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.

03-Jun-15: Alarms sounded: Inbound Gazan rockets around 11:00 pm tonight

Tzeva Adom ("Color Red") incoming rocket alarms were heard throughout southern Israel at 10:55 pm tonight (Wednesday). Times of Israel says residents were seen rushing to bomb shelters, the second time this happened in the past week and undoubtedly disrupting the lives of Israeli families with young children who would have had to be dragged out of their beds.

Israel National News says

Two rockets from Gaza exploded in the Sdot Negev region. There were no physical injuries or damages.

Times of Israel reminds us of that previous attack:

On May 26, Palestinian militants shot a Grad rocket into Israel, striking an area outside the town of Gan Yavneh, in an attack that broke several weeks of calm. Palestinian and Israeli officials said the rocket attack, which caused no casualties or damage, was the result of internal fighting within the Islamic Jihad terror group... Last week’s attack marked the first time a Grad rocket, which can go farther than the smaller Kassams more commonly shot out of Gaza, had been fired at Israel since the summer war.

UPDATE 4-Jun-15 at 7:30 am: According to Aljazeera,

At least two rockets have been launched from Gaza into southern Israel, the Israeli police has said. The police said on Wednesday that they were fired at the towns of Netivot and Ashkelon, near the Gaza border. Warning sirens were heard in the area, but no injuries have been reported. A group calling itself the Omar Brigades has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack, prompting Israeli fighter jets to bomb three empty fields used by Hamas fighters in the southern Gaza strip.

And from inside the Gaza Strip itself, evidence (see screen shot below from the GANSO website) that four rockets were fired at Israel but (which we have not yet seen reported in any news stories) two of them ended up (yet again) crashing on top of Gazan homes and territory: Fell Shorts, in our terms.

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.

7-Jul-14: A day in the life

In a society that values life, a mother shielding a child
as an incoming Gazan rocket pierces the sky is part of an
everyday experience. We hate it, we know we can end it at
a huge price, and we keep hoping the people on the far side of
the fence will be brought to their senses before all of us
pay even more for the hate and the madness.

We happen to be thinly stretched at the moment with family issues, and keeping track of the rapid-fire events going on in our area is beyond our capabilities.

So we are borrowing some work being done over at Haaretz, where they have a live-blog timeline of the rising violence and terrorism now underway. This post is based partly on events they report there, starting from midnight last (Sunday/Monday) night, as well as from other news sources.

Midnight to 3:00 am, Monday

• Twelve individuals are arrested for "rioting and stone-throwing" in parts of the Negev, including the Israeli Arab communities of Tel Sheva (see our earlier post), Hura, Ar'ara and Laqiya.
• It's the middle of the night, but firefighters from Be'er Sheva are rushed in to tackle burning debris caused by that imam-inspired Tel Sheva violence. Police are needed when the firefighters come under attack from locals on arrival. 
• Tzeva Adom incoming rocket sirens are sounding in Sderot and the Sha'ar Hanegev region
• Hamas says four of its militants/activists/revolutionaries are dead following an Israeli air strike in Gaza. On their own numbers, this brings Sunday night's total to six dead terrorists, with no suggestion of any innocents killed in the fire (though deaths of innocents are highly likely under the conditions that prevail in Gaza). Reuters, quoted by Haaretz, calls it "the biggest single Israeli hit against Hamas since 2012's Operation Pillar of Defense". We say they might more helpfully have called it an illustration of pin-point firepower, and a tour de force by an ethics-minded defensive military that takes more trouble to separate combatants from the civilians among whom they are deliberately embedded than any other military has managed to do in modern times.
• Around 2:30 am, the IDF spokesperson confirms an IAF strike on nine targets, including "concealed rocket launchers and other centers of terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip."
• Reuters says, around 2:50 am, that those IAF air strikes on Gaza have resulted in seven deaths.
• According to the IDF, a mortar shell has hit Israeli territory in the northern Golan Heights near the border with Syria. IDF opens fire across the border.

3:00 am to 6:00 am, Monday

• By Haaretz' count, there are now seven dead Hamas "men", along with two dead Islamic Jihad "members", plus three more confirmed wounded as a result of those IAF air strikes on Gaza. Quoting DPA, a major German news agency, it says six of those casualties come from a single strike on the Gazan town of Rafah.
• The IDF spokesperson says another five concealed rocket launchers are targeted by IAF airstrikes in north Gaza and destroyed.
• An AP report quoted by Haaretz puts the overnight death toll in the Palestinian Arab terrorist ranks in Gaza at 9, with the addition of two more from the ranks of Islamic Jihad.

