09-Oct-17: Behind those incoming rocket alerts

We originally published this November 2012 Cameron Cardow cartoon here 3 years ago [Image Source: The Cagle Post]

It's a rainy, sweet-smelling Monday morning here in Jerusalem.

But last night and the night before, both of them balmy and conducive to relaxation during a holiday week (Tabernacles, or Sukkot in Hebrew), in-bound missile alerts (emanating from Israel's advanced Tzeva Adom or Color Red warning system) were sounded across large swathes of southern Israel what we call here the Gaza Envelope. These were barely reported outside Israel.

The Saturday night alarm was soon explained by the IDF as a technical error. So, for a while, was Sunday night's. But about an hour after families rushed to their shelters with sleeping children in their arms, the IDF provided a fuller explanation. Here's how Times of Israel conveyed it:

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip failed to reach Israeli territory, the IDF said Sunday night, upending its earlier statement on the incident and confirming retaliatory Israeli artillery fire on a border post... [The] rocket aimed at the Jewish state exploded inside the Gaza Strip. Earlier on Sunday night, the military had said a rocket fell in an open area in the Eshkol region of southern Israel... The would-be rocket strike was the first projectile fired from the coastal enclave in two months. While no group immediately claimed Sunday’s rocket attempt, Israel holds Hamas responsible for all fire emanating from the Strip...  Earlier Saturday, Hamas said it had arrested four senior Islamic State members, including the group’s leader in the coastal enclave. The attempted rocket fire comes as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are engaged in reconciliation negotiations to see the PA resume civil control of the Gaza Strip... ["Backpedaling, IDF says rocket from Gaza failed to hit Israel", Times of Israel, October 8, 2017]

A Gazan terrorist rocket fired at Israelis but which crash-lands in Gazan territory is a "fell short". They fall short often, though this is rarely reported either by the Hamas regime which rules Gaza or by the major news agencies [see "18-Nov-12: Fell short? Not just the Hamas rockets but the ethics of the journalists covering them"].

Click here to see other past posts of ours where "Fell Short" is one of the index terms: there are currently nearly 80 of them.

What's especially interesting and bothersome about Fell Shorts is that these often crash not just onto Gaza's territory but onto Gazan heads and homes. On a visit we made a couple of years ago to an IDF installation close to Gaza, we learned about serious injuries caused to hapless Gazans just a few days earlier. These had been reported nowhere - because political considerations cause Gaza rulers to hush up the Arab-on-Arab fall-out resulting from self-inflicted Fell Short explosions.

Living under the Hamas jackboot has never been easy.

19-Oct-16: At Tapuah Junction today, a young woman, a knife and a familiar narrative

At the scene [Image Source]

The entire country is on vacation for the week of Sukkot (Tabernacles). But there's no vacation from the threat of terror attacks..

From Ynet today:

An attempted stabbing attack took place at Tapuah Junction in the West Bank on Wednesday afternoon. A female attacker approached the Border Police at the junction and attempted to stab them. They responded by firing, and the attacker was neutralized. No Border Police were injured.

Via social media sources, it appears the meaning of "the attacker was neutralized" is that the armed assailant, a young woman estimated to be 19 years old, was shot and killed at the scene. The attack took place around 12:50 pm this afternoon. Tapuah Junction [click] has seen many such attacks.

UPDATE 3:00 pm: Over at Ma'an News Agency, there's the customary spin-filled reporting, with "alleged" being the prevailing sentiment (the word appears five times in a short news report):

Israeli forces shot and killed a young Palestinian woman at the Zaatara military checkpoint in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus on Wednesday after she allegedly attempted to stab Israeli border police. The slain woman was identified by local sources as 23-year-old Raheeq Shajee Birawi from the village of Asira al-Shamaliya north of Nablus city...

The Arabic version of the Ma'an report [here] calls the girl (named رحيق شجيع بيراوي in Arabic) a "martyr", as do Arabic-language Twitter messages [here]. Ma'an's English version does not. That's the usual approach that this European-funded news packager takes in reports of thwarted Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks.

26-Sep-07: More about our neighbors

So far this morning, the eve of the festival of Tabernacles or Sukkot, four Qassam rockets have crashed into Israel, fired from Gaza. (More than 4,000 in seven years. 1,800 since September 2006.) The BBC routinely calls Gaza "one of the most densely populated tracts of land in the world". Despite this and the fact that it has multiple police- and security-forces, Gaza's authorities are somehow never in the right place to intervene and stop these murderous thugs. A real puzzle.

