02-Nov-19: Again: Friday night rocket barrages from Gaza

As the Sabbath ends here in Jerusalem, we - like many of the families living around us - go as soon as we can to our Internet devices to see what we didn't hear about during the past 25 hours. And it turns out to have been an especially violent weekend.

Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired 10 rockets into Israel in two separate barrages on Friday night, the army said... Warning sirens had gone off in the town of Sderot and in other Israeli communities along the Gaza border as many families were eating Friday night Shabbat dinner... One projectile slammed into a house in the town of Sderot, while the Iron Dome system intercepted eight and the tenth fell in open ground. The army responded several hours later with strikes on several terror targets in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
Palestinian media reported that several airstrikes targeted training sites and outposts affiliated with Hamas and other groups. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said three men sustained moderate or serious shrapnel wounds from one of the airstrikes.
In the early hours of Saturday, sirens again sounded in Sderot and the village of Ibim. The IDF later attributed the sirens to “non-rocket fire” from Gaza into Israel.
During the earlier barrage, a 65-year-old woman was lightly hurt when she fell while running toward a shelter, medics said. Five people were treated for anxiety.
The attack was one of the largest in recent months...
The rocket barrages came a day after a rocket fired from Gaza landed in an open field. There were no reports of injuries or damage in Thursday’s attack. ["Rocket fired from Gaza hits home in Sderot as Iron Dome intercepts 8 others", Times of Israel, November 1, 2019]

Deploying the Iron Dome anti-missile system is expensive, as the news media here frequently remind us. As a general matter, the system rapidly informs its operators if a specific Israel-bound attack is on a trajectory likely to cause damage or injury. Then and (usually) only then, the IDF shoots to intercept.

There were eight intercepts on Friday night.

Here's how a crash-landing Gazan rocket, fired off in the general direction of anything Israeli, looks when it strikes your home. The security cam video clip in the Tweet below is from around 9:00 pm Friday night, via an Israeli news program:

תיעוד נוסף ממצלמת אבטחה של פגיעת הרקטה בבית בשדרות @bokeralmog

(צילום: אלברט אבוחצירא) pic.twitter.com/X3GVQDtpvI

— חדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) November 1, 2019

The family living in the house, according to a paramedic quoted by Ynet,

"a couple in their 40s and their children, were in an adjacent building," he said. "They told us that as soon as the sirens sounded, they entered the protected area and left a few minutes later. They were not injured and did not need medical attention."

Spokesthugs for Hamas are quoted tonight [here] saying the Israeli airstrikes that followed shortly after the Gazan rocket barrages are a “dangerous escalation” and that the “Zionist enemy bears responsibility for its consequences and ramifications.”

07-Jan-19: Pre-dawn Gazan rocket attack on Ashkelon is thwarted

The marina at Ashkelon [Image Source]

It's a little after seven in the morning on a chilly January Monday and the sleep-deprived citizens of Ashdod are, not for the first time, counting their blessings.

Around three this morning, incoming-rocket warnings were sounded in the coastal city that has the misfortune of being within easy firing range of the rocket-rich Gaza Strip and its mayhem-minded terrorist hordes:

...[W]arning sirens blared in the southern city of Ashkelon and the nearby Ashkelon beach region after 3 am. The IDF said it identified a single launch from Gaza that was intercepted by Iron Dome. Residents reported hearing loud explosions, apparently from the interceptor. The launch came hours after the Israeli Air Force struck two Hamas positions in the eastern Gaza Strip in response to an explosive device that was flown into southern Israel earlier in the day, the army said. On Sunday morning, a bomb was flown into Israel using a large cluster of balloons and a drone-like glider device, landing in a carrot field in the Sdot Negev region of southern Israel shortly before noon... ["Air force hits Gaza targets after rocket fired into Israel", Times of Israel, January 7, 2019]

Following the now-familiar playbook, the in-bound rocket was aimed at civilian targets (Ashkelon is not a military base but a bustling city of about 140,000 civilian residents). The fact that it was intercepted mid-flight indicates it was on-target for causing the very sort of damage and destruction that it was intended to. The Iron Dome system calculates the trajectory of enemy rocket attacks before telling its operators whether or not to commit to firing off one of its counter-measure rockets.

No less familiar, Israel's response was to fire from the air against "several terror targets at a Hamas training camp in the northern Gaza Strip" according to Times of Israel quoting the IDF. Since this happened in the dark of the early morning, it's likely no one was injured on the ground.

Yesterday's balloon attack: The payload exploded while
being examined by Israeli police [Image Source: IDF]

Yesterday (Sunday), a brightly-colored, large cluster of balloons carrying an explosive payload as well as (bizarrely) a non-functioning drone-looking device floated across Gaza's frontier with Israel and exploded in a carrot field in one of southern Israel's Gaza containment communities:

The balloons were attached to a drone, which was labeled with a logo from the Gaza engineering college. The balloons sat in a field near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip for most of the day before security personnel could raise the drone using heavy machinery. When that occurred, the device detonated, but the incident did not cause any damage or injuries. Palestinians frequently send balloons, kites and other items laced with incendiary devices over the border fence in attempts to harm Israeli territory, since the "Great March of Return" riots along the fence began in March 2018. The devices have burned more than half the forested land in the area, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) data showed in October... ["Israel hits Hamas posts after incendiary balloons, drone, fall near border", Jerusalem Post, January 6, 2019]

Given the very different kind of media coverage terrorism gets here versus outside Israel, the capacity of Hamas' rocket-equipped forces to deliver serious and deadly harm to Israelis is well-recognized by Israelis; much less so by people far from the scene. Less than a month ago, some 300 Israel-bound rockets were fired from Gaza [Ynet, December 11, 2018] during a single, very violent 5-hour time span on a Monday evening.

No one expects attacks of that sort to end soon.

