18-Jan-14: Gazan rocket attack on southern Israel at 11 tonight

The Tzeva Adom incoming-missile warning system was heard throughout the northern Negev desert area of southern Israel at a few minutes after 11 this evening, sending thousands of residents into their safe rooms and bomb shelters. A rocket fired from Gaza appears to have crashed into open fields (according to Ynet) in the Sha'ar Hanegev region (population about 6,000) without causing injury or damage, though this was plainly not the intention of the terrorists who took their lives in their hands by mounting the attack.

We write often about these ongoing assaults on the civilians - almost never on the military - of southern Israel by the terror forces of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Time to put some simple statistics under the reports. Our experience is that even Israel's staunchest supporters and friends have little idea of the scale of this horror.

The numbers in the table below come from two different sources. Each has its own criteria, but more importantly the fact that there is no systematic reporting of the ongoing day-by-day assault means there's no single source of authoritative data. This is a pity.

Missiles Fired Into Southern Israel From Gaza  thisongoingwar.blogspot.com
Year	Rocket Attacks	Rockets and Mortars		Injuries	Deaths
	IDF	Wikipedia		Wikipedia	Wikipedia
2001	510				1
2002	661				1
2003	848				1
2004	1,528				5
2005	488	1,255			6
2006	1,123	1,777		371	9
2007	2,427	2,807		578	10
2008	3,278	3,716		611	15
2009	774	858		11	2
2010	231	365		35	5
2011	627	680		81	3
2012	2,248	2,273		284	6
2013	36
2014	15
Totals:	14,794	13,731		1,971	64

The gaps in the table reflect the absence of systematic record keeping at various times. They do not signify zero. The ongoing total for 2014 was accurate only up until last week and does not include tonight's.

18-Jan-14: Shooting attack reported tonight on Gush Etzion community

A Palestinian Arab opened fire at the security guard stationed at the entrance to the Gush Etzion community of Migdal Oz, south of Jerusalem, around 7 this evening. Times of Israel says no injuries or damage are reported. IDF soldiers took the attacker into custody and he is being questioned now. Over at Ynet, they say the shooter used an 'improvised' weapon. We assume his intentions were the usual, and not improvised.

17-Jan-14: Gaza rockets shut down schools in southern Israel

Ashdod [Image Source: Municipal website]

Around 9:00 pm, last night (Thursday), communities throughout the Ashkelon area heard the Tzeva Adom incoming rockets warning. We continue to scour the news and our sources to see whether a landing was identified, but for now there is little factual reporting beyond the fact of the sirens and a Jerusalem Post report that this was another "fell short" attack. (When they fall short on top of the heads and homes of Palestinian Arabs, the evidence shows there's very little journalistic desire or ability outside Israel to report that.)

The authorities in Ashdod, a coastal city a few kilometers closer than Ashkelon is to the Tel Aviv area, took steps last night, starting this morning, to protect their population of school children and, we assume, to also heighten awareness of the terrorist threat.

From Times of Israel:

After rockets, Ashdod cancels classes in unprotected schools 

Times of Israel | January 16, 2014, 11:25 pm   Students in the southern city of Ashdod whose schools are unprotected from rockets will stay home Friday, in light of fears of continued rocket fire out of Gaza. Officials in Ashdod made the decision late Thursday, hours after a rocket was fired for the second straight night, setting off sirens in the nearby Ashkelon region. Security officials estimated that the rocket landed inside the Gaza Strip. The school closure will affect some 3,500 kids in Ashdod, out of 54,000. Most of the unprotected schools in Ashdod sit in the ultra-Orthodox part of the city, according to Israel Radio. In the seaside city of Ashkelon, schools will be held as normal, even in unprotected schools. Late Wednesday night, a volley or eight rockets were shot toward Ashkelon. Five of them were downed by Iron Dome anti-missile batteries, and the other three fell in open areas outside of the city. There were no injuries or damage... In response to the late-night barrage, the Israeli Air Force conducted airstrikes on four sites in northern Gaza, including a hidden rocket launcher, a weapons storage site and a weapons manufacturing facility. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit reported direct hits on all targets. Palestinian medical sources said a woman and four children were injured as a result of the strikes.

