15-Nov-12: Ashdod: Two more Gazan rockets in past 45 minutes

Iron Dome air defence battery in suburban Ashdod [Image Source]

The city of Ashdod (population: 210,000, home to Israel's largest sea port, a place mentioned multiple times in the Bible, never part of any "occupied" territories) on Tel Aviv's southern fringe came under rocket attack around 7:30 this morning. The Iron Dome (Kipat Barzel in Hebrew) shot one of the two morning rockets down in mid-air; the other exploded harmlessly, it appears, in open land.

That one Iron Dome battery that has lately become a permanent fixture of the Ashdod cityscape is calibrated, as all the other Iron Dome batteries are, so that it makes rapid decisions once a terrorist missile's trajectory has been computed. Given the huge cost per firing, the Iron Dome system is implemented when the enemy rocket appears to be on track to achieve the Gazan terrorist industry's dream: a hit on humans or their property on the Israeli side.

The decision by Israel to accelerate the development of Iron Dome and put it into urgent deployment came as the Hamas/Moslem Brotherhood military/industrial complex acquired almost unthinkable quantities of rocketry and explosives in these last four years. That has been happening in parallel with the similar process now underway on Israel's northern border where the non-state army of Hizbollah is deeply entrenched inside southern Lebanon's bucolic villages.

The relative protection that Iron Dome has afforded Israelis under attack from civilian-sensing, rocket-rich terrorist gangs is new. It was deployed only 19 months ago for the first time. Since then, by spectacularly stopping Qassam, GRAD and other Palestinian Arab rockets in mid-air on their way to creating massacre after massacre (their unambiguous purpose) on Israeli territory, it has saved countless lives.

This morning was no exception. And the day is still young.

In fact, since starting to quickly write this blog entry, we have seen warnings pop up on our screens of missile attacks in the past fifteen minutes in Beer Tuvia, Be'er Sheva (a wave of rockets, yet again - probably GRADs), the hard-hit Eshkol region, Ashkelon and the Merhavim region. The Iron Dome system was in heavy action during those last few minutes and intercepted no fewer than four of the rockets heading into Be'er Sheva, as well as stopping a rocket over Ashkelon.

As is always the case, not a single one of those Gazan rockets was intended to strike at Israel's military. The undisguised goal of Hamas and its viper's nest of co-jihadists is to hit and hurt ordinary Israelis.

So when people in Western countries take to the streets and protest against war-like, aggressive, disproportionate Israel, as they will be doing today, they are voting with their feet and placards for a continuation of the ongoing war of terror conducted by Hamas and co. against our families, our society and our lives. We will be writing some more about that later today.