03-Jan-18: Wednesday rocket fire on southern Israel - and more Fell Shorts

Far from reporters' eyes and awareness, the southern half of Israel has come under rocket attack three five times in the past several days. In chronological order:

• On Friday, as we noted at the time ["29-Dec-17: Midday rockets from Gaza: two are intercepted in the air, one lands inside Israel"] three somethings (maybe mortars, maybe rockets - Israeli reports are divided, no one else cares) were lobbed into southern Israel in an attempt, it is speculated, to disrupt a well-attended ceremony for the missing-believed-killed IDF soldier Oren Shaul "whose remains are being held by Hamas in the coastal enclave" in the words of a Times of Israel report today. Two were intercepted in mid-air by Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile defense system. The third crashed into an Israeli community causing some building damage. It was announced yesterday (Tuesday) that the IDF has concluded that Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group serving as a well-armed proxy for the Iranian military carried out the attack.
• The on Monday night (not reported by us), a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip at anything Israeli crashed into an open field in the Eshkol region. Neither injuries nor damage resulted which was not and never is the intention of the terrorists doing the firing.
• This afternoon (Wednesday), a mortar fired from the Gaza Strip crashed into a field in the Eshkol region according to Times of Israel which says the IDF's early-detection systems spotted the launch as it happened but the site of its impact is still being sought. No Tzeva Adom (Red Alert) warnings were sounded, evidently indicating that once the trajectory was known, it was calculated not to be heading towards a populated area. For its part, Ynet says there were two rockets this afternoon: one around 2 pm, the other around 3:30 pm. (We see now that Times of Israel agrees.) Both crashed into the Eshkol region, and in neither case was there significant property damage or any injuries.

Several additional rocket and mortar firings during these past few days fell on top of Gazan homes and land and perhaps people. They're what we know as Fell Shorts. The Arab side never reports these, perhaps out of embarrassment. It's exceedingly rare for them to be mentioned at all by the major news syndication agencies like Reuters, AFP and Associated Press.

This is a pity because, as we see it, nothing expresses contempt for the lives and well-being of Gaza's Palestinian Arab population more clearly than the steady stream of rockets that fall short and land in their midst.

Victims of the property damage and of the injuries that follow are right out of luck, because no news reporters come to hear their stories. For Gaza's Hamas rulers, if no one knows about the Fell Shorts, they never happened. Click Fell Short to see that we have reported on close to a hundred such own-goals.

UPDATE Wednesday January 3, 2018 at 6:05pm: There's been a third Gaza-on-Israel firing - maybe a mortar, maybe a rocket. Times of Israel says unlike the two earlier attacks today, this latest one triggered the Color Red sirens indicating that there must have been a perceived danger to people and communities. As always, the rocket-persons can reliably be expected to continue until they're forcibly stopped.

29-Dec-17: Midday rockets from Gaza: two are intercepted in the air, one lands inside Israel

Kfar Aza around noon today [Image capture from this video]

It's a short and overcast Friday. In winter, the Sabbath arrives a little after four in the afternoon. But today, for thousands in Israel's south, the usual Erev Shabbat routine wasn't so routine.

Around 11:50 this morning, inbound rocket warnings were heard in dozens of Israeli communities in the a broad swathe of south-central Israel adjacent to the rocket-infested Gaza Strip.

Israel National News:

Sirens sounded in southern Israel as rockets were fired from Gaza at the Sdot Negev and Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Councils and two were intercepted by Iron Dome missiles. No one was hurt, but at least one building was damaged. According to an IDF spokesperson, three rockets were identified as being fired towards Israel, and the Iron Dome intercepted two of them. Arab media reported that IDF tanks responding to the rockets shot at targets in Gaza.

People attending a ceremony in Kfar Aza to mark the birthday of Oren Shaul took whatever cover they could as the photo above shows. To remind readers who do not recognize his name, the IDF has determined that he was killed in the fighting with Hamas during the summer of 2014. Hamas continues to hold his body for ransom.

Times of Israel says the third of today's three rockets

fell in Israeli territory in the Shaar Hanegev region, on the Gaza border.  Police said they found the rocket at the entrance to a building that had sustained damaged from the fall. Rocket warning sirens were heard shortly before midday in the Shaar Hanegev and Sedot Hanegev regions, sending frightened residents running to shelters. There were no immediate reports of casualties...

Zahava Shaul is accompanied to a nearby shelter as the rocket warnings are
heard [Image Source: Ynet]

UPDATE 2:30 pm December 29, 2017 | According to an updated Times of Israel report ["Gaza rockets apparently target ceremony for captured soldier", Times of Israel, today]:

The three rockets fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel on Friday appeared to have been launched to deliberately coincide with a ceremony marking what would have been the 24th birthday of an IDF soldier who was killed, and whose remains were captured by Hamas, in 2014. A military official could not yet say that this was definitively the case, as the army was still investigating the issue, but said it “absolutely could be,” noting the uncommon timing of the attack. 

Ynet quoted Oren Shaul's mother, Zahava - imagine what the event must have felt like for her - saying "It's an unpleasant and frightening experience. The most important thing is that no one was hurt." The head of the Zionist Union political party Avi Gabbay who attended the ceremony said: "The rocket fire in the middle of the ceremony proves, more than a thousand witnesses, that deterrence has been lost. They knew there was a ceremony happening here, and they fired. It's intolerable. I hope our government responds properly." Among the other dignitaries present: Communications Minister Ayoob Kara (Likud); MK Oren Hazan (Likud); Golani Brigade Commander Shlomi Binder; Maj. Gen. (res) Hagai Topolanski, the former head of the IDF's Manpower Directorate; Haim Jelin MK, former head of the Eshkol Regional Council.

Times of Israel points out that

This month saw two weeks of near-daily rocket launches, the largest incidence of missile-fire from the Strip since the 2014 Israel-Hamas war. These daily attacks had recently seemed to have come to an end. According to Israeli assessments, the rockets are not being launched by Hamas, but by other terrorist groups in the Strip. However, analysts have noted that Hamas has been either unwilling or unable to clamp down on the groups, as it has in the past.

18-Dec-17: Sunday night Gazan rockets seek Israeli targets again

Source

If you follow our Twitter account, you may know we tweeted last night (Sunday) just before 9 o'clock Jerusalem time about inbound rocket warnings being heard in southern Israel again.

In the hours that followed, it emerged that three rockets were fired by terrorists in the rocket-rich Gaza Strip at anything Israeli (they don't care). Two struck ground in the Hof Ashkelon region. A third failed to get across the border and as with so many, fell short on Hamas-controlled territory. Did it kill or maim any Palestinian Arabs living in the Gaza Strip? Did it destroy or damage a school, an ambulance, a hospital? It's unlikely we will ever know unless Israeli intelligence picks up the details and reports it. The Hamas regime in Gaza will not. When it comes to their Fell Shorts , they don't want anyone to know.

According to Times of Israel, quoting Israel Police, one of the rockets crash-landed and exploded in an un-named Israeli community (last night on Israel's Channel 10 news, Moshav Netiv Ha'asara was suggested as the site). The other crashed into an open field nearby. Reports at this stage say there are no injuries to people and relatively small property damage to an Israeli residence.

