21-Nov-15: Quietly and with determination, Israel responds to the stabbers, shooters, rammers

Kiryat Gat is home to a multi-billion dollar Intel plant [Image Source]

Far from Brussels, where security is at historically-unprecedented levels in the wake of a very real Islamist threat and so is the media coverage, Israel's daily struggle with terror-minded stabbers, rammers and shooters - impelled by much the same explosive mix of religious zeal and savage bigotry, goes on.

A manhunt has been on for most of this evening - five hours of intense police activity - in a city in Israel's south that prefers to be remembered as the home of one of Intel's major micro-chip fabrication plants:

Four people, including a 13-year-old female, were wounded in a stabbing attack on King David Street in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat Saturday evening. Magen David Adom reported that the victims included the 13-year-old female, a 51-year-old male and two other females ages 44 and 56. All were in moderate condition after being evacuated to the hospital. A male teenage suspect was captured in the city a few hours after the attack; he originally fled the scene and some 250 policemen searched the area with guns drawn, on high alert. He was caught with a bload-soaked knife on the same street where the attack took place. Two of his friends gave him up to the authorities and he was subsequently identified as an illegal worker from Hebron... Roadblocks were erected at the entrances to Kiryat Gat for the duration of the search, effectively enforcing a complete lock down of the city. [Ynet, tonight]

From Israel National News:

The attack began near the city's soccer stadium and left four people wounded. The stabber managed to flee the scene, sparking a major manhunt, with security forces checking all vehicles entering and leaving the city... During their searches, police rescued a Bedouin resident of Segev Shalom who was attacked and lightly wounded by residents under the false belief that he was the terrorist... Israel Police Southern Commander Yoram Halevi announced the arrest of the terrorist, along with two other Arabs who had aided him in carrying out the attack. The terrorist has been identified as a Palestinian Arab teenager from a village near Hevron who was working illegally in Israeli sovereign territory. "The terrorist found a quiet, dark area in the yards of one of the (local) houses," Halevi said. "He hit and waited for the right time - most likely the early morning - to escape from the city."

No one expects him to be escaping soon. 

But as we noted earlier tonight, how long will it be before calls are heard for this latest stabber's release from behind Israeli bars on the now-familiar nonsense grounds that he's just a improperly-held political prisoner?

Meanwhile, we wonder how much they understand, down there in dark Hebron where tonight's knife-wielder started his journey to an Israeli prison cell, that Intel employs more than 9,900 Israelis at four cutting-edge Research and Development sites and at two world-class fabrication facilities, one in Jerusalem, Israel's thriving capital city, and one in Kiryat Gat.

07-Oct-15: Despatches from the fronts

Shuafat, North Jerusalem, Monday October 5: Border Guard
officers taking care of business [Image Source]

It's early Wednesday evening in Jerusalem and the extreme violence is continuing.