This is also Ashdod [see our report from two years ago]

As of this hour, no news sources other than the Israeli media, have reported on today's closure of schools in Ashdod, a city of a quarter-million people and battered by the missiles fired at random into its streets and buildings from the terror-infested Gaza Strip.

Ashdod, a gorgeous urban community which was nothing but sand dunes as recently as 1956, is about a thirty minute drive from the center of Tel Aviv. It's also only a few seconds flying-time from the lethal, exploding rockets of Gaza. It regularly pays the price for its location.

Interesting that the quoted casualty report from Gaza, where rockets are routinely fired from the urban areas in which the terrorists embed themselves, speaks of injuries that once again are suffered exclusively by women and children. If news items like this are to be believed (they should not), those clever and lucky men of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the other rocket-armed gangs are remarkably impervious to the dangers of pinpoint Israeli counter-fire.

News sources - Reuters has just done it, and so too Ma'an and the Palestinian Arab news source WAFA - astonishingly accept without hesitation those self-serving accounts from "Palestinian medical sources" as if they were factual, and report them accordingly. As for the rocket men of Gaza, they generally get into the news only via their well-publicized 'martyr' funerals. We call that journalism in the service of an agenda.

16-Jan-14: Offensive, inappropriate and dangerously, undiplomatically inconsistent

Based on the Edward Ruscha image

Here on this blog, we try hard to avoid dealing with political issues. It's difficult enough to have our voices heard on the existential issue of terrorism; why dilute that by getting dragged into partisan matters? 

At the same time, we see the roles of malevolent, agenda-driven news reporting and media bias as part of our agenda, and have written about it here many times. Today is one of those times.

The media here in Israel, and to a much lesser extent outside it, have focused attention and vituperation in the past few days on critical statements (for which he subsequently apologized) made by Israel's Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon about the peace campaign conducted by John Kerry, the US Secretary of State. Almost unanimously, the voices you hear in the media are as critical of Ya'alon as the official voices in the Obama administration were and are:

“To question Secretary Kerry’s motives and distort his proposals is not something we would expect from the defense minister of a close ally,” White House Spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday, echoing comments earlier in the day from State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki. “The remarks of the Defense Minister [Ya'alon], if accurate, are offensive and inappropriate especially given all that the United States is doing to support Israel’s security needs, and will continue to do... Secretary Kerry and his team, including General [John] Allen, have been working day and night to try to promote a secure peace for Israel because of the Secretary’s deep concern for Israel’s future... To question his motives and distort his proposals is not something we would expect from the defense minister of a close ally.” [As reported]

The headline next to the portrait of defence minister
Moshe Ya'alon on the cover of the daily Yediot Aharonot
reads: "Ya'alon in closed conversations: Kerry is messianic and obsessed"

The Israeli-Arab analyst and journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, whom we have quoted here numerous times because of what we regard as the clear-thinking, courage and accuracy that characterizes his work-product, today points to a serious and distressing (our words) double-standard on display in this spat.