The same report says

It was not immediately clear why the missiles were not intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system, an army spokesperson said.

The rocket men of Gaza certainly sought a larger return on their investment and fortunately were denied it this time. There is not the slightest doubt they will keep trying. They will invent justifications for public relations purposes but the reality is they will keep doing this until they are stopped. At this stage, the only way they will be stopped involves the IDF and selective, well-directed force.

14-Dec-17: Understanding what happened after Wednesday night's Gazan rocket attack on Israel

Haaretz says (rather blandly) three rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel yesterday (Wednesday): 

Two were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system and one fell into an open area as alarm sirens sounded in southern Israeli districts and cities including Sderot. Magen David Adom emergency responders said that a 30-year-old man wounded his leg while running for cover, and two others were being treated for shock. The rocket fire on Israel from the Gaza Strip Wednesday evening is returning the residents of the Gaza border region back to a state of tension they haven’t experienced since Operation Protective Edge over three years ago. No less [sic] than 15 rockets have been fired into Israeli territory since U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem, and although the Israel Defense Forces has been showing restraint, it will have a hard time holding back for much longer. 

Others say there were four, not three, and the difference points to something significant:

On Wednesday night, four rockets were fired from Gaza at southern Israel. Two of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, a third struck an open field and the fourth fell short of the border and hit a school in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli officials... [Times of Israel, today]

So that's five Arab-on-Israeli attack rockets intercepted in mid-air and brought down by the amazing, life-saving, defensive Iron Dome system so far this week. 

As far as we know, neither Haaretz nor any non-Israeli news source has drawn attention to how yet-another Fell Short rocket dispatched on its murderous path towards Israel failed to cross the border and fell onto the heads of hapless Gazan Palestinian Arabs.

This time it struck a school according to Israeli assessments:

Beit Hanoun’s Ghazi al-Shawa public school, according to Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Defense Ministry liaison with the Palestinians.

Given the late-night hour, it was probably empty of students. But who really knows? And just imagine the reaction if it was an Israeli attack that view up a Gazan (almost certainly meaning UNRWA) school. Does anyone think The Guardian (which has a documented interest in Gazan schools being attacked) will give its readers any insight into this latest school bombing.

Fell Shorts are never reported by the terrorist regime in Gaza. If they did, they might have to own up to the utter contempt they have for harming their own side. Fell Shorts are very rarely reported by major news agencies.

By way of response, Israel this morning (Thursday) imposed a closure of its Gaza crossings:

Israel announced the closure of its Gaza border crossings on Thursday in response to daily rocket fire from the enclave over the past week after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital stoked Palestinian anger. [Reuters, this morning]

An Israeli source adds:

The army said the Kerem Shalom Crossing, from which goods enter and leave the Strip, as well as the pedestrian Erez Crossing would be shuttered beginning on Thursday, in light of “security events and in accordance with security assessments.” It was not clear when the crossings would reopen, the army said. A military spokesperson said that in “humanitarian cases” Gaza residents may be allowed to pass through the Erez Crossing, but that this would be contingent upon approval from Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Israel’s chief military liaison to the Palestinians, known formally as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). [Times of Israel, today]

CNN's reporting on this ["Israel closes Gaza border crossings", CNN, today - archived here in case they change the text] maintains CNN's not-exactly-stellar record for perspective and fairness:

The Israeli military said it will close border crossings into Gaza beginning Thursday until further notice "due to the security events and in accordance with security assessments."
The crossings being closed, Kerem Shalom and Erez, are the only two on the Israeli border left. Israel has closed border crossings when tensions are high, some which have not been reopened to date. The territory is also under a naval blockade by the Israeli navy. Kerem Shalom is the crossing point where goods and supplies are brought into Gaza; Erez is the point where people cross. Shutting the two points effectively cuts off Gaza from the rest of the world by land, save for its small Egyptian border, which is generally closed. The territory is also under a naval blockade by the Israeli navy.

(Yes, Israel's navy gets mentioned twice. There's something about sailors in uniform.)

CNN has an interesting way of looking at this. Gaza, which everyone knows views Israel as its sworn enemy and which is busily attacking Israelis with rockets and tunnels at this moment, is shut off "from the rest of the world" by Israel closing its border this morning. Oh, "save for its small Egyptian border" which is "generally closed".

The word agitprop was invented for silliness of this CNN sort.

09-Dec-17: Friday night rocket-reminder of Gazan rage

Sderot [Image Source]

We're just getting to the developments of the Shabbat just ended, with Tzeva Adom incoming-rocket warnings being sounded three times on Friday evening, after the onset of the Sabbath, in a broad swathe of southern Israel communities. Ynet reports that residents of those cities, towns and homes within shooting distance of Gaza vicinity "who were forced to flee Friday to shelters and protected areas due to rockets being fired from Gaza said Saturday they knew it was coming, but knowing never makes it any easier."

Israel National News:

A rocket fired from Gaza exploded on Friday evening in the city of Sderot in southern Israel. The rocket caused damage to several vehicles but there were no physical injuries. The attack on Sderot was the third rocket attack on southern Israel within several hours. Earlier on Friday evening, Gaza-based terrorists fired two rockets towards southern Israel. One of the rockets was intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system. A second may have exploded in an open area. There were no physical injuries or damages in either attack.

Providing some background, Times of Israel adds that

Hamas, an Islamist terror group which seeks to destroy Israel, has called for a new intifada in response to US President Donald Trump’s recognition on Wednesday of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh on Friday evening praised as a “blessed intifada” the violent protests held by thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank and in Gaza throughout the afternoon. Two Gazans were reported killed in what Israel said were violent protests at the Gaza border fence and a third was badly injured. Israel holds Hamas responsible for all rocket fire and other attacks emanating from the Strip, which the terror group still overwhelmingly controls despite handing over some power back to the Palestinian Authority.

And over at JewishPress.com, this:

Studied and deliberate editorial disinterest about Israeli victimhood ensures
most people have no idea what the terror directed at Israelis does
[Image Source]

Southern Israeli residents were warned to remain near their shelters and safe spaces after the first Red Alert incoming rocket warning siren shattered the calm of a Sabbath evening at around 6:11 pm, sending families racing to safety in Sha’ar HaNegev, Sdot Negev, Eshkol and the Ashkelon Coastal Regional Council districts. That was followed up shortly after by another at around 7:07 pm, sending families back to the shelters in Sdot Negev and the Bnei Shimon Regional Council districts. A third warning siren activated at around 10 pm, again in the Sdot Negev and Bnei Shimon Regional Council districts. “Due to alarms activating recently in the communities in our area, we are asking residents as a precaution to remain near shelters or protected spaces,” said the announcement from the Sdot Negev Regional Council... ["Sabbath Quiet Shattered Friday Night by Rocket Fire on Southern Israel", December 8, 2017]

Other than by parts of the Israeli news media, Friday night's multiple rocket attacks on southern Israel are ignored by most of the global news-reporting industry. Most people in most places have no idea they happened. (Israeli counterattacks, if and when, are bound to get far wider coverage.)

