5-Jul-12: They fired into southern Israel again this morning

There may be experts inside Israel's military intelligence who can predict when and perhaps why these things rise and fall. But for the rest of us, it's a puzzle. After several days of relative quiet, a mortar shell was fired from the terrorist-infested Gaza Strip into Israel in the last hour. [The Times of Israel says it was a Qassam rocket - we're checking with other sources now.] The first in a new eruption? A lone firing? A mistake? Whatever, it means the inhabitants of southern Israel in general, and the Eshkol region in particular, are back to the anxieties of raising families and living normal lives while a terrorist army equipped with a vast arsenal of rockets, mortars and the like, picks its moments. Firing into Israel just before 8 in the morning, in case it's not obvious, is  designed to increase the likelihood of people being on the roads and exposed - the better to inflict something painful on the despised Israelis and Jews. Terrorists work like that. There are no targets, no crossfire, no innocent victims caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their goal, via entirely indiscriminate rocket fire, is to hit anything they can.