It is interesting how one comment from an Israeli minister has managed to strain relations between the U.S. Administration and Israel, while fiery rhetoric and street demonstrations against Kerry and Obama in the Palestinian territories and Arab capitals are completely ignored by Washington... While the U.S. Administration has been quick in issuing a response to the Israeli minister's statements, it continues to ignore remarks and demonstrations against Kerry made by Palestinians and other Arabs. Palestinian officials representing various organizations, including the Palestinian Authority, have been denouncing Kerry almost on a daily basis over the past few weeks. But these condemnations do not seem to bother the State Department. Among the officials who have been extremely critical of Kerry's role in the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks is Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO's Secretary-General and one of the closest advisors to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Just last month, Abed Rabbo launched a scathing attack on Kerry, denouncing his latest proposals as unacceptable. "Kerry does not have the right to decide where our borders will be," the top PLO official said. "If the U.S. wants, it can give parts of California or Washington to Israel. Kerry's framework agreement is very dangerous." Palestinian officials have also been leaking details about Kerry's latest proposals for reaching an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Some have gone as far as accusing Kerry of being biased in favor of Israel, working toward "liquidating" the Palestinian cause and trying to extort the Palestinians...
Why, then, Kerry is not just as offended by the Arab condemnations? ...If Kerry really cares about the peace process, he also needs to ask the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments to lower the tone and stop inciting against him and the U.S. Unless, of course, those statements and protests do not offend him. [Khaled Abbu Toameh, today]

We think the power and impact of Khaled Abu Toameh's observations are enhanced greatly by the calm and reason of his approach. The facts, in other words, speak for themselves for whoever is listening. We're left wondering why they are barely mentioned in the media coverage emanating from other, less-Israel-friendly places. If you believe Israel and the Palestinians bear essentially the same responsibility for bringing about an understanding and an enduring peace based on whatever compromises are needed, then how can you justify applying two sets of standards? 

Kerry and Abbas share a recent moment of mutual persuasion
[Image Source]

Smarter people than we speak of the bigotry of diminished expectations. Whether it's that or (being more constructive) some kind of misguided liberalism that imposes one kind of burden on the party perceived to be stronger, richer, more capable, less oppressed, and another far-less-challenging burden on the other side, it reflects an agenda-driven approach to both statesmanship and journalism, and that makes it wrong and dangerous.

We'll end with a question for those who, despite what appears above, feel Kerry's sense of being offended is justified. 

How can it be that for the past six months his (Kerry's) spokesperson has continued to be unable to answer the following question even while her boss is, as we have just been told, "...working day and night to try to promote a secure peace for Israel because of the Secretary’s deep concern for Israel’s future"? Are the convicted felons being freed by Israel at the behest of the State Department, some of whose victims were US citizens or women or elderly and frail Holocaust survivors, in reality (a) freedom fighters; (b) political prisoners; or (c) terrorists lawfully convicted of their sickening and frequently brutal crimes. 

Our question, for those new to this blog, is not so new. Its background is documented here, complete with video: "14-Aug-13: Are the Palestinian Arab murderers who are being released at this moment, freedom fighters or terrorists? Let's check with the State Department." There's an updated review of it here: "12-Jan-14: Finally, fully justified outrage from State Department about killers being released to do more terrorism". 

Some will call us obsessive. In light of the State Dept.'s bizarre ongoing obfuscation, we think of ourselves as merely infuriated. But at least we're consistent.

16-Jan-14: Middle-of-night rocket barrage from terrorists of Gaza seeks more Israeli victims

Overnight, starting around 2:00 am, there has been heavy rocket fire into the communities of southern Israel from the armaments-rich terrorist forces of the Gaza Strip. A Times of Israel report says no fewer than five incoming rockets that were headed at the coastal city of Ashkelon (population: 120,000) were intercepted in mid-air and brought down by means of the advanced technology of the Iron Dome counter-missile defense system. Three more rockets crashed into open areas in the Ashkelon area without (as far as is currently known) doing damage, other than terrifying the civilian residents. Soon after, there were reports of Israeli Air Force airstrikes on four Gaza sites, described by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit as a hidden rocket launcher, a weapons storage site and a weapons manufacturing facility. Direct hits on all targets are claimed.

15-Jan-14: When a society praises itself for turning its children into human bombs, whose problem is that?

This image appears on the website of the Hamas Ministry of the Interior.
They want you to know their children are being raised to kill and be killed.
So whose problem is that? [Image Source]

This is not an analysis of today's news about Hamas. 