20-Feb-17: In Sinai, rocket-equipped ISIS jihadists remind Israelis this morning of an ongoing threat

Egyptian soldiers standing guard at a strategic site in Egypt's Sinai Desert, November 2015 [Image Source] 

Times of Israel reports this morning (Monday) that two rockets (mischievously and disingenuously described in a Guardian report today as "hand-made") were fired from Sinai into southern Israel's Eshkol region in the past hour. They crashed into open fields. It's reported that no one was injured and there are no signs of any damage caused in the attack, according to the IDF.

The Iron Dome incoming rocket alert system that has delivered breathtakingly-effective defensive results for the benefit of the thousands of Israelis living within range of the massively-well-equipped rocket jihadists in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai desert, was not activated this time. That's evidently because the system instantly computed that no populated Israeli area was threatened by the trajectory of the rockets.

So far, no terrorist group has claimed credit for the attack. But Times of Israel notes that it came hours after the Islamic State terrorists based in Sinai had accused Israel of killing five of its members in an airstrike.

According to Amaq news agency, an official media arm of the terror group, an Israeli drone struck a car with five Islamic State members in a village in the northern Sinai near the Egypt-Israel border on Saturday. The strike occurred near the village of Shabana, south of the town of Rafah, Amaq said. The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to The Times of Israel’s request for comment, but generally refrains from confirming or denying strikes outside of Israel. ["Two rockets from Sinai hit southern Israel, IDF says", Times of Israel, February 20, 2017]

Ynet late last night (Sunday) quoted an ISIS news agency called al-Amaq saying that an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had attacked a vehicle in a village in the northern Rafah part of Egypt's Sinai desert the day before (Saturday). It said five members of its local group were killed in the Israeli attack and that, in Amaq's words they "fell as martyrs to the Jewish enemy", naming one of the dead jihadists as Hatab al-Maqdasi.

Ten days earlier, ISIS had claimed credit for four rockets fired into Eilat from Sinai [which we reported here]. ISIS had said then

A number of rockets were launched at Jewish centers in Eilat, known as Umm Rashrash. The Jews and Crusaders should know that the war of the apostles will not save them in any way. ["ISIS says Israel killed 5 of its members", Ynet, February 19, 2017]

A Financial Times article yesterday indicates the scale of what's at stake:

Isis operations in Egypt have largely remained confined to the jihadi group’s northern Sinai stronghold, but the group remains the biggest security threat facing the state. They have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen and have periodically been able to strike beyond their area with devastating impact... The northern Sinai, a large desert region that borders Gaza and Israel has long been blighted by lawlessness, neglected by Cairo and roamed by smugglers. The Sinai jihadis started out as a local group targeting Israel. But they intensified attacks against Egyptian security forces in 2013 after the army’s ouster of an elected Islamist president. In 2014 they swore allegiance to Isis naming themselves “Sinai Province.” ["Civilians caught in crossfire as Egypt battles Isis in Sinai", Financial Times, February 19, 2017] 

A 2016 BBC Monitoring backgrounder [here] says the Sinai-based jihadists have given signs of softening a previously harsh towards the Islamists of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It had previously criticized them for adopting "infidel democracy" but later called them "supporters of peacefulness" in encouraging them to revolt against Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

While ISIS have a host of determined enemies, there are obvious strategic reasons why they prefer to be seen as losing martyrs to the Israelis rather than the Egyptians, whether or not the evidence is with them.

09-Feb-17: Islamists claim credit for today's Arab-on-Israeli rockets, shootings, stabbings:

Eilat by night [Image Source]

Two very different Arab-on-Israeli terrorist attacks today are major talking points within Israel - and almost entirely unreported and unanalyzed beyond our borders.

Around 11 o'clock Wednesday night, a barrage of missiles were fired at nearby Eilat from a site in the Sinai desert. The Jerusalem Post, quoting the IDF's Southern Command, reported that four rockets were fired, three of them being safely intercepted in mid-air by its Iron Dome defense system. (Click for a video of one such intercept.) Several people were treated for shock in Eilat's Yoseftal Medical Center hospital.

Haaretz reported during Thursday afternoon that ISIS is claiming to be behind the attack:

The Islamic State group's affiliate in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the barrage of rockets fired at the southern city of Eilat Wednesday night. The ISIS-aligned Amaq news agency announced that the affiliate, which calls itself the Sinai Province, fired several Grad rockets toward the Red Sea resort city. The report stated that the war against "the infidels" will continue and that the war against ISIS will not help the unbelievers. It added that future attacks would be much more severe.

Then this evening (Thursday), between five and eight people (accounts vary) were injured in a shooting/stabbing attack on Baron Hirsch Street, Petah Tikva near the city's outdoor market during it busiest hours of the week. The attacker, armed with what Ynet calls a makeshift rifle, opened fire on unsuspecting civilians standing at a bus stop and walking around the market. His weapon jammed as he got to a sewing-machine shop and at that point he began attacking people with a screwdriver. Someone threw (yes) a sewing machine at him, causing him to fall to the ground. Eye witnesses say he screamed "help, help" and was then helped by being arrested.

He turns out to be a 19-year-old male from a village near Nablus. (Ma'an News Agency names it as Beita.) Tonight he is under arrest and in an Israeli hospital where his injuries are being treated. Several of the people he attacked were rushed to nearby Rabin Medical Center at the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. No one's life is in danger, fortunately.

He was still in possession of the gun used in the attack when arrested, according to a police spokesperson quoted by Times of Israel.

The Islamist terror regime in Gaza, Hamas, praised the attack as a “natural result” of Israeli crimes, according to a Times of Israel report but stopped short of claiming credit - though, in traditional manner, it urged other Palestinian Arabs to follow the attacker's example.

05-Oct-16: A Gazan rocket crashes into a residential street in southern Israel

The scene in Sderot earlier today [Image Source]

There has been another rocket attack on southern Israel today with damage to property and cars but thankfully no physical harm to people.