• This morning, an Israeli man in his mid-thirties was attacked by a knife-wielding Palestinian Arab female aged about 18-20. This attack, like the murderous assault on a small group of Israeli pedestrians this past Saturday night ["03-Oct-15: Arab violence escalates in Jerusalem: Multiple stabbings in Old City tonight"] was carried out adjacent to Lion's Gate in Jerusalem's Old City. Today's victim suffered stab wounds in his upper body and back - he was stabbed from behind. The attacker's name is given [here] as Shorouq Dwayyat. Like her victim, she is being treated at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital where she is said to be in critical condition after her victim managed to get off some accurate shots in her direction. The attacker's family are in the news as well, as Times of Israel reports: "The family of the terrorist said that officers stationed outside her hospital room would not allow them to visit the woman, Channel 2 reported. One of the family members was detained by police for questioning. Dwayyat’s mother told the TV station in a later interview that her daughter stabbed the man in self-defense after he attempted to pull off her head covering. It later transpired, however, that Dwayyat had written a Facebook post saying she was “going to become a shahid” - a “martyr.” Lovely people.
• Seven vehicles (at least) were damaged by rocks hurled by Palestinian Arabs this morning on the Jerusalem to Tekoa road near the volatile Arab neighbourhood Beit Sahour. One vehicle, driven by a young Israeli woman, Rivi Ohayon, a resident of Tekoa, came to a stop because of the hail of rocks and was quickly surrounded by a mob that forced the door of the car open. The driver was kicked multiple times and the car’s front windshield was smashed. She was treated by Magen David Adom paramedics and then sent to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem with light injuries. Times of Israel quotes Josh Hasten, a journalist for the Jerusalem Post, and a resident of Elazar, a nearby community, who said that earlier this morning he had been attacked on the road: “As I slowed down, I saw a mob of 40 to 50 masked Palestinians on the side of the road. They were holding rocks and cinder blocks... As they approached my car, I took out my gun and fired one round in the air. The shot obviously scared them and they ran up the hill away from the road... I have no doubt that I would be dead now if I hadn’t used my gun. They were going to kill me.” There's an audio interview with Josh Hasten here.
• A Palestinian Arab male stabbed and then stole the weapon of an Israeli soldier in the coastal city of Kiryat Gat. Security personnel pursued the assailant to a nearby building - evidently in order to take up a position inside an accessible apartment, which he sought to enter [video] - where they succeeded in mortally shooting him.
• Around 6:30 this evening, a similar attack happened in the central city of Petach Tikva where a Palestinian Arab stabbed several people in a shopping mall. There are multiple casualties and few details. One of the victims, an Israeli male of about 25, is reported to be in moderate condition and stable with knife wounds, and being treated at nearby Beilinson Hospital. The attacker was arrested and in the hands of the police.
• Again, few details at this stage, but it's reported that a 15-year-old Palestinian Arab youth was arrested in Abu Tor, a mixed Jewish/Arab section of Jerusalem, after attempting a knife assault on Israel Police forces around 7:00 pm this evening.
• Times of Israel reports that two people were injured lightly when a Palestinian Arab driver rammed his vehicle into a checkpoint on Jerusalem's eastern side around 8:30 pm Wednesday night. The vehicle's driver was shot by a Border Guard officer and injured at the A-Zaim checkpoint, between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, According to police, the vehicle driven by a Palestinian Arab was coming from east of Maale Adumim when the driver rammed it into the checkpoint.

In addition, dozens of rock-hurling attacks and firebombings (Molotov cocktail attacks). It's now almost midnight, and the sounds of police sirens are audible from points across the city.

9-Jul-14: Wednesday afternoon log

Ashdod: Vehicle struck by a Gazan missile
[Image Source]

The rocket attacks keep coming and the life of a vibrant society continues to be conducted here in Israel despite the intense challenges. This post is updated as often as we can manage as the day's events happen. (It follows on from this earlier post.)