The ghoulish industry of death the Islamists have assembled since slaughtering their Fatah opponents and taking control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 is well-known to anyone willing to peer into the cesspool.

No, this is a posting about those many polite international organizations, those major governments of Europe and the Americas, those global humanitarians, those statespeople and moral leaders who will again today, as they have till now, avert their gaze from the obvious child abuse on a huge scale and - in the most genteel of fashions - proceed to ignore the self-cultivated barbarism that has become daily life in places like Gaza.

No self-respecting observer can claim to be unaware that the leadership cadre of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are deliberately establishing a death cult. The reports are explicit; the photographic evidence is well-publicized and ubiquitous; the savages have never made a secret of the sickening abuse of children in which they engage. On the contrary, they want everyone to know. 

And so do we.

Here's an extract from a news report by Elhanan Miller ["13,000 teens complete Hamas training camps to emulate ‘suicide martyrs’"] and posted on the Times of Israel site several hours ago:

• The Hamas government in Gaza celebrated the graduation on Monday of paramilitary camps geared at training high-school children “to follow in the footsteps of the suicide martyrs.” The camps, titled “the pioneers of liberation,” are run by Hamas’s ministries of education and interior. 
• Some 13,000 students in grades 10-12 participated in the one-week training camps this year, compared to 5,000 last year when the program was launched...
• The corps of instructors consists mainly of active members of Hamas’s security forces, and the curriculum includes weapons training, first aid, self defense, marching exercises and “security awareness” classes on identifying Israeli spies.
• Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Interior Minister Fathi Hammad and Education Minister Usama Mzeini attended the graduation ceremony on Monday, each delivering fiery speeches stressing the importance of military training in developing a new generation of Palestinian combatants.
• “Beware this generation,” Haniyeh said, addressing Israel. “This is a generation which knows no fear. It is the generation of the missile, the tunnel and the suicide operations.”
• Hammad, the interior minister, said the training was in preparation for the coming war with Israel. “This generation is a sapling from God on earth. It will harvest the enemies of God and be the pride of all nations,” he said.

The article ends with an eleventh-grade boy declaiming:

We are the pioneers of liberation. We are coming to purify you from the Zionists...

Children trained to see themselves as being in the purification business learn too late that in reality they have been reprogrammed, repurposed, rewired to become human bombs. 

That is what the grotesque men of Hamas have wrought. Professing to be advancing their version of religious values, those men have induced children who ought to be acquiring the skills that will bring them a good and productive life to instead become adept at slaughtering and being slaughtered.

And there's this: all the Islamist martial music and military imagery cannot conceal the ugly reality that a Hamas attack has almost invariably meant hitting unarmed children (first), women and men. The massacre at a pizza shop in the center of Jerusalem in which our daughter Malki was murdered along with many others is the paradigm. It exemplifies what the Hamas brand of 'combatants' is trained to do.

As for Hamas launching an assault on a fighting force of armed Israelis, when did that ever happen?

As we said, none of this is news. Certain parts of the mainstream media have delicately poked at these stories from time to time. Activist supporters of the case for Israel, we among them here on this blog, have addressed it often. Our posts, for instance, have included (among many others):

• 8-Oct-13: Children and their indispensable role in the conflict
• 3-Jul-13: Educating the next generation: an early-summer reflection on asymmetry
• 18-Jun-13: They want their children to become killers and they say why. The rest of us are left with questions
• 17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns

The real story is not the military-style training and the pledges by children to die for the values of those hideous, terror-addicted Hamas insiders. It's this: where is the outrage of the civilized world? 

Are UNICEF, Defence for Children International, UNESCO, Child Rights International Network, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Save the Children Sweden, Arab Council for Childhood Development and so many other child-focused NGOs silent for a reason? If there is a reason, let them say it. It's inconceivable that they are unaware of this horror.