Being the day after Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year), the explosive device is a reminder that the insatiable appetites of the Palestinian Arab terrorist ranks for more mayhem and more Jewish victims produce largely unpredictable outbursts of violence directed at generally unpredictable targets and with unknowable outcomes.

What we can say with confidence is that ordinary people living peaceful lives on our side of the fence are again being terrorized.

Times of Israel published this at 10:40 am today (Wednesday):

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck a street in the city of Sderot in southern Israel on Wednesday morning, police said. Two people who suffered anxiety attacks were treated by medical teams, but no one was physically hurt by the attack, according to the Magen David Adom medical service. The two — a 15-year-old girl and 60-year-old man — were taken to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center for further care, MDA paramedic Oren Benita said. Israel Defense Forces tanks responded to the rocket attack with strikes against Hamas sites in the northern Gaza Strip, the army said. The rocket alert siren was activated at approximately 10:20 a.m. and was heard in Sderot, Nir Am, Ivim and Gevim. A few minutes later, Israel Police officers located the rocket in Sderot. The road was slightly damaged in the attack, as were several nearby cars and homes. Police sappers were called to the scene, and the area was closed off to pedestrians and traffic, police said...

No physical injuries to Israelis but that, emphatically, was not the intention of the people doing the firing.

The terrorists of Gaza have a deep arsenal of rockets - thousands of them (this source estimates at least 12,000). The rocket men and their backers can pick their time, and they can afford to miss and then try again. Life, as measured by their own out-in-the-open value system, is extraordinarily cheap. Rockets are even cheaper. During the seven weeks of battle between Hamas terrorist forces and the IDF during the summer of 2014, Hamas managed to fire some 4,500 rockets and mortars in the general direction of Israel's cities and towns [source]. Israel's defensive Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted 735 rockets. The system first ascertains that the inbound missiles are headed toward densely-populated areas and strategic facilities before launching against them. Thus Hamas fired many more rockets than Israel fired against.

The terrorists of Gaza evidently chose to fire today rather than, say, yesterday or the day before because, on those other days, all the Israeli schools and all the Israeli kindergartens were closed. In fact, the whole country was on holiday to mark Jewish New Year.

So they fired today and during the morning hours when those schools and those kindergartens are filled with children. That's one of the reasons they are terrorists.

The photo at the top of this post does a better job than the text above of explaining how just how maddeningly random the outcomes of these terror eruptions are and how miraculous that the losses were not catastrophic.

How far from the homes of ordinary Sderot civilians did today's rocket crash? It's not hard to see; take a look. The answer is: mere meters. (A video clip on the Israel National News site [here] makes this reality even clearer.)

Did the rocket-men care? Of course they cared; they sought, as they always seek, to inflict the maximum possible pain and fear that their life-threatening efforts could produce.

Here's a security-camera view (via Times of Israel and YouTube) of what the in-bound rocket looked like and felt like to the people on Sderot's streets. Those are city employees who stopped their truck on hearing the Tzeva Adom siren and then scattered as the explosion took place just meters from where they parked:

From experience, it's likely to be suggested now in parts of the media that those firing the rockets are not actually Hamas - the Islamist terrorists who rule the tiny Gaza enclave with an iron fist - but this or that so-called splinter group. And that by implication Hamas is against these random outbursts of violence and would prefer quiet and peaceful relations with their Israeli cousins.

We think that's unfounded wishful thinking and fails to take account of the ruthlessness with which terror regimes operate.

10-Oct-15: Bloody Saturday and Hamas says "we intend to join in"

[Source]

Shabbat ended here in Jerusalem about four hours ago. The sirens of police and emergency vehicles throughout the night and day ensured that the drama unfolding in this city was never far from most people's thoughts, notwithstanding the specialness of the day and its message of peace.

A survey of the day's events:

• Around the middle of this morning, two Jewish men, wearing the traditional black Sabbath garb that marks them as belonging to the Haredi sector, were attacked while walking home from Sabbath prayers at a local synagogue in the Nevi'im Street neighbourhood of Jerusalem adjoining the Old City. Medics who rushed to the scene found both men "on their feet... conscious and in stable condition", according to a Times of Israel report. One was moderately injured while other other sustained light wounds. Both, suffering from stab wounds to the upper part of the body, were rushed to Shaare Zedek Medical Center for emergency treatment. Police arriving at the site of the attack "saw the terrorist with a knife in his hand and called on him to halt. The terrorist ran towards them with his weapon and the two cocked their weapons, fired at him and neutralized him. The attacker was identified as Ishak Badran of Kafr Aqab in East Jerusalem." His life ended at the age of 16. In the Palestinian Arab media, they're saluting him today as "the child martyr". A photograph doing the rounds today on Twitter [here] purports to show him holding the knife before police did what they had to do:

[Image Source]