1pm UPDATE: Today's tally is now seven Qassams. Haaretz says two hit "the rocket-weary town of Sderot". Fortunately no injuries so far. This morning Palestinians also lobbed 20 mortar shells into Israel from the southern part of the Gaza Strip. There's no strategy here other than terror. Israel's patience and restraint in the face of hate-filled violence is beyond comprehension - and also largely unrecognized.

3:45pm UPDATE: The tally is now nine, and the sun is still high in the sky.

10-Oct-06: Self-Slaughtering Murderers... Again

It's a little after 8 on a very pleasant Jerusalem evening. We're taking things easy at home, eating in the palm-roofed outdoor hut on our terrace (we're in the midst of the festival of Tabernacles).

Meanwhile at roadblocks all over this region, young Israeli men and women are manning security checkpoints, as they do 24 x 7 x 365, watching for that disturbing Palestinian Arab creation of self-slaughtering, religiously-inspired young men, hell-bent on getting to paradise by blowing up Jews.

Today, a small victory. A very quiet and small victory.

We say quiet because, as so often happens, the only news media interested in reporting on Palestinian terrorists that fail (as opposed to the well-covered stories where actual spilled Jewish blood takes centre-stage) are Israeli news media. Too, too, too boring for the rest.

IDF troops thwart attempted terror attack at West Bank checkpoint

Last update - 18:13 10/10/2006
By Amos Harel and Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service
Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Tuesday arrested two Palestinian youth attempting to carry out a suicide bombing attack near the West Bank city of Jenin. Military police troops searching the youths youths during a routine security check at the Rihan checkpoint found two pipe bombs weighing a kilogram each strapped to one of their bodies. Troops arrested the youths and sappers safely detonated the explosives. The youths told police during their investigation that they had been sent by Hamas militants to carry out the attack. This is the second attempted terror attack at a West Bank checkpoint in 24 hours. IDF troops on Monday shot dead a Palestinian youth who they said pulled out a knife and attacked a soldier at the Hawara checkpoint, south of Nablus.

Jenin: Terror attack thwarted

Two Palestinians raise officers' suspicion at Reihan Crossing, found to be carrying explosive devices. In interrogation, men admit they planned to throw bombs at troops
Efrat Weiss (Published: 10.10.06, 18:51)
The security forces thwarted a second terror attack in 24 hours, this time at the Reihan Crossing near Jenin. On Tuesday afternoon, two Palestinians who arrived at the crossing raised suspicion with the local Border Guard policemen manning the checkpoint. Following a search of the two, soldiers found two pipe bombs, weighing about one kilogram each. The crossing has been by the officers closed and the bombs were detonated in a controlled manner by Border Guard sappers. During an investigation of the incident, the two Palestinians said they intended on throwing the devices on the local forces. The Hawara checkpoint experiences an incident or an attempt to attack soldiers on daily basis.

Some points to ponder:

• The terrorists were caught at a security checkpoint. These are endlessly criticized by outsiders. They degrade. They humiliate. They delay. They ensure the continued hatred of Palestinian Arabs for Israel and for Israelis. All of these criticisms may be true. But they prevent deaths by terror - every single day. You don't have to be the parents of a child murdered by savages like those caught today (as we are - our daughter's murderer passed unhindered through a laid-back Israeli checkpoint on the day he carried out his massacre) to understand the importance of those security checks. A pity that so many journalists and their editors seem to ignore the almost daily snarings of terrorists that those checkpoints make possible.
• This successful intercept comes 24 hours after the last successful intercept of self-slaughtering Palestinian Arab terrorists with murder in mind. Did you read about it in your local or national paper? See it on the evening news? This latest event happened six or seven hours ago. It's currently reported (according to Google News) in precisely two global news channels: In Israel's Haaretz and in Israel's Yedioth Aharonot.
• By their own admission, the young religious fanatics were sent by Hamas - they control the government of the would-be state of Palestine. Remember this when you next hear how moderate and ready for peace Hamas is.
• As boring and uninteresting as it may be to report on foiled terror attacks, on lives saved and not blown away, the reports of terrorists intercepted en route to their barbaric mission are potentially much more important to ordinary readers of the news than the reports of massacres are. Terror is not a Middle East invention. Jihad is not directed at Israelis or Jews alone. There are lessons to be learned from the systems and methods Israel has put in place to deflect the savages of Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and the rest. What is it about these reports that your news people don't want you to know?

We'll go back to eating our dinner now. Have a good evening.