We especially want to know what UNRWA plans to do about the Hamas death-cultism. With an enormous footprint in the Gaza Strip, this has to become UNRWA's issue. Its website, the front end of the perpetual global UNRWA fund-raising, asserts this lofty set of aspirations:

We are committed to fostering the human development of Palestine refugees by helping them to: Acquire knowledge and skills; Lead long and healthy lives; Achieve decent standards of living; Enjoy human rights to the fullest possible extent. [UNRWA | Our priorities]

Given the self-imposed realities of Hamas ruled, we need to know how acceptable it is to them that six year old Gazan children (or for that matter 16 year olds) are given training in the lethal use of AK47s that are bigger than some of the children holding them [see Daily Mail UK]. Let them drop the charade and admit they have no problem with it, if that's the reality. We know the Palestinian Arab Islamists have no problem with this at all.

If, by chance, there are some civilized critics of Israel's various actions and policies who are as outraged as we are by the sickening sight of children being shown how to kill innocent civilians across the other side of the fence, then let them speak out as vociferously as they do when they blame Israel for this or another "war crime" or "atrocity". 

If they don't, why not? Who is going to save these children? It certainly is not going to be Hamas and their co-conspirators.

15-Jan-14: How jihadist messages heard in the Palestinian Arab villages go unreported in the wider world

Abbas' minister of religion and government-controlled
sermonizing Al-Habbash [Image Source: PalestinianMedia Watch
report, January 14, 2014]

While the rest of us tend to 'hear' only a handful of voices emanating from the Palestinian Authority government - one of the two quarrelsome regimes purporting to speak for the Palestinian Arabs - the citizens living under the yoke of the PA hear many more. 

Most of us recognize the name Mahmoud Abbas and more or less the things he stands for: the 'heroism' of those pathetic killers of elderly Jews and unarmed bus passengers, for instance. Some of us may know one or two of the names of PA cabinet ministers [here's a list]. But mention the name Mahmoud Al-Habbash and most observers of events in our neighbourhood will probably just give a shrug.

This is understandable but a shame. Al-Habbash, a Hamas member at an earlier stage in his career, is today a certified PA/Abbas insider, a cabinet minister who is more influential in the villages of the PA regime's fiefdom than most of its other politicians. This is because of what he does for a living: after earlier stints as minister of agriculture and minister of social affairs, he has served as minister of "waqf and religious affairs" since 2009. Or more accurately, one of the two such ministers since Hamas, naturally, has named its own man to the same post.

In a society where religion plays such a deadly important role, the influence of Al-Habbash is tremendous, even if most analysts and reporters are oblivious to it. (The dirty little secret about news reporting on what the PA stands for, wants, does and says is that it is based on the English-language versions of news releases put out by Abbas' bureau and by a handful of media outlets that play nice with the PA. The authentic Arabic-language messages are rarely reported other than by dedicated PA watchers like MEMRI and PMW. The work product of both is routinely ignored by most of the mainstream media most of the time.)

Palestinian Media Watch which specializes in just this kind of thing recently translated into English an Arabic-language press conference [here] in which the minister clarified to the citizenry the scope of his powers:

Al-Habbash explained that he is responsible for “all activity within the mosques” including the sermons, which require prior approval by his ministry. [He] emphasized that the mosques and everything related to them belong to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, from the employees – the imam, the speaker, the Quran teacher, the librarian, the caretakers and custodians – via the mosque and its adjacent structures… to regulation of the activity and the functioning, in accordance with Shari’ah and civil law… The Ministry is responsible for all activity within the mosques – the functioning, the centers for Quran study, the calls to prayer, and the sermons – and that the Ministry would not take lightly or be negligent in the fulfillment of its obligation. He noted that the religious lessons, Quran study and other activities going on in the mosques require prior approval by the Ministry.” [Al-Ayyam, Aug. 16, 2010 via PMW] 

Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority cabinet [Image Source]

In Palestinian Arab society, this amounts to a powerful megaphone. In fact, the editors at PMW point out that as minister, Al-Habbash himself often delivers the Friday sermons transmitted on official PA TV. These reflect messages that his ministry, Religious Affairs, chooses to disseminate to the Palestinian people. That's the way things work in authoritarian regimes.