• A second knifing attack in Jerusalem happened around 3:45 pm at Damascus Gate in the Old City. A police statement says two Border Police officers on patrol in the area noticed a Palestinian Arab male acting suspiciously. They asked him for identification and in the course of handing over his ID card, he pulled out a knife and stabbed one officer in the neck. Other nearby service personnel saw the attack and opened fire, killing the attacker, but also accidentally hitting two Israeli officers, one seriously. The dead terrorist is named as Muhammad Saed Ali, 19, from Shuafat in North Jerusalem. According to a Reuters report tonight, Hamas has issued a statement saying the attacker (Reuters calls him a shooter) "was one of its members. "The hero martyr fought the Israeli occupation with language they understand," Hamas said." That's interesting; perhaps the editors at The Guardian, always careful not to take sides in such matters unless it's to castigate Israel, ought to mention it some place, because right now they are telling their news consumers that Mr Ali "was shot dead after Israeli police alleged that he stabbed two police officers." Do you think the Islamist thugs of Hamas might be offended by the Guardian's squeamishness? We certainly hope so.
• Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system batteries were emplaced in Ofakim and Be'er Sheva (both of them are cities in Israel's south) today after two separate rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip during Friday night. The first of the attacks consisted of two Israel-bound rockets fired late Friday night - both failed to get as far as Israeli territory and crashed into people or property inside the Gaza Strip, with zero news reporting about the outcome, which is what normally happens with Fell Shorts. A second attack, at about 1:00 am Saturday morning, resulted in a crash landing in an open area in the Eshkol region, close to the border fence with Gaza. Fortunately no injuries or damage, but that, as we keep saying here, was never the intention of the terrorists who have death and destruction on their minds and in their prayers.
• Related to that last note: William Booth, writing for the Washington Post on Friday ["Gazans join in widespread violence sweeping Israel", Washington Post, October 9, 2015] said: "Palestinians in Gaza joined in angry protests sweeping across Israel and the West Bank, rushing Israel’s perimeter fence and throwing stones at soldiers, who shot and killed six Gaza residents and wounded 60, many of whom were in serious condition, according to the Health Ministry. The clash at the Gaza fence marks the highest death toll in the coastal enclave since last year’s war between Hamas and Israel. After Friday prayers in Gaza, the leader of the Islamist militant movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, declared that a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada, had begun “and we intend to join in.”
• Over at the Wall Street Journal, Haniyeh is quoted differently but no less savagely: "A leader of Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules in the Gaza Strip, spoke in support of the attacks on Israelis. Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas politician, in a sermon on Friday called for “the strengthening and increasing of the intifada,” saying Gaza was “ready for confrontation."
• Incoming rocket warnings are sounding as we write this. The area under attack appears to be Ashkelon, a coastal city in southern Israel within a few seconds' rocket-firing distance from the terror-infested Gaza Strip. Initial indication [at 11:20 pm] - a successful mid-air intercept, which means the trajectory of the terrorists' rocket was calculated to be threatening to lives or property in the target area. There are also reports that Hamas has in the past few minutes been threatening (via its media channels) to launch additional rockets with longer-range targets as their goal.
• Earlier this evening, we learned the government of Israel has issued emergency call-up notices (in Hebrew: Tzav 8) to three Border Police reserves units. They are expected to be deployed in and around Jerusalem.
• There have been violent riots and clashes in Ramleh, Shuafat (North Jerusalem), Taibe.
• We are scanning reports throughout the evening of Arab rock-hurling attacks on Israeli buses and cars, as well as firebombings in a number of dispersed locations throughout Israel. 

More coming.

21-Sep-15: Monday morning rocket attack on southern Israel

Yet another overnight Gazan rocket was fired at southern Israel in the dark of early Monday morning (today), around 4:00 am. Times of Israel reports that Israel's anti-rocket Iron Dome system calculated that it was going to crash into open unoccupied land in the Hof Ashkelon region, and therefore no sirens were heard or countermeasures taken.

This, as we feel needs to be stated each time, is never the intention of the terrorists who do the firing. They place themselves and their communities at mortal risk when they shoot at Israel. In the terrorists' calculus, the risks are justified by the prospect of achieving some meaningful damage or injuries or worse to the Israeli side. These are acts of war. But other than in the Israeli media, there is zero coverage by the news reporting industry which is likely to spring into action if and when an Israeli counter-measure is taken.

The most recent in-coming rocket attacks from Gaza took place all the way back on Friday night. On Thursday, we wrote:

What are the chances that rocket fire directed at anything Israeli in southern Israel is going to happen in the next 24 hours? Your answer will likely depend on how high a price you believe the Palestinian Arabs making the decision to let those rockets blast will be paying. In this neighbourhood, the price is close to zero, which is why an Iron Dome battery is being deployed there at this moment. ["17-Sep-15: Rocks, rockets, riots, religion, risks"]

19-Sep-15: Gaza rockets: Another Friday night attack

Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted a rocket heading for the southern coastal city of Ashkelon around midnight on Friday night, the Jewish Sabbath. Another rocket attack - thought to comprise two separate rockets - at about 8:45 pm Friday night produced explosions in a residential area of Sderot where some property damage - including to a bus - resulted. Jerusalem Post says a house was also hit.

One report says Sderot's public bomb shelters, which are programmed to open automatically when Tzeva Adom (Color Red) incoming-rocket sirens sound, failed to unlock during the Friday night attack. Several people had to be medically treated for shock.

Times of Israel says the intercept in the skies above Ashkelon

was the first since last summer’s war between Israel and armed Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip last summer.

"Credit" was rapidly claimed by one of the proliferating Gaza Strip terror industry groups, the so-called Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade, also known as Ahfad Ashaba, which first emerged (and was probably created) in the last few months.

17-Sep-15: Rocks, rockets, riots, religion, risks

When we pray, Jews face in the direction of Jerusalem, and within Jerusalem
towards the site of the no-longer-standing Temple. This is true no matter where
in the world we are at that moment. Moslems, as this image shows, when in
Jerusalem, turn their backs to the Temple Mount. This photo appeared in a blog
post we published a year ago here 

Here's one small peek into what it means, in practical day-to-day-living terms, to have neighbors for whom terrorism and violence directed both at us and at their own populations, have zero downside.

The decision to open the valve a little or a lot - encouraging or allowing street violence, rocket fire, petrol bombs, stabbings - comes at close to zero cost. Worse, the outbursts of Palestinian Arab violence almost always pay dividends.

Why this works is something few people outside the region understand. But work it most assuredly does, in the satanic terms of the political and social culture embraced by those in charge of those places.

As we have been writing here ["16-Sep-15: Jerusalem Watch | Not-so-new New Year violence"], there is currently a state of serious high tension in Jerusalem. Thuggish young men, and not so young women, have clearly been given the signal to make maximum trouble. Their media, and especially cartoons, are in full incitement mode. Some of their Islamic holy sites are chief among the places where trouble and violence are designed - by them - to erupt.

No mainstream Western journalist, as far as we know, has raised the question this week that Israelis ponder all the time: if these mosques and other religion-rich sites have such holy status to Islamic believers, why do they treat them with what seems to us like naked contempt? Not just piling up rocks inside their mosques and ripping out fixtures to create stockpiles for hurling at Israeli soldiers, but even such prosaic matters as playing football inside and around the place they want us to call the Noble Sanctuary. (When did anyone ever see soccer played by observant Catholics, or anyone else, on the smooth flat surface of St Peter's Square in Vatican City?) There are some startling examples and pictures in a post of ours from a year ago: "06-Oct-14: Oh Jerusalem"

So when Hamas and the Fatah leadership of the Palestinian Authority again threaten to deliver more trouble, more violence, more "anger", it's worrying because we know they pay no price at all for this hold-me-back irresponsibility. And no Western media and very few Western political figures have ever shown an appetite to reign them in.

There is a price, however, that has to be paid. And it's generally paid by Israelis. Here's a clear example. From the Jerusalem Post today:

The Israeli military has deployed the Iron Dome rocket interceptor on the outskirts of the southern city of Ashdod in anticipation of more rioting in Jerusalem, Channel 10 reported on Thursday morning. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has declared Friday "a day of rage" in response to recent developments on Temple Mount.
Palestinian and Arab anger has percolated in recent days over claims that Israel is provoking Muslims on Temple Mount.

