian claims to have the area under control. The most recent attack was on 28th November, when the pipeline was exploded for the ninth time this year.

None of this means Hamas did or did not set up facilities under the new Egyptian regime's noses. But it does suggest that when Egyptian officials say "Everything's under control", it's time for Israel to hedge its bets.

11-Dec-11: Hamas shifts some of its terrorist infrastructure into Egyptian territory

New York Times 28-Apr-11 [Source]

The Jerusalem Post has a report today about a dangerous development on Israel's southern border. Hamas is shifting sensitive portions of its operations into the Egyptian-controlled Sinai desert, where it expects them to be sheltered from Israeli attack.

Hamas has established rocket production facilities in Sinai, on the logic that Israel will not strike targets inside Egypt for fear of worsening relations with Cairo. The Post article, written by Yaakov Katz, says Israel has warned Egypt to take steps to re-establish some kind of order in the area and to prevent attacks on Israelis like the one in August which cost 8 Israeli civilian lives. (See our earlier blog article "18-Aug-11: Today's multiple terror attacks on southern Israel".) The Egyptian military has so far done essentially nothing, though more than a dozen Egyptian army battalions are currently operating in Sinai - with Israel’s permission. That permission had to be obtained from Israel because of the demilitarization provisions under the Egypt/Israel peace treaty.

Egypt's passivity is a real issue given the accelerating rate at which advanced weaponry originating in looted Libyan military storehouses is arriving in Gaza. Bearing in mind the relatively open state of Israel's long border with Egypt, this is highly problematic.

What does a small nation like Israel need to do when huge political and strategic shifts take place inside the territory of its neighbours? The IDF has recently established a new regional brigade responsible for defending southern Israel including Eilat, and is in the course of reinforcing its presence along the Egyptian border. But Sinai is very large, and the stockpile and sophistication of weapons possessed by the terrorists just keep on growing.

10-Dec-11: Incoming rockets: An uncomfortable Sabbath

PRC terrorists give a media conference, August 2011 [Image Source].
Sadly, it seems, no one, other than journalists from a multitude
of media channels, knows where to find them.

The Jewish Sabbath begins every Friday evening at sunset. We happen to be in the midst of a two-front escalation by the terror groups arrayed on Israel's northern and southern borders. For the residents living within range of the jihadists, this is an especially discomforting time, though the extremely scarce reporting in the world's media means it's understood by very few people outside the neighborhood.

As the Sabbath approached yesterday (Friday) afternoon, a rocket, heading in the direction of the city of Ashdod was shot down in mid-flight by counter-fire from an Iron Dome defence battery, according to JPost. Two other Gazan Palestinian-Arab terrorist rockets were fired shortly after 5 pm in the direction of Be'er Tuvia. And at about the time families were seated at the Sabbath table, three more rockets exploded in the Eshkol region. Yet another crashed into the Shaar Hanegev region. JPost says Sderot came under fire around 10 pm Friday night, exploding in an open field and causing no casualties or damage. Two additional rockets were fired after 11 pm, landing in the Ashkelon Beach and Eshkol regions. Again, thankfully, no injuries or damage are reported. That was not the intention of the terrorists.

Today, Saturday, the Sabbath day in Israel, the firings continued. Two Qassam rockets crashed into the Eshkol region at about 7:30 a.m, according to INN. Both exploded in open fields, causing no physical injuries or damage. A little later this morning, two Grad rockets slammed into the Asheklon region, both exploding in open areas. "Credit" was claimed by the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) terrorist organization that operates freely within the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip, giving press conferences at will, as the AP syndicated photo above demonstrates.

UPDATE Saturday 10 pm: It's reported that Hamas is "worried that the renewed rocket attacks on Israel could torpedo the implementation of the second phase of the prisoner exchange agreement that saw the release of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit." How worried? Worried enough to step in and actually stop the firing of dozens of weekly rockets directed at Israel? In a territory they totally dominate that is frequently described as "the most densely populated place on earth" though it certainly is not even close to being that? [Tel Aviv and London and numerous other cities are more densely populated by far.] No, not that worried.

UPDATE Saturday 11:45 pm: From Ynet: "A rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists in northern Gaza Saturday night landed in an open area within the limits of the Eshkol Regional Council in the Negev. There were no reports of injury or damage."

9-Dec-11: Up north, it's continuing to grow hotter

At the scene of today's attack on French
UNIFIL soldiers [Image Source]

We noted here a week and a half ago that the terrorists who occupy southern Lebanon are raising the stakes - something that is always deliberate and calculated. [And to see why, check the end of this blog entry.] This morning, five French soldiers deployed as part of the UNIFIL presence up there, were injured by a roadside bomb in the Bourj al-Shamali area, near the port city of Tyre, the third such attack this year (so far). 