Here's an extract from one of those authorized sermons from this past Monday:

"Whoever wants resistance, whoever wants Jihad, the direction for Jihad is well-known and clear... Those who send young people to Syria or elsewhere to die for a misdirected cause must stop and understand that Jerusalem is still waiting. Jerusalem is the direction, Jerusalem is the address...  I don't think there is anyone who doesn't know this... A compass that does not point to Jerusalem, Muhammad has nothing to do with it. Put an end to your ignorance." 

Put an end to your ignorance: that certainly makes sense to us. PMW's report of the speech, along with the video evidence of it, is here. With his boss and chief Palestinian maker-of-peace Mahmoud Abbas present in the audience and applauding to show agreement, declaiming in front of a sign stating that the event was being held under Abbas's auspices, Al-Habbash's message to the villages and streets of the PA was clear: there is a role for the jihadists, and it's not in Syria (current death toll: about 130,000) but here in Jerusalem from where we are writing these lines. [Another striking and mostly-ignored Al-Habbash sermon is well covered in this Israel-friendly report, and this one.]

Abbas and his message spinners know they take almost no risk in identifying with pro-terror messages like that of the minister of religion. Their confidence stems from the certainty that reports like PMW's coverage of the Al-Habbash speech will never appear in the world's conventional news channels. The Israelis may get agitated about it, but no serious analysts take that seriously either since it goes on all the time. Lethal journalism happens, even if the vast majority of its consumers have no idea it exists.

That dull, grinding sound you hear in the background? It's the so-called peace-process, about whose actual contours and features (like the hate-filled, violence-friendly pro-jihad message of Mahmoud Abbas and his inner circle) most people know nothing.

It's something to bear in mind when the reports of a fourth tranche of murderers, convicted and sentenced but being released from their Israeli cells under relentless US pressure, appear again in the news in the coming weeks.

14-Jan-14: In Turkey, urgent questions about when a humanitarian group qualifies as terrorist

From today's Turkish raid [Image Source]

Before moving on to today's story from Turkey (below) please first read a three-and-a-half-year-old post of ours: "6-Jun-10: It's not that complicated: Is IHH a humanitarian group or a terrorist group?" 

That post reviews some fairly basic facts, and winds up with these statements:

This information is freely available on the web. You don't need to be a terrorism specialist to see and be troubled by it. So why are otherwise credible sources raising snakey questions that undermine the allegations against IHH as if they were part of an Israeli conspiracy? ... You don't need to buy Israel's case to see that, being generous, IHH has a murky past and a highly compromised standpoint when it comes to jihad and acts of terror.

Please also read this: "4-Oct-12: With humanitarians like these, who needs militant barbarians? Revisiting the Mavi Marmara"

Now from the past hour, this Turkish report:

Turkish police have detained 25 people, including some taken in a raid on the branch of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH) in the southern province of Kilis, as part of an operation against al-Qaeda. Anti-terror police coming from the eastern province of Van have searched the main office of the İHH and its depot. The raid is part of simultaneous operations against al-Qaeda in six provinces including Istanbul, Van, Kilis, Adana, Gaziantep and Kayseri. Three people have been detained by anti-terror police in Bağcılar, Fatih and Küçükçekmece districts in the Istanbul leg of the operation. The suspects were sent to Van, according to the reports... The İHH released an official press statement today concerning the raid, with General Secretary Yaşar Kutluay saying the operation was aimed at preventing the İHH from sending humanitarian aid to Syria. “They are trying to show the İHH as if it is related to terror organizations,” Kutluay said, claiming that the operation was an “attack” on the NGO, which is said to be the biggest organization in Turkey sending aid to Syria... The İHH, an NGO which bases its humanitarian relief action on Islamic principles, was the operator of the Mavi Marmara and one of the main organizers of the Gaza Flotilla in May 2010.