Holy Islamic site of vast significance to the Arab people in
general and Palestinian Arabs in particular. Ignore the
football playing - mainstream news reporters surely do. [Image Source]

Note that the pathetically mis-labeled "moderate" PA leadership is right at the center of the rable-rousing, replete with insulting remarks about Jewish souls and Jewish soles:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas vowed on Wednesday that his countrymen won’t allow Israelis to “desecrate” Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.
“Al-Aksa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet. We won’t allow them to do so and we will do whatever we can to defend Jerusalem,” Abbas said in his Ramallah office during a meeting with east Jerusalem activists.
Abbas said the Palestinians were determined to prevent Israel from passing its scheme to “divide” the Aksa Mosque compound.
“There will be no Palestinian state without Jerusalem,” he stressed. “We are in Jerusalem and we will stay in it to defend our Islamic and Christian holy sites. We’re not going to leave our country.”
He praised Muslim male and female worshipers whose job it is to harass Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount.
“Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah’s will.” [Jerusalem Post, September 17, 2015] 

What are the chances that rocket fire directed at anything Israeli in southern Israel is going to happen in the next 24 hours? Your answer will likely depend on how high a price you believe the Palestinian Arabs making the decision to let those rockets blast will be paying. In this neighbourhood, the price is close to zero, which is why an Iron Dome battery is being deployed there at this moment.

14-Jun-15: Israel's anti-rocket defence system gets wider deployment

Taking cover on a road in Israel's Negev as incoming Gazan rocket
warning is heard, July 2014 [Image: Reuters]

Rockets being flung into the sky in the general direction of Israel might sound (if people hear about them at all) like a vague and trivial threat. The media repetition of how few Israelis, relative to the dead and injured on the Arab side, have been hurt reinforces that impression.

In reality, vast parts of southern Israel are under actual threat of attack by them right now. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis live in communities in those parts, and anxiety levels are running high. Relying on the good sense of the terrorists to avoid self-damaging escalation is generally perceived, based on overwhelming evidence, as not getting our side very far.

Hence:

[Israeli S]ecurity officials decided last week to deploy four Iron Dome air defense system batteries in Ashdod, Netivot, Ashkelon and Beersheba... ["More Iron Dome batteries deployed in light of renewed rocket fire", Jerusalem Post, tonight]

According to an article that appeared last summer (see "15 things you didn't knw about the Iron Dome")

The cost of launching a missile from the Iron Dome at a threatening rocket has been reported to cost anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 [while] the rockets fired by terror groups at Israel are estimated to cost between a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. 

A 2013 report in TIME Magazine looked at the cost on a per-battery basis:

At about $50 million per battery — the launchers with 20 missiles each, ground radar and command-and-control center, led by an officer equipped with an abort button — Iron Dome still costs plenty, especially since Israel estimates it would need at least 13 of them to protect the entire country.

08-Jun-15: The banality of defending our lives from the terrorists

Street scene in Be'er Sheva. (Yes, Be'er Sheva) [Image Source]

This is a note about the unappreciated challenges of making your home in a small country, one that's roughly the size of Hawaii.

Unlike Hawaii, Israel is surrounded not by the blue Pacific Ocean but by entrenched, armed-to-the-teeth, religious fanatics: Hamas and PIJ in the south; Hezbollah in the north; the highly mobile and phenomenally aggressive ISIS just beyond the river that is our eastern border, and talking about rolling westwards.

Very few people outside the circle of Israelis and friends of Israel really care to know

1. how small this little country of ours is
2. how astronomically well-armed the fanatics of Hamas and Hezbollah are, especially with rockets
3. how difficult it can be to conduct ordinary life while tuning in to hourly news bulletins and to incoming-missiles sirens.

In which airport was this endless line of people waiting to go
through security? It hardly matters - could be anywhere [Image Source]

No sane person wants to obsess over life-threatening dangers. So most of us find ways to deal with the tensions. It's easier, in some ways, when everyone around you is in the same pot with you.

With that in mind, here's the full text of a news report that went up on the Ynet site a few minutes after 8 this evening (Monday):

An Iron Dome missile battery was deployed near the southern city of Be'er Sheva Monday as a precaution after three recent rocket attacks by ISIS supporters in Gaza.

That's the whole piece. The most worrying thing? That news of the overnight placement of millions of dollars worth of advanced anti-missile technology, along with the soldiers who man it 24/7, on the outskirts of Israel's seventh largest city gets one-line, at most.

Very few news outlets beyond this country's borders will even note it.

And in Europe, North America, Australia, and those other places where anti-terrorism security at airports, train-stations and parliaments has become a sink-hole for untold millions of whatever currency, they mostly don't even realize that we are all in this together.

06-Jun-15: Saturday night rocket attack on southern Israel communities

Starting around 9:37 pm tonight (Saturday night - about half an hour ago as we write this) - Tzeva Adom (Color Red) incoming rocket warnings started being sounded in a swathe of communities across Israel's south, evidently focused on the Hof Ashkelon region and the city of Ashkelon on Israel's southern coast.

Ynet says

at least one rocket was fired from Gaza, landing in an open area near the city of Ashkelon. Residents in the south reported hearing at least one loud boom and it the exact location of the rocket strike was initially unclear. No reports of injuries or damage were immediately forth coming and authorities began searching for the fallen rocket.

Signs of rising trouble in Gaza are behind the decision by the IDF Friday, publicized earlier today (Haaretz, i24news, Ynet) to re-deploy one or more Iron Dome missile defense batteries in several locations in the south, including one near Ashdod, just a few kilometers up the coast from Ashkelon.

This comes in the wake of several rounds of Gazan rocket fire, indiscriminate as always but as always fired off in the general direction of Israelis, their homes, their communities, in the past week [see "03-Jun-15: Alarms sounded: Inbound Gazan rockets around 11:00 pm tonight"].

5-Aug-14: This morning's ceasefire and what came before

It's now mid afternoon on Tuesday, a hot and - at least in Jerusalem - unusually quiet day because, for those observing the Jewish calendar, it's Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, a day on which a series of calamities that fell on the Jewish people are remembered.

