29-Jan-09: How things look from the Israeli end of the rifle barrel

The open letter below appeared in Hebrew in Maariv, an Israeli daily, earlier this week. It's written anonymously though the email address of the writer is known to us.

You can quibble with a word here and a thought there, but it's our estimation that this note captures the essence of what many Israelis are thinking right now in the wake of an appalling and unnecessary war that brought immense destruction and loss to the inhabitants of the Hamas regime in Gaza... and which, sadly, looks more and more likely to be the forerunner of more of the same.

An Israeli Soldier's Letter to a Gazan Family: I Am the Israeli Soldier Who Slept In Your Home

Yishai G serves as a citizen-soldier in a reserves unit of the Israeli Defence Forces

Hello,

While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away. I am that someone.

I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home. How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.

I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation. I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say. At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.

I spent many days in your home. You and your family’s presence was felt in every corner. I saw your family portraits on the wall, and I thought of my family. I saw your wife’s perfume bottles on the bureau, and I thought of my wife. I saw your children’s toys and their English language schoolbooks. I saw your personal computer and how you set up the modem and wireless phone next to the screen, just as I do.

I wanted you to know that despite the immense disorder you found in your house that was created during a search for explosives and tunnels (which were indeed found in other homes), we did our best to treat your possessions with respect. When I moved the computer table, I disconnected the cables and lay them down neatly on the floor, as I would do with my own computer. I even covered the computer from dust with a piece of cloth. I tried to put back the clothes that fell when we moved the closet although not the same as you would have done, but at least in such a way that nothing would get lost.

I know that the devastation, the bullet holes in your walls and the destruction of those homes near you place my descriptions in a ridiculous light. Still, I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I decided to write you this letter specifically because I stayed in your home.

I can surmise that you are intelligent and educated and there are those in your household that are university students. Your children learn English, and you are connected to the Internet. You are not ignorant; you know what is going on around you. Therefore, I am sure you know that Qassam rockets were launched from your neighborhood into Israeli towns and cities.

How could you see these weekly launches and not think that one day we would say “enough”?! Did you ever consider that it is perhaps wrong to launch rockets at innocent civilians trying to lead a normal life, much like you? How long did you think we would sit back without reacting?

I can hear you saying “it’s not me, it’s Hamas”. My intuition tells me you are not their most avid supporter. If you look closely at the sad reality in which your people live, and you do not try to deceive yourself or make excuses about “occupation”, you must certainly reach the conclusion that the Hamas is your real enemy.

The reality is so simple, even a seven year old can understand: Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, removing military bases and its citizens from Gush Katif. Nonetheless, we continued to provide you with electricity, water, and goods (and this I know very well as during my reserve duty I guarded the border crossings more than once, and witnessed hundreds of trucks full of goods entering a blockade-free Gaza every day).

Despite all this, for reasons that cannot be understood and with a lack of any rational logic, Hamas launched missiles on Israeli towns. For three years we clenched our teeth and restrained ourselves. In the end, we could not take it anymore and entered the Gaza strip, into your neighborhood, in order to remove those who want to kill us. A reality that is painful but very easy to explain.

As soon as you agree with me that Hamas is your enemy and because of them, your people are miserable, you will also understand that the change must come from within. I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say is easier to write than to do, but I do not see any other way. You, who are connected to the world and concerned about your children’s education, must lead, together with your friends, a civil uprising against Hamas.

I swear to you, that if the citizens of Gaza were busy paving roads, building schools, opening factories and cultural institutions instead of dwelling in self pity, arms smuggling and nurturing a hatred to your Israeli neighbors, your homes would not be in ruins right now. If your leaders were not corrupt and motivated by hatred, your home would not have been harmed. If someone would have stood up and shouted that there is no point in launching missiles on innocent civilians, I would not have to stand in your kitchen as a soldier.

You don’t have money, you tell me? You have more than you can imagine. Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, during the time of Yasser Arafat, millions if not billions of dollars donated by the world community to the Palestinians was used for purchasing arms or taken directly to your leaders bank accounts. Gulf States, the emirates - your brothers, your flesh and blood, are some of the richest nations in the world. If there was even a small feeling of solidarity between Arab nations, if these nations had but the smallest interest in reconstructing the Palestinian people – your situation would be very different.

You must be familiar with Singapore. The land mass there is not much larger than the Gaza strip and it is considered to be the second most populated country in the world. Yet, Singapore is a successful, prospering, and well managed country. Why not the same for you?