Today's news from Turkey is bound to get some close analysis from people like us with terrorists on their minds.

13-Jan-14: As Sharon funeral winds up, two more civilian-seeking attack rockets are fired from Gaza

Ariel Sharon's fresh grave, beside that of his wife Lily
and in the soil of his farm

Yoav Zitun of Ynet writes:

Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel and landed in an open field in the vicinity of the Gaza border fence. There were no injuries or damage reported. IDF is not planning to respond to the attack at this stage.

This report appeared on-line around 4:30 Monday afternoon, very shortly after the Ariel Sharon state funeral had wound up.

We're puzzled by the suggestion that the IDF, confronted with four rockets in two volleys fired indiscriminately by Gaza-based terror forces at Israeli targets, would decide - let alone announce - to do nothing. About this morning's incoming rockets, see "13-Jan-14: Ahead of today's state funeral - rockets".

Times of Israel says the two rockets fell in an open area near the border with Gaza in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, noting that

Many of Israel’s top leaders and dignitaries were nearby at the Sharon family’s Sycamore Farm, located just east of the town of Sderot and only seven kilometers (4.3 miles) from the border with Gaza. Among leaders at the funeral were Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, US Vice President Joe Biden, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and many others.

Another source reports that

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the projectiles had targeted the town of Sderot, which lies very close to the Gaza border, and just four kilometres (2.5 miles) west of Sycamore Ranch, causing no injuries or damage. Given the ranch's proximity to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, the Israeli police and army had beefed up security in the area, with unconfirmed media reports saying the military had deployed a battery of the Iron Dome missile defence system to counter possible rocket attacks.

And on the Haaretz site, columnist Amir Oren writing a day before today's Gazan volleys, presciently observes that the late prime minister, by ordering the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza

laid the foundation for the Hamas takeover [and] helped realize the nightmare scenario that had previously served him as a political accessory: Gaza became a launching pad for rockets on the entire south. The ability of Gazan terror groups to rain fire on his ranch and the hill on which he will be buried is... part of Sharon’s legacy. [Haaretz] 

UPDATE Monday 6:45 pm: Contrary to the implication of its earlier report that the IDF had said it would do nothing in response to today's Gaza rocket attacks on southern Israel, Ynet now says "The Palestinians have reported that the IAF has attacked a Hamas military camp in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip. The IDF Spokesperson Unit said that the IAF attacked a military compound in central Gaza Strip and terror infrastructure in the southern part of the Strip."

13-Jan-14: Ahead of today's state funeral - rockets

Sharon's bier lay in state yesterday in the
Knesset plaza [Image Source: AFP]

Here in Jerusalem, though we're more than an hour's drive away from the site of today's state funeral for former prime minister Ariel Sharon, there's a broad level of awareness for more than one reason.

First, because the main highway connecting the nation's capital via the Judaean Hills to the coast is going to be closed for security reasons at various points. Secondly because part of the funeral events are going to be done here in the Knesset, Israel's parliament complex. And thirdly, because it's fairly plain that the terrorism-minded forces arrayed on our nation's borders are perceived as being interested in having their own impact on the day's events. This is not unconnected to the large number of foreign dignitaries making their way at this hour to Jerusalem, and the pre-burial activity at the Sharon farm close to Israel's border with Gaza where the funeral will take place.

It's now just after 8 in the morning, and we already have news - not entirely clear in the details - about two incoming rockets fired from the Gaza Strip [Hebrew here: they landed in open fields, no injuries] where Hamas has all the triggers under its forces' fingers. A Dan Williams report via Reuters says Israel has "beefed up security" ahead of today's events, and has

warned Palestinian rulers not to allow rocket fire during the ceremony, which U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will attend... An Israeli security source said Israel had "passed the message" to Gaza authorities to prevent any rocket fire during the funeral... "It was made clear to them that tomorrow would be a very bad day for anyone there to test Israel's patience," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. There was no immediate response from the Hamas government. [Reuters]

But it seems there has been a response. Williams himself tweeted a few minutes ago

Israeli media saying explosions heard in northern Gaza were likely rocket tests rather than cross-border launches ahead of Sharon's funeral.
— Dan Williams (@DanWilliams) January 13, 2014

More when we know it.