We were walking to synagogue in our Jerusalem community a few minutes before 8 this morning when several distinct and powerful explosions were heard some way off in the distance. We guessed that, with a 72-hour Egyptian-brokered ceasefire taking effect at 8:00, these were Gazan terror rockets being flung at anything Israeli. And perhaps, assuming they were on target for built-up areas, the sounds of Iron Dome anti-rocket missiles being shot into the sky.

What we know now is that a heavy barrage of rockets was fired from Gaza in the minutes just before 8.

The IDF's Tweet from shortly after the start of today's ceasefire [link]

And that a Palestinian Arab village south of Jerusalem took a hit, according to the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency which reported that a home in Beit Sahur, a predominantly Christian town was damaged. See the photos below:

The Beit Sahur house struck by a Gazan rocket this morning [Image Source: Ma'an]

Israel National News says this morning's rockets were fired at Ashdod, Ashkelon, Kiryat Malachi, Gan Yavneh, Maaleh Adumim and the Judea region plus communities in the area immediately bordering Gaza. Two rockets had been fired in the overnight hours, which is the smallest tally since the start of the Hamas rocket onslaught (well over 3,000 rockets fired at Israelis) a month ago.

One, a Hamas M-75, was evidently intercepted in flight and landed in the Gush Etzion area, just south of Jerusalem and adjoining Bethlehem. A friendly source sent us this snapshot this afternoon:

The ceasefire has evidently held so far. And as an additional indication of the slightly more relaxed atmosphere, Israel's Channel 2 TV (which can be viewed online here) has ended its widely-watched 29-day-long, round-the-clock coverage of the fighting to go back to its more traditional light-entertainment programming.

2-Aug-14: Not satire: UN's chief human rights officer outraged that Israel and US fail to share Iron Dome technology with the Islamists

Pillay in 2011 [Image Source]

A reasonable observer could be forgiven for thinking that the people who manage some of the world's most influential and well-funded humanitarian organizations enter into moments of madness when Israel is on the agenda. Maybe not all of them, but certainly some.

Here's an example recorded on the Al Jazeera site ["UN says illegal Gaza blockade must be lifted | UN officials condemn Israeli attacks and warn of humanitarian crisis amid 440,000 displaced and lack of basic services"] from yesterday. It quotes Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2008, speaking about the rights of the Gazans:

Pillay also criticised the US, Israel's main ally, for failing to use its influence to halt the violence. "They have not only provided the heavy weaponry which is now being used by Israel in Gaza, but they've also provided almost $1bn in providing the Iron Domes to protect Israelis from the rockets attacks," she said. "No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling."

Reuters ["World powers must hold Israel accountable: U.N. rights boss"] has it too.

It's hard to ignore her silence on the brazen (and suicidal) siting of jihadist rocket-fire emplacements inside residential buildings, schools, hospitals, mosques by the men of Hamas. And she says nothing about the absence of bomb shelters or other protective structures to serve Hamas' Gazans; the terrorist regime has been in power since 2006 and presided over its descent into ever deeper poverty and hopelessness, with tragically little attention to the infrastructure needs of those they rule. Does this not impact on Gazans' human rights? Of course it does, but it's an inconvenient truth.

But more than anything else, it's just breathtaking to see how, confronted with an entirely defensive system that can bring no harm to the fat-cat (and largely absent) insiders of Hamas or to the masses of Gazans suffering under their fanatical rule, Judge Pillay criticizes Israel for the Iron Dome system too.

It's too easy to characterize Pillay's (and OHCHR's) distorted reality as merely bizarre. It comes against a more serious, sadly rich background of distortion and agenda-driven partisanship, as Anne Bayefsky pointed out some days ago in "Depravity at the UN Human Rights Council":

• A native of Durban, South Africa, Pillay spent her time in office championing the racist anti-racism conference that took place in her hometown in 2001... She choreographed the second and third UN Durban conferences in 2009 and 2011 that “reaffirmed” the Israel-is-racist canard. 
• Pillay also initiated, and subsequently became the lead spokesperson for, the 2009 slanderous UN Goldstone Report. Though Goldstone himself later recanted the charge, the report accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians the last time Israel had the audacity to mount a sustained response to the Hamas killing machine in Gaza.
• Pillay opened the [UN Human Rights] Council session on July 23, 2014. For her, “suffering” was a description applicable only to Palestinians. She carefully presented the charge of “crimes against humanity” – knowing full well that the image projected was one of Israelis as the new Nazis. She simultaneously called for an investigation to discern the facts and recounted a list of supposed Israeli-driven horrors... [including] “unimaginable death, destruction, terror and life-long consequences.”
• In the end, the Human Rights Council’s resolution “deplores” and “condemns in the strongest terms” Israel’s “grave,” “widespread, systematic, and gross” “violations of human rights.” The word “Hamas” is never mentioned. And the UN launched a second Goldstone-like inquiry...
• There have been twice as many urgent debates and special sessions of the [Human Rights] Council on Israel in its entire eight-year lifespan than there have been on Syria with upwards of 200,000 dead... One-third of all the resolutions and decisions critical of a single state - for all 193 UN members - have been directed at Israel alone. 

Six years after Ms Pillay took office, presiding over 1,000 employees and a budget of $120 million, we're entitled to wonder how close she came to fulfilling the predictions made at the time, like those of UN Watch, whose head said in 2008 as the undoubtedly-talented woman was getting into the driver's seat:

"Pillay will need to use her unique [platform] to throw a spotlight on the world's worst violations, including Sudan's mass killing in Darfur, Burmese brutality, Chinese persecution, and Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe"...

His optimism is admirable. Pillay, too, sounded an optimistic note in the same report on her way into the job:

"This is the only office at the UN to be fiercely uncompromising and independent about human rights standards. The commissioner is the voice of the victim everywhere." [BBC, July 28, 2008]

We're still puzzling over how the rights of Israelis, pounded by more than 3,000 civilian-seeking rockets from Gaza between January 1, 2014 and the end of July [Wikipedia], have gained from that $120 million budget, those thousand OHCHR bureaucrats, and those uncompromising UN actions and standards.

Actually, we're not entirely puzzled. That's because of a rare and not-very-pleasant one-on-one meeting we had some time ago with one of the key UN officials whose travels and views play a key role in OHCHR reports and thus on Ms Pillay's policies.

In a post entitled "28-Feb-08: John Dugard", we wrote of how Mr Dugard, another South African lawyer , has the improbable job description - according to the business card he handed over when we met him - of Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967". In less bombastic terms, his actual role was to look exclusively at one side of a multi-sided conflict.

Come to think of it, meeting him was good preparation for trying to make sense of Navi Pillay's depressing pronouncements.