• 2:10 pm: Two incoming rockets were intercepted in the skies over Kiryat Gat in the past few minutes, according to Ynet. In additionto the thousands of homes in the area, some significant civilian businesses are located there.
• 2:20 pm: Haaretz says multiple Gazan rockets were intercepted in mid-air over Sderot and Kiryat Gat.
• 2:45 pm: Reports of Hamas claiming to have fired at Haifa. No indication that they either say they hit it or that it was in fact hit. There are also reports (including via Haaretz) of Tzeva Adom rocket sirens being heard in the Zichron Yaakov area on the Israeli coast north of Tel Aviv about 110 km north of Gaza. UPDATE: Haaretz now says two rockets crashed and exploded in open areas near Zichron Yaakov, injuring one person. That's the furthest north those Hamas rockets have reached so far. Haaretz says the rockets are probably M-302 rockets, "the same make that struck Hadera on Tuesday. On March 5, Israeli naval forces intercepted the Klos-C, a ship carrying 40 Syrian M-302 rockets from Iran to the Gaza Strip."
• 2:55 pm: Additional rockets intercepted in the skies above Sderot (Haaretz).
• 3:15 PM: Anshel Pfeffer from Haaretz tweets: "Media lesson from Op. Cast Lead #Israel allowing foreign journos into #Gaza - Government prefers unfriendly reports to rumors of "genocide"
• 4:05 pm: Tzeva Adom - Ashkelon city, and the Hof Ashkelon region (some details at this Hebrew-language forum)
• 4:15 pm: Tzeva Adom - Bnei Shimon and Merchavim regions (more details here for Hebrew readers)
• 4:45 pm: Tzeva Adom, according to Times of Israel, in the city of Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem
• 5:00 pm: The IDF is claiming [Haaretz] an extraordinary impact for its Iron Dome anti-missile system: which "is activated only when the rockets fired by Palestinian militants at Israel appear likely to hit populated areas. It has been activated to intercept about 27 percent of the approximately 180 rockets fired between Monday night and midday Wednesday. Of the times when Iron Dome was activated, it successfully intercepted the rockets nearly 90 percent of the time, and there have been few rocket hits or serious injuries. The success of the defense system marks an improvement over the 84 percent success rate during Operation Pillar of Defense."
• 5:05 pm: Times of Israel reports that Iron Dome brings down a rocket over the central Dan region. Another in the same area is believed to have crashed in an open area. Immediately before, the Tzeva Adom sirens were heard in Bat Yam and Holon, two satellite cities of Greater Tel Aviv.
• 5:30 pm: At Haaretz, they are now reporting that 6 mortars were fired into the Eshkol region.
• 5:30 Tzeva Adom in Sdot Negev and Sha'ar HaNegev regions
• 5:40 pm: At Rehovot's Kaplan Medical Center, patients from the cardiology and intensive care wards are now being moved to fortified rooms because of the Gazan rocket fire [source]
• 6:00 pm: Haaretz quotes sources in the IDF saying they have bombed 31 tunnels in Gaza since this (Wednesday) morning, plus 60 concealed rocket launchers and rocket storage sites, and 12 buildings used as command centers by the forces at work in Gaza.
• 6:05 pm: Mahmoud Abbas, the "moderate" Fatah chief and president of the Palestinian Authority, is quoted this evening by the AFP newsagency in a syndicated news report in which he says Israel's actions in attacking Gaza amount to genocide. And let's be clear about this: Mahmoud Abbas knows about genocide. "Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday accused Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza during its military campaign which has so far killed 43 Palestinians. "It's genocide -- the killing of entire families is genocide by Israel against our Palestinian people," he told a crisis meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah."
• 6:10 pm: At Ynet, they say there has been a massive rocket attack on the Eshkol region in the past hour: 9 rockets in total, and there is some serious damage.

The firing has not taken a break but we have, to go take care of family matters.

11-Mar-12: Scenes from an asymmetrical war

The people of Ashdod, a city south of Tel Aviv, have had a maddening
weekend with incoming rocket sirens round the clock
and the kind of tension and fear that people living far
from here cannot imagine. This Reuters photo shows
a launcher, part of the Iron Dome rocket shield system,
freshly deployed in a field on the edge of the city. 

The terrorists of Gaza, as we noted earlier tonight, have so far flung (the best word we can think of for their indiscriminate firing into southern Israel) some 135 rockets into southern Israel in the latest escalation in this ongoing war.

Around 11 o'clock on Saturday night, a barrage of five rockets emanating from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip crashed into the Eshkol region of southern Israel. This time, no injuries and no damage reported but there have been Israeli casualties during this past 30 hours of ceaseless indiscriminate rocket firing into Israel.

Most of the rockets have been fired in the general direction of Ashkelon and Ashdod and Gan Yavne, southern dormitory suburbs of Tel Aviv. One Israeli civilian was severely injured, but very fortunately the injury list at this stage is relatively short. The Iron Dome anti-rocket system developed and urgently pressed into service by the Israeli military last year has done an impressive job of intercepting those missiles and rockets calculated (by the IDF) to be heading towards populated areas and, as Tom Gross writes tonight, disregarding those that are heading towards fields and empty land:

Of the first hundred launched from Gaza in the last 24 hours, 29 of the incoming rockets were heading towards Israeli population centers. 27 of them have been intercepted by the Iron Dome: a success rate of 93%.

