It's a beautiful November Friday here - sunny, warm, blue skies, balmy breezes. And the fourth consecutive day of terrorist rocket fire at Israeli civilian targets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Five rockets crashed into Israel since dawn this morning. Two landed in Sderot; three in the Negev desert. Al-Quds Brigades, part of the Islamic Jihad terrorist entity, issued the usual muscle-flexing, hormone-oozing press release claiming responsibility. Meanwhile parents of Israeli school children have been asked by the authorities to remain alert - whatever that means.
Yesterday, Thursday, four additional Qassam rockets were fired into Israel. And since this past Tuesday, the Palestinian Arab terrorists have fired no fewer than 50 rockets into Israel. One of those landed close to the Neot Ashkelon elementary school where 700 children were preparing for an air raid drill that quickly took on a more real character, and not for the first time. Children who were frightened by the siren were collected shortly afterward by their parents.
Did we say frightened?
Ours is not a society that quakes without reason. Have a look at the following graphs that summarize what it is like to live in a neighbourhood where the barbarians operate with absolute no restraint, and largely without any media or government attention from anyone but the Israelis. (Data courtesy of this source.)
Ours is not a society that quakes without reason. Have a look at the following graphs that summarize what it is like to live in a neighbourhood where the barbarians operate with absolute no restraint, and largely without any media or government attention from anyone but the Israelis. (Data courtesy of this source.)
Rockets that have been fired into Israel by the Gazan terrorists during the past year.
Mortars fired into Israel since October 2007 (above)
Israeli casualties - victims of the Hamas rockets and mortars (above) in the past twelve months only, and only in the cities and towns lying close to the Hamas-controlled Gaza region.
The charts above were prepared before the wild firing of this week.
So now a question for our visitors: Which self-respecting country - other than Israel - would ever absorb this sort of relentless attack on its civilian population without carpet-bombing the terrorist perpetrators in their vipers' nest strongholds?
So now a question for our visitors: Which self-respecting country - other than Israel - would ever absorb this sort of relentless attack on its civilian population without carpet-bombing the terrorist perpetrators in their vipers' nest strongholds?
