YNet says four mortar shells were fired from northern Gaza towards Israel Wednesday, landing near the beleagured, long-suffering community of Nativ Haasara. No injuries or damage were reported.Israel's government decided two weeks ago to strategically reduce the amount of electricity it supplies to Gaza in response to the unceasing rockets and mortar attacks on Israel by terror forces in Gaza. Before that policy could be implemented, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered it suspended until safeguards could be instituted to prevent humanitarian harm. That's still, as of today, what characterizes Israel's stance in this war against terror: a citizenry absorbing daily terror attacks, and the overpowering military might of Israel busy with constructing humanitarian checks-and-balances.
There's a price to pay for taking this moral high ground, fighting with the military equivalent of one arm tied behind its back. A background report by AFP this week points out that more than 3,000 Israelis living in Sderot, a town located five kilometres east of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, have left town during recent years. Its population stands today at 22,000 residents; so more than 10 percent of the local population has left. "The fact that people continue living here is a miracle," AFP quotes the town's mayor as saying. "More and more people prefer keeping their families safe by moving out."
Widely interpreted as a warning of impending action, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said two days ago that each passing day brings closer the prospect of a full-scale military operation in Gaza: "We are not happy about it and we would be happy if circumstances would prevent [military intervention], but the day is definitely nearing," he said. The JTA confirms this, writing this week that Israeli forces have been training and stockpiling equipment at a pace that would suggest a major Gaza action is weeks away at most.
But two days is a long time in the middle east. Yesterday he said: "What happens in Gaza brings us closer to a broader operation every day. But we should get to that point only after we consider and examine and exhaust all the other types of operational possibilities."
The exhaustion of possibilities is evidently in full swing.
3 comments:
Do the 'other possibilities' include the depopulation and ethnic cleansing of Sderot? Or has a figure been put on the number of sustainable civilian casualties?
This won't come as a newsflash to the authors of this blog, and it breaks my heart to say it, but the world currently dislikes Israel intensely and irrationally, so what Israel thinks it has to gain by enduring this barrage with such restraint is beyond me: given that the rockets are not reported here in any case, you gain nothing for your restraint. Yes, when you take action, it will appear to the West that you are the aggressor; but so what? Moronic Europe already believes that as part of its mental furniture.
Syria would know how to deal with Hamas. But only Arab states are allowed to perpetrate actions such as the destruction of the town of Hama. Israel, on the other hand, because it acts as a Western nation, is expected to act with more restraint than we expect from ourselves, precisely because of the maniacal violence of some of its neighbours.
Thanks for your insight, Gharqad. The fact that rocket attacks on Israeli towns - a near-daily event here for years - are largely unreported is essentially unknown to the Israeli leadership, to members of Israel's working press, and to most Israeli citizens.
It's an important matter. A one-sided presentation of the daily narrative leaves newspaper-readers and liberal-minded individuals in other countries convinced that what there is to know about the Middle East conflict is: touch, cruel Israel - weak, cowering, defenceless Palestine.
The role of the media is quite influential in what eventually become government decisions, and that includes decisions of the government of our country too.
This is one reason (but only one) the media and its professionals have to be held to a higher standard, and exposed when they fail to discharge their responsibility of reporting the facts.
It's a very sad situation when our citizens routinely, (which is to say, 'daily') are attacked with missles, rockets and mortars, and Olmert does nothing. Appalling!!
I started a new blog today that's connected to Jewish Pride and I'd like to invite you over to check it out and let me know what you think!
Shabbat Shalom!
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