7-Jul-14: And now a night in the life...

We will be updating this post as Monday evening wears on.

• Around 8:30 pm, Tzeva Adom siren warnings are heard in a huge swathe of the country including (in no particular order) Ashdod, Nes Ziona, Rehovot, Kiryat Malachi, Beer Tuvia, Kibbutz Brenner, Gederot, Beit Shemesh, Kibbutz Gezer, Gan Raveh, the Yavneh region, Har Hevron area, Hof Ashkelon, Lachish, Nahal Sorek and Emek Hefer. That list includes places that can legitimately be thought of as the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.
• In the Ashdod attacks, we know of one person lightly injured by shrapnel. 
• Haaretz's rocket/mortar count for the day has reached 70. Not much expectation that it is going to taper off without something decisive from the Israeli side.
• A Haaretz report around 9:00 pm makes the astounding statement that the Iron Dome system has just made seven mid-flight rocket intercepts over Ashdod and five over Netivot. This is serious fire. 
• 9:00 pm: An estimated 60 rockets were fired into Israel during the past hour alone. Hamas takes credit (source: Times of Israel). 
• Seven people are treated for shock in the wake of this latest rocket barrage, according to Israel's Channel 2 TV news which also reports Israeli air activity in southern Israel's skies.
• The US State Department says "the US condemns rocket fire from Gaza and supports Israel's right to defend itself". Astonishingly, this does not slow down the incoming rockets.
• 9:20 pm: Incoming-rocket warnings again, this time Hof Ashkelon and Eshkol regions.
• From the BBC, background on Israel's version of what ended the careers of several Hamas terrorists today: "Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner said the tunnel where the men died had been bombarded on Thursday. He said the militants were killed as they went into the tunnel on Sunday to assess the damage and meddled with some explosives, which were apparently detonated accidentally. The Israeli military believes the militants planned to use the tunnels to infiltrate Israel, kill or abduct residents of nearby communities and troops."
• A Tweet just now from NGO Monitor's Prof. Gerald Steinberg (@GeraldNGOM) reminds @HRW @amnesty @btselem @EUinIsrael @kenroth that 65 rockets from Gaza, directed at Israeli civilians, amount to 65 war crimes. The silence from the highly-politicized, self-appointed guardians of human rights is considerably more eloquent than their carefully framed occasional crocodile-tear expressions of regret and sympathy when Israeli victims unavoidably need to be addressed. And in case they want to hide behind professed doubt as to who is doing the rocket firings, Haaretz's Jack Khoury reports that Hamas is proud to take full credit tonight.

• And newsagency reports say the same.
• Train travel throughout Israel's south is severely impacted by today's fighting. Many train services are cancelled (Ynet).
• A guest at an outdoor wedding in Netivot tonight (outdoor weddings suit our climate well) captured a video clip of a Hamas rocket being destroyed in mid-flight. Check it out even if Hebrew's not your first language.
• 9:45 pm Another incoming rocket report from Sderot and Sha'ar Hanegev regions, followed a few minutes later by reports from the same two places plus Hof Ashkelon. No reports yet of results on the ground.
• 10:00 pm: In Ashdod, all school classes for tomorrow are canceled. And at Be'er Sheva's Ben Gurion University of the Negev, they have just announced that exams set for tomorrow are postponed until further notice. Same goes for Sapir Academic College in Sderot.
• 10:20 pm Physical damage in the wake of an incoming Gazan rocket that crashed into the Yoav region.
• Around 10:30 pm, says Times of Israel, the Iron Dome system brings down another in-flight Gazan rocket. This one was pointed at Sderot. Three others land crashed and exploded in open areas in Sha'ar HaNegev region and near Sderot.
• A Grad rocket crashed and exploded somewhere close to Kiryat Malachi. There's damage.
• The national ambulance service, Magen David Adom, is now officially on high alert in central and southern Israel. Further Gazan attacks are expected overnight and they need to be ready.
• At Soroka Medical Center, the Be'er Sheva hospital that serves a huge area in Israel's south including (naturally) a very high percentage of Arabs, and is reputed to have more births each year than any other Israeli hospital, they announced in the last hour [Hebrew report] that all preemie babies and newborns have been moved urgently to rocket-protected parts of the hospital buildings. There's no statistical breakdown of the respective number of Moslem, Christian and Jewish mothers/babies because, being Israel, that has no relevance to anything worth talking about.
• Rock-throwing Arabs from Beit Safafa, a generally quiet West Jerusalem neighbourhood, have been causing serious problems ronight for drivers and for the police [Hebrew report]. 
• Acknowledging the way the social media and the Internet can mould people's perceptions, and sometimes manipulate them, a BBC article tonight points out that many of the most-widely circulating images purporting to show Gaza in flames are fakes. "A #BBCtrending investigation has found that many of these images are not from the latest conflict and not even from Gaza. Some date as far back as 2009 and others are from conflicts in Syria and Iraq."
• 11:00 pm Another round of incoming-missile siren warnings from the IDF's Tzeva Adom system. Awaiting details from the areas impacted, principally Sderot and Sha'ar Hanegev. 
• 11:25 pm Yet another rocket attack on Sderot (perhaps on other places too). This one must have been on-course to do real harm because the Iron Dome system was deployed again, and intercepted one of those rockets in mid-flight. The bad news is that the thugs with the rockets have far, far more rockets than Israel has anti-rockets. At Times of Israel they quote Yaakov Amidror, former national security adviser: Hamas has “about 10,000 rockets” in its arsenal (he tells Channel 2) and “we may be in for many more nights” of rocket attacks. And the "good" news? Hamas “does not have any kind of game-changing Doomsday weapon” so we can breathe... easier?
• 11:50 pm Tzeva Adom sirens sounding in Hof Ashkelon region.
• 12:30 am More Jerusalem area clashes tonight involving Arab neighbourhoods - this time Beit Hanina on Jerusalem's north side where some of the locals are hurling firebombs at police.
• 12:30 am Tzeva Adom siren warnings again, and they're unlikely to be the last of the night, being heard now in Hof Ashkelon region again.
• 12:35 am Initial and unconfirmed report [Hebrew] of a shooting attack in a Jewish neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.

