20-Sep-06: Gaza's Unreported Terror War on Israel Continues

Far from the latte-laden attention of mainstream media editors, photographers and reporters, the war of rockets and explosives directed at Israelis continues in Gaza, almost entirely unreported in the pages of anything you are likely to read or on any television screen.

Several hours ago, Wednesday morning, a 15-year-old boy suffered moderate injuries when a Qassam rocket hit the grounds of one of the kibbutzim in the Western Negev. He's now in Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon after a piece of shrapnel struck his chest. A woman was treated for shock. The kibbutz’s greenhouses and tomato crop suffered severe damage.

A second Qassam landed in the greenhouses of Kibbutz Erez that borders the Gaza Strip; fortunately no casualties or damage. In Sderot, loud explosions sent residents into air-raid shelters and protected rooms.

Yediot Aharonot quotes Gil Taasa, head of security at Kibbutz Nativ Ha’asara, located near Wednesday’s rocket landing sites, saying:

“The Israeli government has been ignoring the Qassam fire for six years now, and it is clear that we will eventually have to go to war to stop the rocket-fire, as was the case in Lebanon – but it will be too late because the Palestinians are constantly arming themselves; we should act now before an inquiry commission is set up in a few years to investigate the matter.”

Earlier this morning, the Israel Air Force carried out a strike on a house in the militant stronghold of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip early, causing no casualties. The attack targeted a house which field intelligence established was being used as a weapons-storage facility. As is the usual practice when Israel attacks the terrorists, residents in the vicinity of the house were warned to leave the building well-enough in advance for this to be done, and it was done - hence no injuries. Haaretz quotes witnesses saying the house, which was destroyed, belonged to a Palestinian militant.

This morning's air attack on Rafah is likely to get some press mentions. The now-daily rocket attacks on undisputed, unoccupied Israeli towns and communes and the people who carry out their peaceful, constructive lives within them, will be largely ignored. (Reuters proves us right this morning.) This absence of contextually-sound, accurate reporting of events is at the root of terror's success in this ongoing war.

Update: Credit is claimed by this group of self-justifying savages.

17-Sep-06: Israel Under Rocket Attack Once Again

Just now

Sunday morning, and already the rockets of the terrorists have started their week's work.

Haaretz reports that one person is injured and two others are treated for shock as a result of two rocket attacks this morning. The first, at 7am, lands in a residential part of Sderot, the small southern Israeli city that has never been "occupied territory" or otherwise disputed - it's 100% civilian, 100% Israeli, 100% a terror target.

Houses and cars are damaged.

The second rocket twenty minutes later crashed into Kibbutz Gevim, an agricultural settlement nearby, killing dozens of chickens and causing damage to equipment.

Yediot Aharonot says three Qassam rockets were fired into Israel from the northern Gaza Strip on Friday morning. Two landed in the agricultural hothouses of Kibbutz Nativ Ha'asara in the western Negev, while the third exploded in an open field near Shaar Hanegev. In both incidents no one was injured.

On average, ten rockets a week have been crashing into Israeli targets over the last five months. This ongoing terrorist initiative remains barely reported by the mainstream media, who choose to ignore it entirely when reporting on Israeli measures (like Friday's) to eliminate the terrorists and their arsenals.

15-Sep-06: Tonight in Rafah

Another Rashomon moment.

IDF intelligence sources in recent days identified a building in Rafah at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, close to the border with Egypt, that was serving as the concealed entrance to an arms-smuggling tunnel. This past night (Thursday/Friday), IDF planes bombed the building and destroyed it. No persons were hurt.

Experience tells us that if this event is reported in any form at all, it will be along the lines of a Gaza grandmother in dusty black robe, sitting on the ground, arms stretched to the heavens, wailing over the cold-blooded destruction by the Zionist occupation forces of yet another refugee dwelling. When we spot the pictures on any of the usual picture sites, we'll copy one here. Meanwhile we'll tap into our archive. (To be clear, losing your home is a misery. But everything we have learned about how images are willingly manipulated by activist photographers and editors tells us you must ask questions and demand to know the context. Most people don't, and they are routinely served visual falsehoods.)

The reality is, as always, a little different from the spin.

The building in Rafah serves terrorism. The smuggling activity conducted from within it is not calculated to deliver fresh eggs to the hungry of Rafah but to bring armed terrorists into Israel and to serve as a conduit for explosives and other armaments. Its true nature and the threat to human lives it poses to people on both sides of the barrier is, by its nature, well-known to the authorities and to the neighbours on the Gaza side. It doesn't faze them.

Prior to sending in the planes, the IDF - as it customarily does - delivered warnings to the Gazans living in the vicinity of the building to leave. It reminded them people staying in structures that serve the terrorists and store and smuggle weaponry take enormous risks. Once the message was communicated, the bombs hit their target (that was a few hours ago) causing what the IDF's press office called a series of secondary explosions in the building. Secondary explosions happen when explosives - in this case in large quantities evidently - are contained within buildings.

The laconic language of the IDF announcement could hardly have less impact, but there's sense in its words neveretheless - sense which is rarely communicated to the news-consuming public via the mainstream media:

Terrorist organizations operate from within civilian population, while cynically exploiting uninvolved civilians and using them as human shields, exploiting their homes to store weaponry and launching rockets at Israeli towns from populated areas.

Meanwhile 3 more Qassam rockets landed inside Israel overnight. Two struck agricultural hot-houses on the grounds of Kibbutz Netiv Hasarah near the Gaza security fence. One landed south of Ashkelon in an open field near the Shaar Hanegev neighbourhood. No injuries or damage are reported. (With Palestinian Arab terror attacks, it's usually pot-luck. They don't aim and they don't dare as long as it's Israel and Israelis.) The IDF responded by firing at the rocket-launching sites - not "retaliation" as some news channels like to say, but attempting to permanently eliminate the rocket-firing equipment and their terrorist operators.

If anyone comes across a different version of these events from a Palestinian Arab perspective, we'd be very interested to know about it.

Nothing in today's blog is earth-shattering (except in a literal sense) and clearly has a very small impact on people living far away. But for those of us actively engaged in living our lives here in Israel, it's depressing to see how an ongoing low-intensity war of terror on our flanks is basically wished out of existence by those charged with reporting it.