My friend, I would like to call you by name, but I will not do so publicly. I want you to know that I am 100% at peace with what my country did, what my army did, and what I did. However, I feel your pain. I am sorry for the destruction you are finding in your neighborhood at this moment. On a personal level, I did what I could to minimize the damage to your home as much as possible.

In my opinion, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. I am a civilian, not a soldier, and in my private life I have nothing to do with the military. However, I have an obligation to leave my home, put on a uniform, and protect my family every time we are attacked. I have no desire to be in your home wearing a uniform again and I would be more than happy to sit with you as a guest on your beautiful balcony, drinking sweet tea seasoned with the sage growing in your garden.

The only person who can make that dream a reality is you. Take responsibility for yourself, your family, your people, and start to take control of your destiny. How? I do not know. Maybe there is something to be learned from the Jewish people who rose up from the most destructive human tragedy of the 20th century, and instead of sinking into self-pity, built a flourishing and prospering country. It is possible, and it is in your hands. I am ready to be there to provide a shoulder of support and help to you.

But only you can move the wheels of history.

Regards,
Yishai G.

19-Jan-09: Graphic outcome

Scott Stantis gets it.



So does Theo Moudakis.

15-Jan-09: Public Relations and Gaza

One of this blog's two authors has an op-ed that appears as the Jerusalem Post's lead guest blog, and also on the FrontPageMag website.

PR and Gaza
By FRIMET ROTH

Israel is stuck in a PR morass. All of the logical arguments that its spokesmen have been hammering away at leave the foreign press cold.

The Economist's former Israel correspondent, Gideon Lichfield, wrote last week of Israel's PR: "[It] is so sophisticated that there is still no adequate word for it in English." The Palestinians, on the other hand, are so inept, he adds, that they "barely know what a spokesman is.".

Hyperbole aside, Lichfield is on target when he explains why Israel's media blitz for Operation Cast Lead has fallen flat on its face: "Partly, of course, it's because the numbers are against it... On television, what looks bad looks bad."

Lichfield, like most foreign correspondents, isn't interested in the background to those numbers. Hamas' use of human shields, and of homes, schools, mosques and hospitals as arsenals and launching pads are out of the equation. This selective blindness leads them to Lichfield's "deeper reason" for Israel's PR failure: "The consistent impression Israel leaves is that it kills people because, at best, it simply doesn't have any better ideas, and at worst, because some Israeli leader is trying to get the upper hand on one of his or her rivals."

Such assessments only aid and abet the carnage. Relentless media focus on the shocking civilian numbers and images from Gaza are the best incentive for Hamas to pursue its barbaric tactics. The payoff in global sympathy is invaluable.

At the helm of those reporters are the Israelis Amira Hass and Gideon Levy.

Early into this war Levy attacked Israel's pilots: "Good boys from good homes are doing bad things - they bomb the graduation ceremony for young police officers... a mosque, killing five sisters... a police station, hitting a doctor nearby..."

Hass contributed her predictable litany of Palestinian suffering minus any context. "A mother whose three school-age children were killed, and are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, screams and then cries, screams again and then is silent." And "Two women... eighty years of age, and three of their grandchildren... have treated their injuries with water and salt, though their wounds have become infected."

Levy thinks Israeli pilots have become "callous, cruel and blind people." and implicitly urges disobedience of orders. Given Hamas' stated intention to continue bombarding Israeli cities and its refusal to recognize Israel, Levy's advice could spell the end of the Jewish State.

But that is not an eventuality he or Hass would lose sleep over.

Hass, who has lived in Ramallah and Gaza since 1993, likes to label the Jews "a Diaspora nation". In 2005 she participated in a public debate organized by the British Evening Standard. The thesis was that "Zionism is the worst enemy of the Jewish People". Hass defended it so effectively that her team won.

This week Levy anointed the Gaza correspondent of Al Jazeera English his "hero of the Gaza war". The blatantly pro-Hamas bias evidenced by that station's harassment of its pro-Israel interviewees, somehow washed over Levy. The station, he pronounced, is "balanced [and] professional".

The pair's prolificness is testimony to their unfettered freedom of speech. But facts are no match for popular myths; "heroic" is always the adjective preceding their names when mentioned by their supporters.

Another persistent myth about Hass and Levy is that their work is driven by compassion. In reality neither has ever written a sympathetic syllable about Jewish victims. Throughout the Second Intifada, when Hamas was targeting and murdering hundreds of innocent Jewish children in bombings and shootings, this duo pointedly ignored Israel's suffering.