Ashdod, on Israel's southern coast: under more
normal circumstances, a relaxed, pleasant and
fast-growing Mediterranean city [Image Source]

A number of Palestinian Arab terrorists have been eliminated by IDF action in the past day, caught as they were in the act of launching rockets at Israeli targets. No doubt there will be changes in the coming hours, but at this point, we believe no Palestinian civilians have been harmed. The precision of the IDF attacks so far has been extraordinary.

The website of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights has been tracking this weekend's dead terrorists (hat tip to Mr Medad) and unwittingly helping the outside world see how much care the Israeli side takes in blunting the terrorists and their rockets while making maximum efforts to avoid injury or worse to bystanders. Here's a summary of their running list so far:

• Friday, March 9, 2012 at 6:15 pm: A vehicle carrying two leaders of the Popular Resistance Committees was  struck from the air. The men inside were killed. They were Zuhair Mousa Ahmed al-Qaissi, 49, from Rafah, the so-called Secretary-General of the Popular Resistance Committees [more about him in a moment]; and Mahmoud Ahmed Hanani, 44, from Nablus, the son-in-law of al-Qaissi. [Note that the report states this son-in-law had been released from an Israeli prison and expelled to Gaza in 2006.]  The Times of Israel says tonight that al-Qaissi had boasted about his involvement in the kidnapping and holding for ransom of Gilad Shalit. He was the head of the Popular Resistance Committees, a somewhat shadowy terrorist group linked to Hamas. The Times quotes him saying shortly after the Shalit kidnapping that he was handed over to Hamas because Hamas “had the capabilities and the locations which allowed them to keep the prisoner in a safe secret place.” 
• Friday, March 9, 2012 at 7:20 pm: Three "activists" [Palestinian Arab code-name for terrorists] of  the al-Quds Brigades division of Palestinian Islamic Jihad were spotted and killed from the air while they were "near al-Mentar Hill in the east of al-Shuja'iya neighborhood in the east of Gaza City" [Israeli reports say they were in the process of firing off rockets into Israel at that exact moment]. The men's names: Mohammed Khaled Harara, 24; Fadel 'Obaid al-Gharabli, 25;  Hazem 'Awadh Quraiqe', 33.
• Friday, March 9, 2012 at 10.30 pm: another pinpoint attack from an IDF jet eliminated Shadi Riad al-Saiqali, 27 another so-called "activist" from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, this time in the al-Tuffah neighborhood in the east of Gaza City. 
• Saturday, March 10, 2012 at 12:45 am: Another air-borne attack on Palestinian Islamic Jihad "activists", meaning terrorists in the process of despatching rockets into Israel from a location "near the headquarters of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the center of Gaza City". Three terrorists were all eliminated. Their names: Fa'eq Sameer Sa'ad, 28; Mo'tassem Diab Hajjaj, 22;  Ahmed 'Abdul Fattah Hajjaj, 24.
• Saturday, March 10, 2012 at 1:45 am:  Another air-borne attack on Palestinian Islamic Jihad "activists", meaning terrorists in the process of despatching rockets into Israel from a location "near Hammouda fuel station in the southeast of Beit Lahia". Killed: Mohammed Yahia Mohammed al-Mughari, 24; and Mahmoud Ismail Nejem, 22.  A third un-named terrorist (PHCR calls him an "activist") was seriously wounded.
• Saturday, March 10, 2012 at 4:10, yet another precise air-borne IDF attack on Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists caught in the act. They were driving on Saladin road near the entrance of the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah. Their car took a direct hit, killing Mohammed Ibrahim al-Ghamri, 26. Three others terrorists in the car were wounded. 