6:00 am to 9:00 am, Monday

• Two rockets explode in the Eshkol region of southern Israel. One explodes inside a built-up area (deliberately fuzzy language for security reasons). A soldier is injured, and cars are damaged.
• The early morning rocket tally, as measured by the GANSO people (funded by the European Union and serving the small army of NGO workers based inside Gaza), was "32 rockets and 20 mortar shells... 3 rockets exploded at the launching site and 1 dropped short." In other words, still more Fell Shorts - the self-inflicted rocket casualties that are never ever reported by the mainstream media channels. To keep in mind when the body counts are published. 

9:00 am to noon, Monday

• According to the Palestinian news agency Ma'an, Israeli air attacks on Rafah and Beit Hanoun cause injuries to six civilians. One is in serious condition.
• The seven Hamas "members" killed overnight died (says Haaretz) in a tunnel collapse. It's unclear whether the collapse was the deliberate result of an Israeli attack. It points out that two weeks ago Hamas lost five other "members" in a mysterious explosion in a Gaza tunnel; at that time, there was no revenge attack by Hamas. "The high death toll overnight may paint a different picture, however. It remains to be seen if last night's airstrikes will prove to be a turning point, leading to an escalation in the rocket fire to Israel's south", writes Amos Harel.
• Israel's prime minister speaks to Hussein Abu Khdeir, father of the Arab 16 year old killed last week; reports say six Israelis have been arrested in connection with the death. "I wish to express the shock Israeli citizens and I feel by the repugnant murder of your son... We've acted immediately to find the murderers; they will be brought to trial and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We reject any brutal behavior, and the murder of your son is despicable and cannot be accepted by any person." The boy's mother says “They’re only going to ask them questions and then release them. What’s the point? They need to treat them the way they treat us... They need to demolish their homes and round them up, the way they do it to our children.” We consider showing her some of our posts (this one, for instance) about how the head of the Palestinian Authority holds aloft the arms of men who murdered Israeli children and calls them heroes of the Arab nation. For now, we assume the impact of our message might get lost for all the fire-bombing and rock-hurling being done in memory of her son. 
• Around 11:00 am, Hamas confirms six of its "members" were killed in Israeli air strikes at a "resistance location" in Gazan Rafah, early this morning. Haaretz thinks this means a smuggling tunnel. Hamas says via Sami Abu Zuhri that Israel committed a "grave escalation" in violence and threatened to retaliate, saying Israel would "pay the price." For a sense of the moral and war-crimes background, read an earlier post of ours here quoting this same Abu Zuhri disgustingly praising the murder-by-Islamism of an Israeli woman in her seventies. 
• Times of Israel, quoting the IDF, says those Hamas tunnelers died as a result of a “work accident,” when an explosive-laden tunnel that was hit in an Israeli airstrike several days earlier exploded.
• About the same time, an incoming Gazan Grad rocket explodes in open terrain in Be'er Sheva. It's the second rocket fired on the city in 48 hours. The first was intercepted by Iron Dome.
• Haaretz says three of six the suspects in the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir have confessed and reenacted the crime.
• Around noon, there's a report that the speaker of the Knesset asks members of the Israeli parliament to "refrain from statements which could spark violence and legitimize the actions of one side or the other". We think it's worth pausing for a moment to ask when the speaker of any Arab parliament (there are some, not many) did something similar.

AP photo today shows IDF forces
massing on border with Gaza

Noon to 3:00 pm, Monday

• Just before 1:00 pm, two more rockets crash and explode in open areas in the Sdot Negev region of southern Israel. Another explodes in the beleagured Sha'ar Hanegev region. A few minutes later, mortars come crashing in to the Eshkol region, close to the fence with Gaza. And they keep coming.
• By 2:30 pm, Haaretz can report 9 rockets and mortar shells in Eshkol during the past hour alone.
• At about the same time, the government's so-called "Security cabinet" convenes in Jerusalem to decide on a response to the relentless rocket fire from Gaza. Let it be clear that every Israeli, whether politician or ordinary citizen, understands that at any given moment, Israel's massively superior firepower can be turned on the Gaza Strip and the problem will stop. This has always been about the price in moral and political terms that Israel is willing to pay.
• Two more rockets hit the Eshkol region around 3:30 pm.
• A few minutes later, there's mortar fire in Eshkol with resultant damage to unspecified properties (deliberately suppressed).
• A quarter hour later, the Israel Air Force launches strikes on the Gaza Strip.

3:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Monday

• Ynet says Tzeva Adom sirens are heard in the Sha'ar HaNegev region. 
• It's reported that the Security cabinet meeting results in the IDF being instructed to increase strikes against the Gaza Strip "in efforts to halt the rocket fire emanating from the coastal enclave".
• Also reported that some 1,500 IDF reserve soldiers, primarily from the Home Front Command including those trained to operate the Iron Dome anti-missile batteries, are issued urgent call-up papers for service on the southern border. Haaretz quotes an IDF official: “Quiet was not met with quiet, and therefore we are preparing for an escalation.” 
• Times of Israel quotes IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner who says the IDF is "still in a defensive position but has shifted its readiness in order to address an escalation in the ongoing conflict with the Gaza Strip." We're wondering, along with most concerned Israelis, how many warnings there are going to be.
• Around 6, there are (Ynet) four more incoming rockets from Gaza that crash and explode in open areas near or in (we'll keep it vague) Sderot and the Sha'ar Hanegev region. No injuries or damage reported at this stage.
• In all it's been a hot Monday, and it's not ended yet. The IDF says the tally of mortars, Qassam rockets and GRADs, all of them indiscriminately seeking Israeli victims, has reached about 50 today. There were dozens yesterday. (Remember when you last heard of a Hamas rocket hitting a military target? If not, you're closer to understanding their strategy.)

6.00 pm onwards, Monday

• A Times of Israel report says residents of the front-line desert communities of the Shaar HaNegev, Eshkol, and Hof Ashkelon regions being instructed to stay within 15 seconds of shelters, as Tzeva Adom incoming rocket sirens are being continuously heard.
• A directive from the IDF's Home Front Command to residents within 40 kilometers (24 miles) of the Gaza Strip: gatherings of over 500 people are now officially "strongly discouraged". It's bad news for people celebrating weddings at this peak-season time of year. That 40 km radius includes Ashdod, Israel's fifth-largest city with a population of about 210,000 and home to Israel's major sea port, and Be'er Sheva (pop.: 200,000).
• Proving the point, a heavy barrage of rockets from Gaza around dusk Monday night (according to Ynet) rained down on communities across the south. One or more are reported to have been brought down in mid-flight by Iron Dome counter-fire. Tzeva Adom warnings were heard moments before in Netivot, Ofakim, and the Bnei Shimon and Sdot Negev regions.
• Reporting from inside the Gaza Strip, the GANSO website says that last barrage was especially heavy: "07 JUL, 1830: Pal. ops. fired 30 rockets from Gaza toward the Green Line over the last minutes." Hint: that expression "toward the Green Line" is how they refer to Israeli civilians.

Needless to say, this is an ongoing war. Updates to come.

29-Jun-14: Intense Gazan rocket fire on southern Israel again tonight

It's Sunday night. Around 8:15 this evening, at about the same time as a major rally in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square in support of efforts to safely rescue the three Israeli boys abducted by Palestinian Arab terrorists, the Tzeva Adom (Code Red) incoming missile system began sounding its sirens right across southern Israel. Warnings were sounded in the Hof Ashkelon region, in Sdot Negev which was hit last night as well, and in Sha'ar Hanegev which was also hit last night.

At about the same time, Gazan mortar fire erupted right on the border fence that separates the Hamas-controlled, terrorism-infested Gaza Strip from Israel.

We now know that two of the incoming rockets, classified as GRADs, were intercepted in mid-flight by the IDF's Iron Dome defensive rocket system, and destroyed over the southern city of Netivot (population: 27,000) without doing serious harm.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the first day of the Islamic holy month, Ramadan, had just concluded at about the time of tonight's rocket volley.