17-Nov-12: Small, perhaps marginal, aspects of events here that might not get the coverage they deserve

Taking cover: Israeli child in the southern Israeli community of Kiryat Malachi. Three civilians were killed
in their homes on Thursday when a Gazan rocket fulfilled its intended jihadist purpose [Image Source]     

Do pigs fly? EU's foreign minister says it's Hamas actions that are causing this battle and these human losses. From the WAFA Palestine News & Information Agency today [online here]:

EU’s Ashton Blames Hamas for Israeli Raids on Gaza

BRUSSELS, November 17, 2012 (WAFA) – European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton Friday held Hamas responsible for the Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip that had so far left 40 Palestinians, including women and children, dead and more than 400 injured, most of them civilians. Ashton also justified the Israeli airstrikes that started on Wednesday saying in a statement that Israel has the right to protect its population.
“The rocket attacks by Hamas and other factions in Gaza which began this current crisis are totally unacceptable for any government and must stop,” said Ashton. “Israel has the right to protect its population from these kinds of attacks,” she added, but called on Israel “to ensure that its response is proportionate.” [More]

And a small (very small) reminder (via Israel's MFA) of what it can mean to put yourself into the hands of the thuggish terrorists. [The source is online]. You might ask yourself how the jihad-addicted thugs of Hamas find time for this kind of craziness when they are under constant bombardment from Israel. Evidently ideology routinely trumps sense.

Hamas Detains Foreign Journalists in the Gaza Strip

November 17, 2012
Hamas is not allowing at least 22 foreign nationals who wish to exit the Gaza Strip for Israel to do so. Among the members of the foreign press being detained are nine Italian citizens, six citizens of Japan, one Canadian, one South Korean and a French national. In addition, two Turkish Red Crescent members have been refused exit. This violation of the human rights of neutral foreigners is yet another example of Hamas’ attempts to manipulate and pressure the press. For its part, Israel is keeping the Erez crossing into Gaza open, allowing passage to the foreign press, diplomats and humanitarian workers.

Incidentally it's Palestinian Arabs who know better than most other people what it can mean to become subject to the kindnesses of the thugs from Hamas [an earlier report here via the Ma'an news agency.]

As we noted earlier this evening, the scale of Palestinian Arab losses in Gaza is way out of proportion to the scale of the Israeli attacks. Clearly (to anyone with some degree of open-mindedness on this), the IDF is doing somersaults in the air to avoid causing unnecessary damage and human loss, even while seeking very vigorously to neutralize the Gazan terrorists and their vast arsenal of rockets. The item below comes from the Palestinian news agency Maan.

Israel texts Palestinians in Gaza

Published this evening 17/11/2012 23:09 [Online here]
BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israel on Friday warned residents of the Gaza Strip to stay away from Hamas operatives, Palestinians who received the messages said and the army confirmed.
"The messages were sent to 12,000 residents of the Gaza Strip," an army spokeswoman told Ma'an. "It warned them to stay away from Hamas operatives," she said.
Rana Baker, a Palestinian blogger in Gaza, said her father received one of the messages. She uploaded a picture of a message that showed the sender as "IDF".
"The next phase is on the way. Stay away from Hamas elements," it read.
On Thursday the Israeli army said it dispersed leaflets above several locations in the Gaza Strip warning residents to stay away from Hamas and other armed groups.
"The leaflets stress that Hamas is dragging the region toward violence, and that the IDF is prepared to defend the residents of the State of Israel until quiet is restored to the region," an army statement said at the time. The text of the leaflets said: "For your own safety, take responsibility for yourselves and avoid being present in the vicinity of Hamas operatives and facilities and those of other terror organizations that pose a risk to your safety.
"Hamas is once again dragging the region to violence and bloodshed. The IDF is determined to defend the residents of the State of Israel. This announcement is valid until quiet is restored to the region." The leaflets were signed: "Israel Defense Forces Command."