The late Zuhair Mousa Ahmed al-Qaissi

The rain of rockets has not yet ended, and neither have Israeli pinpoint military attacks on specified targets in the Gaza area. Since there's uncertainty about how much freedom-to-operate the Gazan thugs still have at this point, the authorities in Beersheba, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Netivot, Kiryat Gat, Ofakim, Beer Tuvia, Yavne and Gedera have announced that all schools in their regions will be closed today (Sunday).

To call the news coverage of the ongoing rocket barrage on southern Israel minimal would be an understatement. It's almost entirely unreported, though the reactions to the untimely deaths of 'activists' from the Palestinian Arab side [for instance, "Israel launches deadly air strikes on Gaza" over at the BBC right now] are given wide, headline-level prominence, particularly in third-world countries. Hard not to be extremely cynical about the hypocrisy that produces results like this.

4-Aug-11: More rocket attacks on Israel tonight are a taste of... more rocket attacks on Israel

The Intel plant in Kiryat Gat

Ynet reports that the rocket attacks are continuing.

A loud explosion was heard in the Kiryat Gat region of southern Israel this evening (Thursday) after the Color Red siren was activated. Officials said a rocket apparently landed in an open area in the town's vicinity. No injuries were reported in the latest attack but two people were treated for anxiety... The anti-rocket Iron Dome system... is currently not deployed n the area. Iron Dome batteries are now deployed elsewhere in the country as part of tests. At this time there is no intention to deploy the systems in the Gaza region again, unless a dramatic escalation necessitates such move.

INN reported around 8 this evening that the incoming missile was a Grad-style Katyusha rocket, and that it struck a barn in a community close to Kiryat Gat, adding that "the Israel Defense Forces are checking reports of another rocket landing in an open area next to Kiryat Gat."

Kiryat Gat's population is around 48,000. An Intel microprocessor-manufacturing plant located in the city employs some 2,000 people.

4-Jan-09: Why Hamas equals terrorism: reminder #79

The entry of Israeli ground forces last night into Gaza came a full week after Israeli planes destroyed some of the most important strategic installations of the Hamas regime.

A week, it needs to be pointed out, in which Israeli forces gradually assembled on the edges of Gaza where it meets southern Israel. A massive, step-by-step build-up of forces. Thousands (we're guessing - this is not 'inside' information) of Israeli service personnel, vast quantities of heavy equipment, the heavy and slow-moving paraphernalia of war.

What exactly did Hamas do during that week?

They don't lack for fighters or equipment. Their strength is formidable. As terrorist organizations go, they have strong, wealthy and dedicated backers, and the terrifying volleys of missiles that were fired into the skies of Israel - missiles that did not grow on the date palms of the Gaza Strip - are evidence of the resources at their disposal.

For a week, they had the Zionist enemy within firing range, just across their back fence. Sitting ducks.

And for a week, all of last week, Hamas did not (as far as we can tell from published reports) fire even a single shot in anger at the assembling masses of Israeli ordnance and fighters a mere stone's throw from their emplacements and towns.

Why not? Because they had far more important targets: the homes and schools and kindergartens and residential suburbs and city centers of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beer Sheva, Kiryat Gat and of course Sderot.

Not just single shots. Not just a missile or two. Entire barrages, dozens of them at a time, at any target in southern Israel they could reach. They didn't discriminate. They didn't care and never do. But shooting at their enemy's soldiers and bases and military equipment - that somehow did not figure in their script.

The Hamas goal then, and for the past eight years of this ongoing war, was the goal that unites practitioners of terror wherever they operate: find the women and children in playgrounds and crosswalks and cafes and restaurants; seek out the elderly quivering in their living rooms and bus shelters. Shoot and bomb the weak and the defenceless. Those are the quality targets. Those are the true objectives. This is what jihad has come to mean for the fanatics who confront and threaten civil society in every part of the world, and who stole the beautiful life of our daughter.

This is why the Hamas jihadists are terrorist thugs. It's why they must be stopped.