The Washington Post says “UNIFIL’s forensic and investigation teams are at the location of the explosion, working in close cooperation with their counterparts of the Lebanese Army to determine all the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident”. UNIFIL has been deployed in the area since 1978. Their task is to monitor the Lebanese border with Israel and - since the war of 2006 - to monitor a zone south of the Litani River where Hezbollah is banned from keeping weapons. Anyone with eyes and brains knows the attacks on UNIFIL soldiers are carried out by Hezbollah, and anyone who reads the news knows weapons are deployed deeply and extensively in the entire south-of-Litani region.

About those previous roadside bomb attacks:

• In May 2011, a convoy of Italian soldiers was hit, killing one, wounding six. 
• In July 2011, a convoy carrying French soldiers was hit, wounding five. 
• And in the most deadly of the recent attacks, a bomb was fired at a UNIFIL armored personnel carrier in June 2007, just near the Israeli border (where the Hezbollah are forbidden to have any weaponry - hah). It killed six Spanish peacekeepers.

The wire services laconically state time and time again that "no group has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks". But everyone understands it's the Hezbollah jihadists, acting on orders from their masters in Beirut and Teheran. 

Here's a Lebanese comment on the rising religious/military fervor in Hezbollah circles:

"Anyone monitoring Hezbollah’s rhetoric over the last several days could not but notice a spike in its apocalyptic pitch. Perhaps it was the religious occasion of Ashura, but more likely, it was the result of the tense regional situation, namely the increased paranoia in Tehran. Convinced that an attack against them is imminent, the Iranians are now preparing for war and publicly declaring that Hezbollah, and thus Lebanon, will be their first line of defense. That is why in his most recent speeches, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has been preparing the Shia community in advance for the ruin that awaits them as a consequence... The group’s first and foremost task is to be Iran’s long arm. The Iranians are now making this fact known explicitly. Two weeks ago, Yahya Rahim Safavi, former commander of the Revolutionary Guards and military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei, declared  that in case of an Israeli attack on Iran, the Iranian retaliation will come from Lebanon, “because all the Zionist cities are within the range of our ally Hezbollah's Katyushas.” In other words, the order has been given and Hezbollah is up to bat." [More]

Clear enough?

9-Dec-11: Incoming rockets: seven overnight (and more in daylight)

Smoke trails emanating from Gaza: More
terrorist rockets en route to any possible Israeli target,
preferably civilian, within reach [Image Source]

JPost says the overnight attacks from Gaza totalled seven rockets. The first two rockets were fired at 8:10 p.m., as we reported earlier, and struck open areas in the western Negev. Bomb squad units were surveying the scene to locate them. A third exploded around the same time in the Eshkol Regional Council, also in an open area. One Grad-type rocket ("at least") was fired at Beersheba, landing outside the city limits. Two more rockets crashed to earth south of Ashkelon shortly before midnight. In total, seven rockets: fortunately no casualties or damage are reported but as we have noted here many times, that was not the intention of the terrorists who are motivated by visions of wreaking death and destruction among ordinary Israelis and the society we are building here. Women, children, kindergartens, school buses, hospitals, power stations, private cars, greenhouses, milksheds. They could not care less - it's all the same, so long as it hurts the Jews. That's what makes them terrorists.

UDATE Friday 9:30 am: Ynet: The Color Red rocket alert system was activated after a Qassam rocket was fired at Israel from the Gaza. Shortly after, a Qassam rocket landed in an open field in the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council. No injuries or damage was reported.

UPDATE Friday 1:00 pm: Two more Gazan terrorist rockets crashed into southern Israel, in the Southern Ashkelon Coast region, in the last 40 minutes. No reports of injuries or property damage.

8-Dec-11: Incoming rocket(s)

Around 7 this evening (Thursday), according to Israel's Channel 10 News, a Qassam rocket crashed into open space in the Eshkol region, having been fired from the Gaza Strip. No reports of damage or injury.

UPDATE Thursday 8:25 pm: Rocket warnings sounded in several southern communities, including the city of Beer Sheva, ten minutes ago (around 8:15 pm, Israel time). Still no report of the outcomes.

UPDATE Thursday 8:30 pm: Haaretz says there were in fact two firings in the past hour. The one that crashed into open land near Beer Sheva was a Grad, more deadly than the Qassams.