There's a video here showing the mass distribution of those Israelis leaflets into Gaza.

16-Nov-12: Snapshotting the turbulence

Gaza Thursday

We are well into the third day of this latest phase in an ongoing war. A brief review of what has happened in the past 24 hours.

• The IDF executed 340 strikes against a range of Gazan targets since Operation Pillar of Defense began on Wednesday. TOI says there were 70 strikes against Hamas targets last night (Thursday), a response to the firing of long-range missiles (two, it seems) on the Tel Aviv area yesterday evening.
• From Gaza, they say sixteen Palestinian Arabs have been killed and about 200 injured. The Gazan side does not make a meaningful distinction between terrorist combatants and the civilians in whose midst they operate.
• As of early this morning and since fighting began on Wednesday evening, 305 rockets had crashed into Israeli territory. 130 were intercepted in mid-air by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
• Three people were killed in a Kiryat Malachi apartment yesterday morning. Those injured include an 8-month-old infant, whose condition is serious. 
• Right across Israel, Magen David Adom - the country's major first-responder organization, treated 54 Israelis for injuries during Thursday.
• In a significant turning point, air raid sirens were sounded throughout metropolitan Tel-Aviv in the early evening of Thursday. Our television screens were filled with images of thousands running to find whatever shelter was available, or throwing themselves onto the ground and covering their heads with their hands; that's what the civil defence authorities have suggested we do if no proper bomb shelter is close by. The arrival of the bitter realities of a war that has been mainly conducted on Israel's periphery has practical implications for what happens next.
• Those sirens were followed by explosive booms. The authorities are, for understandable reasons, remaining vague about what was hit. We are at war, after all. But the IDF has said, and evidently means, that no Gazan rockets landed near Tel Aviv. Perhaps this means they crashed crashed into the sea.
• Last night, the government and the IDF authorized the call up of 30,000 reservists. There's widespread speculation that this a step before launching a ground-based attack on Hamas in Gaza in order to do what can be done less well, less effectively, from the air.
• Hisham Kandil, the prime minister of the Moslem Brotherhood government in Egypt, is said to be going to Gaza some time today, and there are reports on the television news here that PM Netanyahu has announced Israel will temporarily discontinue its attacks on Gaza while he is in the area. Reports are saying that the Egyptian is coming "to show solidarity with the residents of Gaza" and to meet with the Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh - along with the entire Hamas leadership - has not been seen since Wednesday. None of them attended yesterday's funeral of their military 'chief-of staff' Jabari.
• There have already been many rocket attacks on Israelis this morning. Soon after dawn this morning, a home in the Sha'ar Hanegev region took a direct hit. 
• After that, rockets were fired at Be'er Sheba, Sderot and in the Sha'ar Hanegev region. 
• The parking lot of a residential apartment building in  Ashdod was hit just after 7:00 am. All Israeli schools within a 40-kilometer radius of Gaza are closed.
• Times of Israel says "hundreds of soldiers from the Paratroops, Golani and Givati Brigades, as well as Armored Corps units, have been transferred to the Gaza border area for training exercises — apparently, in preparation for a possible ground incursion. Rumors that IDF soldiers had entered the Gaza Strip, or were about to, circulated briefly in the early hours of Friday morning, but they have not been substantiated."

More later.

15-Nov-12: Gazan terrorists succeed in rocketing a residential building in Kiryat Malachi; three killed

Screen shots from Channel 10's live coverage

From Times of Israel:

Three people were killed and a baby was critically injured Thursday morning after a rocket blasted into a four story building in Kiryat Malachi. As emergency services scrambled to rescue those still trapped inside the shattered structure another five missiles were fired at the town but the Iron Dome system intercepted them before they landed.

The commentators on Israel television are saying the building had no safe room or bomb shelter. The tragic hit is a clear illustration of what might have happened forty additional times in the last 12 hours, were it not for the Iron Dome system knocking incoming missiles out of the air. Forty intercepts so far is what the analysts are quoting at this hour.

Kiryat Malachi is one of dozens of communities under fire by the terrorists at this exact moment. Ashdod has suffered five separate rocket attacks in the past 20 minutes.

War for all practical purposes.