30-Jun-10: Scenes from this ongoing but unreported war

Yet another Qassam rocket - one of the thousands reportedly stockpiled by the Hamas regime and its jihadist co-conspirators in the Gaza Strip - was fired off in the general direction of Israel in the early hours of this morning (Wednesday). To say that it was deliberately aimed at civilians is both true and untrue. Terrorists in possession of crude but lethal weaponry are completely indifferent about what damage their attacks cause. Indifferent - because anything they hit is an achievement. There is no strategic goal of trying to cripple the enemy's military forces. Never has been, not in the 1990's or 1950's or 1920's - never. On the contrary, the jihadists have demonstrated for decades a preference for hiding from the Israeli military and striking kindergartens, little children and the like. This is one of the many reasons they are accurately described as terrorists.

The operators of today's Qassam unfortunately got lucky. It struck and damaged a packaging factory (see "Kassam destroys factory in Negev" in today's Jerusalem Post) in an un-named community in the Sdot Negev area (un-named because Israeli security policy says we don't want to provide any operational knowledge to the terrorists, ever), on the Israeli side of the boundary fence abutting Gaza and its thuggish warriors. The JPost quotes police saying no one was injured in the attack. But as we keep pointing out, that is not the outcome that the barbarians intended. The damage to the plant was considerable.

Israel's retaliation was not slow in coming. Starting a few hours after the attack, the quantity of goods permitted by Israel to enter the Gaza Strip was increased by 50%. The number of trucks entering via the Kerem Shalom crossing point at the southern end of Gaza (temporarily shut down this morning because of actual intelligence warnings of a pending terror attack on the crossing and its stressed-out Israeli staff) will increase to 250 within weeks. An additional 120 trucks will be permitted entry into the Hamas-controlled mini-state through the Karni terminal at the northern end of the Strip.

That should teach them.