21-Jul-06: This war grinds on

Israel's firepower is huge as unfortunately it has to be. Thus, it strikes us that when the Israeli authorities say what they have done in the battlefield, they ought to be believed. Clearly they can do far more harm to individuals and property than they do; that they don't is because there's a moral conscience driving Israel's military decisions. So if they report on what they did, it's likely to be true. Anyone who has followed news reports for years, as we have, knows that over time, Israel's version of events usually turns out to have been the truthful one.

So in view of the know-nothing imagery exemplified in our last posting, and taking account of howls (such as from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) about wanton destruction of property and lives by the IDF, it's appropriate for us to place the IDF's version on the record. Since so few other sources seem to be doing that, and since we get the IDF's press releases, we'll share what we know.

On Thursday July 20th, more than 50 Katyusha missiles were launched by Hezbollah's terror

forces on Israel's towns, cities, settlements and inidividuals. Not one, as far as we can tell - and this is not the IDF speaking - was directed at or struck a single Israel military installation. For the Nasrallah storm-troopers, this has never been about inflicting strategic damage on the IDF, but on terrorising Israeli society.

More than 900 missiles have so far landed in Israel (about the size of Rhode Island) in the seven days since Thursday July 13th.

The IDF says it carried out about 150 aerial attacks on hostile targets yesterday (Thursday). These included:

• 16 different Hezbollah headquarter facilities, structures and bases
• 3 Hezbollah ammunition warehouses
• 6 Hezbollah missile launchers
• More than 100 "access routes used by the Hezbollah" to use the IDF's press release language. (This presumably means roads and bridges. If it were up to us, we would be more forthcoming and less shy about stating in plain language what needs to be stated. Hezbollah's main weaponry is military-use missiles that are being used to rain terror down on civilian settlements. These need to be moved from place to place by heavy truck, and if the road or bridge is taken out or otherwise rendered unusable, mobility of missiles is diminshed. End of story.)
• 21 vehicles that served Hezbollah for the launching of missiles. This included one vehicle believed to a Fajer 3 launcher. (It's the Fajer 3 which Nasrallah means when he speaks of "surprises" waiting for us Israelis.)

One further development: a wedding took place inside one of the hundreds of Israeli bomb-shelters. Mazal tov to Maya Lougasi and her groom Shlomi Bouskila from Kiryat Shmona, pictured in the snapshot above. In Israel, life is always preferable to death. (Nasrallah says openly that he takes the opposite view.)

The southern front has not been quiet either. Four missiles were fired at IDF forces and Qassam fire was directed at an Israeli town in the western Negev area near Gaza, wounding an Israeli civilian who was hospitalized. The IDF has been firing on Qassam launch sites in the northern Gaza Strip during the past 24 hours. Between Thursday night and Friday morning, IDF forces confirmed hitting 10 armed Palestinian Arabs, some of whom were part of two groups of anti-tank missile launcher cells, and a group of Arab gunmen targeted in aerial attacks as they were attempting to reach and attack IDF forces operating in the area.

Far from the cameras and writing pads of foreign journalists, Israel has been ensuring food and fuel are quietly delivered to the Arabs of the Gaza Strip via the Nahal Oz and Karni crossings (both of which have routinely come under terror attack, with significant loss of Israeli life). Here's what was delivered yesterday, July 20th 2006.

• At Karni crossing: 146 truckloads of basic food items.
• At the Nahal Oz fuel terminal: 370,000 liters of diesel, 90,000 liters of gasoline, 175 tons of natural gas for cooking.

The spokesperson for the coordinator of Israeli government activities in the Territories, Shlomo Dror, was kind enough to make his cell phone number available for anyone wanting to know more. We'll gladly pass it along to anyone willing to write about Israel's ongoing humanitarian concern. There's nowhere near enough light thrown on the incompetent, kleptocratic leadership in Gaza and the catastrophic state of the society in their care.

Remember the headlines last month about the Palestinian Authority tottering on the edge of collapse, unable to pay the salaries of the tens of thousands of make-work "employees"? Now imagine how things might look if a fraction of the enormous funds Hezbollah has tied up in its arsenal of missiles and weaponry had been diverted to the struggle of their Palestinian brothers. No, not that struggle. We mean the struggle to give their children a better life, education, health, a future. Right, that struggle.

Just imagine.