Several years ago Levy hosted a Ninth of Av television special. He shamelessly abused that platform. "Jews have focused on their own grief for long enough," he preached. "The time has come for them to mourn Palestinian losses instead."

Despite all of the above, Levy and Hass are pegged as mainstream leftist journalists rather than political activists. Their articles appear, often on a daily basis, not only on opinion pages but on the front pages as hard news. Hass herself has confessed: "There is a misconception that journalists can be objective." Nevertheless, their own and their sources' credibility is never doubted. And that's the heart of the problem.

Once upon a time, reporters wrote words like these:

"The Jews with their backs to the sea, fighting for their very homes, with 101 percent morale, will accept no compromise... they plead only for the right to make this fight themselves... They are fighting for their very lives and must act accordingly."

Robert Kennedy penned the above on June 6, 1948, as the Herald Tribune's Israel correspondent.

Today, such liberal defenders of Israel are like needles in a haystack and support like Kennedy's is rare. Not even Israel's most brilliant spokesmen can alter that.

But at least we can remove the red-carpet from under Levy and Hass; their hate-filled articles belong on our opinion pages -­ and nowhere else.

---
Frimet Roth, a freelance writer, lives in Jerusalem. She and her husband founded the Malki Foundation in their daughter's memory. Malki Roth was murdered at the age of fifteen in the Sbarro Jerusalem restaurant massacre in 2001. The foundation in her name provides concrete support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child.

11-Jan-09: European pathologies

Mark Steyn, an incisive analyst whose views are invariably worth the time it takes to read them, has captured some of the unreported depths of the danger that's in the air right now. This column appeared on Friday.

The 'oldest hatred' lives, from Gaza to FloridaJew-hating pathologies ultimately harm the Jew-hater, too.
By MARK STEYN

In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell "You are the brothers of pigs!," and a protester complains to his interviewer that "Hitler didn't do a good job."
In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, "You need a big oven, that's what you need!"
In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, "Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!"
In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year's Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from Jan. 1, 2009, but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast "accidentally."
In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, "Palestine will kill the Jews"; in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, "Jews must die."
In Helsingborg, Sweden, the congregation at a synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in. in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store. in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a synagogue; in Antwerp, Netherlands, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel in Britain, "youths" attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.
In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security procedures because of potential revenge attacks. The Sun reports "fears" that "Islamic extremists" are drawing up a "hit list" of prominent Jews, including the Foreign Secretary, Amy Winehouse's record producer and the late Princess of Wales' divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Islamic nonextremists from the British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Foundation and other impeccably respectable "moderate" groups have warned the government that the Israelis' "disproportionate force" in Gaza risks inflaming British Muslims, "reviving extremist groups," and provoking "UK terrorist attacks" – not against Amy Winehouse's record producer and other sinister members of the International Jewish Conspiracy but against targets of, ah, more general interest.
Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinian people are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the Earth. For the past 60 years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab League, the PLO, Hamas and the "global community" – and the results are pretty much what you'd expect.
You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the U.N. refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don't deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the "Palestinian Authority" has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian "nationalist movement" has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago.
So, as I said, forget Gaza. And, instead, ponder the reaction to Gaza in Scandinavia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and golly, even Florida. As the delegitimization of Israel has metastasized, we are assured that criticism of the Jewish state is not the same as anti-Semitism. We are further assured that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, which is a wee bit more of a stretch.
Only Israel attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its very existence. For the purposes of comparison, let's take a state that came into existence at the exact same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of Pakistan was the greatest failure of post-war British imperial policy. But the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift.
But, even allowing for that, what has a schoolgirl in Villiers-le-Bel to do with Israeli government policy? Just weeks ago, terrorists attacked Mumbai, seized hostages, tortured them, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. The police intercepts of the phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers make for lively reading:
"Pakistan caller 1: 'Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.'
"Mumbai terrorist 2: 'We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China'
"Pakistan caller 1: 'Kill them.'
"(Voices of gunmen can be heard directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Sound of cheering voices.)"
"Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims." Tough for those Singaporean women. Yet no mosques in Singapore have been attacked. The large Hindu populations in London, Toronto and Fort Lauderdale have not shouted "Muslims must die!" or firebombed Halal butchers or attacked hijab-clad schoolgirls. CAIR and other Muslim lobby groups' eternal bleating about "Islamophobia" is in inverse proportion to any examples of it. Meanwhile, "moderate Muslims" in London warn the government: "I'm a peaceful fellow myself, but I can't speak for my excitable friends. Nice little G7 advanced Western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it."
But why worry about European Muslims? The European political and media class essentially shares the same view of the situation – to the point where state TV stations are broadcasting fake Israeli "war crimes."
As I always say, the "oldest hatred" didn't get that way without an ability to adapt: Once upon a time on the Continent, Jews were hated as rootless cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance. So they became a conventional nation state, and now they're hated for that. And, if Hamas get their way and destroy the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated for something else. So it goes.
But Jew-hating has consequences for the Jew-hater, too. A few years ago the poet Nizar Qabbani wrote an ode to the intifada:
O mad people of Gaza, a thousand greetings to the mad The age of political reason has long departed so teach us madness.
You can just about understand why living in Gaza would teach you madness. The enthusiastic adoption of the same pathologies by mainstream Europe is even more deranged – and in the end will prove just as self-destructive.
©MARK STEYN

