23-Apr-14: Twenty rockets fired from Gaza on Monday; ten land in Israel. What the remaining ten teach us.

Gaza terrorists laying explosives: Their neighbors' children routinely serve

as human shields and unseen victims [Image Source]

A brief report on the Long War Journal website discloses, thanks to their very useful research and media monitoring, that the ten rockets fired on southern Israel this past Monday [see "21-Apr-14: Rocket barrage seeks Israeli victims in Monday morning attack from Gaza"] came from a specific source in the Gazan vipers' nest. Also, that the published numbers conceal - yet again - something that sharp reporters and their editors ought to have focused on long ago, but keep ignoring.

Here's part of what David Barnett's LWJ report says:

In a series of tweets, the Yahya Ayyash Brigades took credit for rocket fire today from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The jihadist group, which has been promoted by Abdullah Azzam Brigades official Sirajuddin Zurayqat, said its fighters launched more than 20 rockets... The Yahya Ayyash Brigades, named after a deceased Hamas bomb maker, first appeared in mid-January 2014 when it took credit for rocket fire during the funeral of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Last month, the group took responsibility for some of the rocket and mortar fire from Gaza during a mini flare-up between Israel and Palestinian terror groups in Gaza.

The IDF's assessment of the Monday barrage from Gaza is, as the Times of Israel said, that ten rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip in all. Seven fell in open areas in the Sha’ar Hanegev region and outside the city of Sderot. One exploded in Sderot's city limits, causing damage. Another exploded in the Eshkol region.

The terror practitioners who did the indiscriminate firing say the number was double the Israeli total, making it fairly likely an additional rockets fell short, landing on the heads or homes of the hapless Palestinian Arabs who live under Hamas domination in that jihadist enclave.

Gaza, 2004: The original AP caption read (in part): "A masked Hamas

militant sets up a makeshift mortar launcher against Israeli forces,

unseen, as Palestinian youths try to cover him from the sight of

the forces during an incursion in a Gaza city's neighborhood,

Wednesday Feb. 11, 2004. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Those fell shorts are the key to understanding what it means to live under jihadist rule. Your life, your children, your family, your property: they're worthless. The essence of your role in society is to contribute to waging a ceaseless war of hatred on your enemy. And if that means death and injury from mis-fired missiles or plain incompetence, pish, it's nothing. A small price, even a trivial price to pay.

How sickening this is will be lost on the jihadists. The victims in their own communities have neither electoral power nor freedom of speech, so there is virtually no outcry from them, other than very occasional condemnations emanating from such groups as Palestinian Center for Human Rights. But where are the mainstream news reporting organizations? For them, those fell shorts never happened, don't happen. (Try finding online news photos of the destruction caused in Gaza to Gazans by these Gazan "fell shorts".) Public opinion does not become outraged. The men doing the shooting come under zero pressure. 

Not to diminish the existential threat all of this poses to Israelis, in terms of the numbers, Gazan Arabs continue to pay a steep and largely unexamined price in terms of people maimed and killed at the hands of the barbarians in their own midst.