Islamist militancy is running high in Gaza:

About 100,000 students from all over the Gaza Strip joined the “Pioneers of Liberation” summer camps organized this year by the Hamas movement. The camps are organized according to educational level, with primary, middle and secondary school stages... Students ranging in age from 12 to 17 gather in the afternoons for three hours, seven days a week, wearing fatigues, black shirts and green berets. They are trained in the basics of military action and security in the camps organized by the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip during their summer vacation. Forty supervisors affiliated with the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, divide the students into groups. Some groups are trained to carry and use arms and others to navigate obstacle courses, while another group is trained on debarkation techniques and safety. Each year, Hamas holds summer camps for male and female students of various ages. Some of these camps are predominantly recreational and cultural, while others focus on the military drills, all part of a program to promote Hamas and its ideology. Hamza Ahmad, a summer camp official in the Saraya region, said military drills fall in line with Hamas’ conviction that the Palestinians are in a state of conflict with Israel, and they must know the basics of military action in addition to the security and cultural aspects of the program. [Source: Al-Monitor]

Times of Israel, quoting government sources, says Palestinian Arab rocket attacks on Israel during the (still unfinished) month of June are running at 4.5 times the number of the previous month: 13 in May; 60 in June.

26-Jun-12: GRAD rockets strike Netivot again tonight

Scene of a previous GRAD attack on Netivot in March 2012.

Fortunately the explosion occurred in a car park in the center of town,

meters away from residential buildings. Tonight's attack (so far at least)

has also had a relatively mild outcome. But a strategy of

defending your home and your family cannot be based

on luck alone. [Image Source]

In the past hour (it's now 11:00 pm Tuesday night here in Jerusalem), four [11:45 pm UPDATE: five] GRAD rockets were fired from a launcher in the Gaza Strip, tumultuously ending what the Jerusalem Post is calling "a brief period of calm". Terrified residents of the areas targeted ran for cover as air raid sirens sounded on three separate occasions. 

Two [11:45 pm UPDATE: three] incoming rockets are reported by Times of Israel to have been intercepted in mid-air by Israeli Iron Dome missile defence system fire. Intercepts generally happen when the system's computer assesses that the enemy rockets are on track to hit a residential or other strategic target. The other two GRAD rockets crashed and exploded near the southern desert city of Netivot (population: 27,000); no damage or injuries to humans are reported.

The GRADs now deployed by the terrorists of the Gaza Strip are reported [source] to carry a warhead of  up to 19 kg of explosives “wrapped” with lethal metallic fragments. With a length of approximately 3 m, the rocket has a range of 40 km. Developed in the former Soviet Union, it has been sold to many former-Soviet allies and has undergone improvements by the Chinese and Iranians who are believed to be the parties supplying the Gazan terrorists. 

GRAD rockets are used by nearly 50 militaries worldwide, though it's unlikely they are applied - as the Gazan Palestinian Arabs do - exclusively against civilians.

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.

24-Dec-08: In southern Israel, it's raining rockets

For its own good reasons, the Hamas regime is fully engaged in a strategy of steady terrorist escalation against Israeli civilians. The result is that today, the first really cold and rainy winter day of the season, has been violent and deeply worrying.

The New York Times version of today's turbulence along the southern border of Israel with Gaza says that the terrorists of Gaza

"...increased the range and intensity of their rocket fire against Israel Wednesday as the Israeli security cabinet weighed options that include broader military action or efforts to renew a truce that recently expired. More than 60 rockets and mortars were fired at southern Israel by the afternoon... [They] slammed into the Israeli border town of Sderot, the yard of a house and a water park in the coastal city of Ashkelon, an Israeli factory at Nir Oz near the Gaza border, and hit a house outside the Western Negev town of Netivot. The strikes caused extensive damage and widespread panic among the residents... Scores of adults and children were treated for shock, the emergency medical service said."

Tonight's television news programs are reporting that, while Israel's military is primed and ready to intervene and silence the rocket launchers, and now has a green light to go ahead from the Israeli cabinet, efforts are still underway to try to avoid the bloodshed that will inevitably follow once the IDF is unleashed.

UPDATE Thursday 25-Dec-08 8:00am: The Jerusalem Post summary of yesterday's Hamas mayhem says: "The IDF received the green light Wednesday for a series of operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after more than 60 mortar shells and Katyusha and Kassam rockets pounded the Negev. The barrage hit communities throughout the south, reaching as far north as Ashkelon and as far south as Kerem Shalom. At least two Grad-model Katyusha rockets were fired into Ashkelon on Wednesday, and a Kassam with extended range hit Netivot.... The terrorists hit close to educational facilities and homes. Nearly 60 people, almost half of them children or teenagers, were treated for emotional trauma and anxiety.

Haaretz now says Wednesday's toll was "more than 80 rockets and mortar shells into Israel".