12-Jan-14: Mr Abbas, some words to mark a little-noticed anniversary. You deserve at least this.

Manifestly sincere dedication to terror and the things it does
for one's career [Image Source] 

It's solemn commemoration time.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of January 9, 2009, the date on which the term of office of Mahmoud Abbas, frequently touted as the democratically-elected president of the Palestinian National Authority and of the self-proclaimed State of Palestine, actually came to an end.

January 9, 2009 also happens to be the date on which Mahmoud Abbas unilaterally extended his presidential term. He has continued to extend it ever since. (Alert readers might wonder why they don't read this sort of thing on the front page of the New York Times or the website of BBC World Service. We sort of have no idea.)

In honour of the anniversary, we want to take this opportunity to remind readers of how Abbas and the group of Palestinian Arab insiders who have made out like thieves (just an expression) while controlling the perpetually-crippled PA economy, view the actions of the people we mentioned in several blog posts of the past fortnight.

Which posts and which people? We mean the people mentioned here, all of them from the two weeks just ended:

• 12-Jan-14: Sabbath afternoon knifing attack in Jerusalem
• 11-Jan-14: Saturday night rocket fire on southern Israel 
• 6-Jan-14: Gaza rocket fired this morning into southern Israel
• 5-Jan-13: The terror not reported remains the real news 
• 3-Jan-14: Behind the bombing of an Israeli city bus
• 3-Jan-14: Thursday rocket attack from Gaza again but the living in southern Israel's Gaza-fringe communities remains good 
• 31-Dec-13: Reality-checking: are we closer to peace this morning or further away?
• 30-Dec-13: Rocket fired into Israel from Gaza 
• 29-Dec-13: Israel's north faces fresh round of terrorist rocket attacks
• 29-Dec-13: When Mahmoud Abbas raises their hands and cheers their heroic deeds, read this and shudder

Abbas, the self-proclaimed head of state of a nation that has demanded and gotten a seat in many of the world's global organizations including the UN, says this about people who (literally) hack, slash, knife, shoot and bomb innocent civilians:

They are "heroic brothers" whose return to the Palestinian Arab towns and villages is reason enough to "congratulate ourselves" for the "great celebration that unifies" the Palestinian Arabs. Their actions reflect the determination of the people at whose head he stands "not to lose their humanity, their highest, deeply-held moral values". Though a self-declared "man of peace", he holds that "if the Arabs want war – we are with them" but his side "cannot fight alone". "We tried military action during the Second Intifada". "Popular operations resisting settlement and the [security] fence (i.e. acts of terror directed at unarmed Israeli civilians) lead to clear positive results for the Palestinian cause". The people who murder and maim children, women, elderly survivors of the Holocaust, their own work-mates and employers - these "are human beings, who did what we, we, ordered them to do". 

Happy anniversary, Mr Abbas. If nothing else, the notable milestones of your career have caused thoughtful people (including us) to pay close attention to speeches of yours that would otherwise probably have been immediately consigned to the garbage.

It is rare to find a politician as unafraid as you of owning up to the unvarnished, though little reported truth: that you believe sincerely and deeply in terror: in its utility, in its effectiveness, in its redeeming power.

Perhaps one day we, together with some of the thousands of others who have suffered unspeakable loss and pain at your blood-drenched hands, might meet in a suitable place - perhaps an international court-room or, better yet, a prison where we can spend time with you reviewing what the words "hero" and "deeply-held moral values" mean in your lexicon.