22-Jun-12: For now, there's somewhat less drama down south, but peaceful it's not.

Radiant Israeli bride Rinat Shiklar lives on Kibbutz Alumim, 
adjacent to the Gaza Strip. 
Here she poses in front of an Iron Dome anti-missile battery
on her wedding day,yesterday. Mazal tov! [Image Source]

Life goes on, as it must, and people get married and live productive lives. [Mazal tov, Rinat!] 

In Ashkelon, a gorgeous Mediterranean city that is home to more than 110,000 Israelis, the schools were due to reopen this morning after the drama of this entire past week. And yes, things are a little quieter there and in other parts of southern Israel this morning. But certainly not quiet, and certainly no one believes a ceasefire agreement with the terrorists means very much. 

During the night just ended (Thursday night/Friday morning), four rockets were fired from Gaza into the city, according to the Times of Israel. Three exploded in open fields, while the fourth was shot down in mid-flight by the IDF's Iron Dome missile defense system which is a good indication that that rocket was on target to strike a residential area. (The Iron Dome system has a differential identification mechanism that allows it to make split-second decisions about where to fire off one of its counter-measure rockets, or allow the incoming missile to crash and explode, depending on what it assesses to be the risk of a very bad outcome.) Fortunately no damage or injuries to human beings was reported during this past night but that was never the intention of the terrorist organizations and their sponsors.

In the quietest day of indiscriminate terror attacks this week, seven rockets (according to Ynet) hit Israel on Thursday in addition to the one intercepted over Ashkelon. The talley since Monday: 130 rockets that actually hit Israeli territory.

The IDF has made public its working assumption that the rocket attacks are going to continue. All things considered, it's a safe bet. What downside is there in the continued firing of lethal missiles when you're a terrorist organization. You're surely not concerned about possible losses to your own people. Such losses are actually a good thing rather than a bad, as anyone who follows these events and understands something about the mindset of the jihadists knows.

Hamas took public credit on Thursday for the fact that its terrorists operatives did all the rocket firings into Israel this week (which is almost certainly an exaggeration). But in doing so, it showed how much it expects consumers of news around the world to swallow the patent nonsense that it says about itself. The Hamas report proudly (no other way to describe it) lists 120 Gazan rocket firings, and then recites the name and character of the targets.

Guess what the targets were. No, not farms. Not school buses. No, not pizza restaurants or kindergartens or residential buildings. In reality, the people firing the rockets care not one tiny little bit who or what is hit; just as long as it's someone or something Jewish. But though that is certainly the truth, it's not what they say. On the contrary, the Hamas report says every single building, vehicle and person hit this week on the Israeli side was what it terms a "military site". The report is written in a kind of  English; check it now to see that we're not making this stuff up.

Revealingly, there's nothing on the Hamas site to acknowledge how one of its rockets this week killed a two year old Palestinian Arab girl. Elder of Ziyon has a brief and factual report which we would very much like you to see [click]. Brief summary: Hamas blames Israel for yet another self-inflicted loss caused by its own terrorist evil, and buries the evidence by staging a funeral for the little child, calling her a "martyr," and disgustingly wrapping her body in a Hamas flag. But it admits to the BBC [see "Palestinian Girl’s Death: Hamas Owns Up"] that the death was caused by its own sick-minded thuggish members (not the actual words they used).  

Hamas rockets landing on top of Gazan homes ["Fell Shorts"] and hurting and even killing their own people is nothing new. It happens all the time, but gets reported in the media almost never. To know more, look for the laconically titled "dropped short", "exploded prematurely" and "exploded at the launching site" rocket listings on this EU-funded Gazan website [hat tip: EoZ].

In truth, we don't expect terrorists to tell anything other than lies and self-serving distortions since anyone with eyes is aware of what savages they are. What does stun us, by contrast, is how otherwise sober and supposedly intelligent reporters and editors (such as those at Agence France Press and the New York Times as two among many examples) peddle those Hamas inventions and fabrications while knowing from first-hand experience the true nature of Hamas, its ideology and its beastiality.