UPDATE Thursday 9:30 pm: So far, it's 3. Ynet: "Three rockets were fired from northern Gaza at Israel Thursday evening. The fire came several hours after two Al-Aqsa Brigades' operatives were killed in an IAF strike in Gaza Strip. A Grad rocket exploded on the outskirts of Beersheba and two other rockets hit an open area between the Sha'ar Hanegev and Sdot Negev regional councils. No injuries or damage were reported."

8-Dec-11: So do the Syrians have poison gas?

Hama, Syria: aftermath of the 1982 massacre
[Image Source]

The comment below, referring to our earlier blog entry on US concerns about Syria's stocks of poison gas, comes from J. E. Dyer, a retired US Naval intelligence officer who served around the world, afloat and ashore, from 1983 to 2004. Her last operations in the Navy were Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom in 2003. Her articles appear in a number of well-read sites and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

In our blog entry, we wondered at the statement by Rachel Oswald that Syria is not known to have ever used poison gas, and that it developed and stored it "as a deterrent to outside attack, namely from Israel, and not for use against the Syrian people".

"If Oswald was going only on information from US intelligence sources, that might explain not mentioning Hama 1982.  That is not because US intelligence has certain knowledge that no toxic chemical was used at Hama -- rather, it would be that US intel is keeping tabs on what it perceives to be the weapons stock. The gas used at Hama was reportedly hydrogen cyanide, a major component of Zyklon B.  Hydrogen cyanide is very difficult to weaponize -- i.e., use as a toxin in warheads -- and can't be deployed effectively over large areas with an aerial platform.  It disperses and becomes ineffective too quickly.  No one was very successful at using it in weaponized form in WWII.

If US intel is seeking to keep track of chemicals married up with missiles, rockets, artillery, helicopters, or fixed-wing aircraft, hydrogen cyanide won't be among them.  Hydrogen cyanide is basically deployed using forced-air generators in the immediate vicinity of the target victims.  A quick web search reveals that the eyewitness reports from the Hama massacre indicate exactly that:  regime authorities used generators to flood buildings with hydrogen cyanide in order to ensure everyone was killed.

Of course, hydrogen cyanide is considered a WMD component, but today that's mainly because terrorists can find ways to use it.  Aum Shinrikyo [Wikipedia entry here - AR] tried to use it in a Japanese subway in the 1990s, and there's plenty of intel that al Qaeda has experimented with it using dogs as the victims.  If Syria uses it, however, it won't be deployed via a conventional "weapons" platform.  It will be done more as a police or infantry action, in ways detectable only to bystanders.

I think the preparation and use of hydrogen cyanide would basically be undetectable to an intel collection plan that was focused on the chemical manufacturing facilities and the weapons handling facilities.  Hydrogen cyanide can be generated on-site or transported in small trucks or vans, and is deployed using small, portable equipment.  It doesn't have the deployment "footprint" of something like ricin, VX, or mustard gas, which can be delivered by rocket warhead or artillery shell or dispersed from aircraft. From an intel detection perspective, I think the only reliable way to know hydrogen cyanide was being used would be to hear someone talking about it explicitly, on a phone or radio (or by reading official emails, perhaps)."

8-Dec-11: Heightened terror alert in southern Israel

Ynet is quoting the Israeli defense establishment this evening saying that civilians living in southern Israeli communities that border on Gaza are instructed "to remain near their shelters over fears that rockets will be fired on the area after the Israeli Air Force carried out a strike against Gaza terrorists, killing two operatives most likely preparing to carry out a terror attack through Sinai."

It reported earlier in the day that aircraft of the IDF targetted a vehicle transporting Assam Subahi Ismail Batash, a senior terrorist in Gaza. This person is said to have been "the mastermind behind several terror attacks carried out by militants who infiltrated into Israel from the Sinai Peninsula". The Office of the IDF Spokesperson is reporting that the terrorists "affiliated with a terrorist squad that intended to execute a terrorist attack against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers via the western border".

It names the senior target (using slightly different spelling - not uncommon when transliterating from Arabic) as Isam Subahi Isamil Batash, born in 1968, from Gaza City, "a senior operative in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades". It says he was responsible for "the suicide bombing in Eilat (January 2007), in which three Israeli civilians were killed. In recent years, a number of Batash’s attempted attacks were thwarted." If that's right, then there will now be no need to thwart him any further.

The attack on the terrorists' vehicle, according to the report in Haaretz, happened when "The car in which the two were traveling went up in flames on the crowded Omar al-Mukhtar street, [Gazan] medical officials said." A crowded market street, yet no one else was hurt. Evidently the goal of the counter-terrorist side must have been definite and precise; so too was the execution. Will the mainstream media commentariat say anything about that aspect, do you think?