The fighting in Gaza is going to end sooner or later. But the spreading scourge of racism and anti-semitism is going to be around to haunt us for a long time to come.

9-Jan-09: Quick - sit down, shake hands and make peace with these people

This ghastly vignette appears in today's New York Times. What more do outsiders need to know than this, when asking themselves and us the question: "Why not sit down and talk peace with the Hamas Gazans?"

January 9, 2009
Fighter Sees His Paradise in Gaza’s Pain
By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
GAZA CITY — The emergency room in Shifa Hospital is often a place of gore and despair. On Thursday, it was also a lesson in the way ordinary people are squeezed between suicidal fighters and a military behemoth.
Dr. Awni al-Jaru, 37, a surgeon at the hospital, rushed in from his home here, dressed in his scrubs. But he came not to work. His head was bleeding, and his daughter’s jaw was broken... A car arrived with more patients. One was a 21-year-old man with shrapnel in his left leg who demanded quick treatment. He turned out to be a militant with Islamic Jihad. He was smiling a big smile.
“Hurry, I must get back so I can keep fighting,” he told the doctors.
He was told that there were more serious cases than his, that he needed to wait. But he insisted. “We are fighting the Israelis,” he said. “When we fire we run, but they hit back so fast. We run into the houses to get away.” He continued smiling.
“Why are you so happy?” this reporter asked. “Look around you.”
A girl who looked about 18 screamed as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few weeks old and slightly wounded looked around helplessly. A man lay with parts of his brain coming out. His family wailed at his side.
“Don’t you see that these people are hurting?” the militant was asked.
“But I am from the people, too,” he said, his smile incandescent. “They lost their loved ones as martyrs. They should be happy. I want to be a martyr, too.”

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of armed-to-the-teeth fanatics like the "militant" of this article sit on our country's borders. Those who urge their "peace" proposals on Israel while ignoring this satanic reality are thoughtless, pointless and a dangerous diversion. This man and his opinions are the enemy of not only us in this ongoing war.

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.

4-Jan-08: Disproportionality of sitting and hoping for better

A thought on the appropriateness of Israel's self-defence measures as the campaign to neutralize the Hamas terrorist machinery moves into ground-campaign mode tonight.

"Those who scream 'disproportionate' think - grotesquely - that not enough Israelis have been killed. If anything has been 'disproportionate,' it's been Israel's refusal to take action during the years when its southern citizens have been terrorized by rockets and other missiles raining down on them from Gaza. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands for so long in such circumstances."

Melanie Phillips, The Spectator

2-Jan-09: The proportionality of living in the terrorists' cross-hairs

A more open and intense sort of war than the one we are accustomed to is raging in the south of Israel and in Gaza.

This is happening against a background of an ongoing vicious terror war waged against Israelis and Jews that (as we have said once or twice before) is mostly overlooked, ignored or just not understood. This inability or unwillingness to comprehend, and to look a little deeper than the mainstream media coverage, goes a long way towards explaining how the reporting on events here is so often partial, subjective, agenda-driven and wrong.

36 Israelis were murdered by terrorists during 2008. The year before, 2007, the number was 13. This is an increase of 177% year on year. Notable? Headline-worthy? Don't hold your breath.

Acts of terrorism by our immediate neighbours, the Arabs of Jerusalem, are sharply up in the annual security service report summarized by Haaretz today. The report points out what most Israelis already understand well: "East Jerusalem terrorist are exploiting their familiarity with the city, as well as their legal status and ability to move across it, to mount attacks against Israelis." Attacks by rocket and mortar shells are sharply up too.

There has also been a notable increase in the ability of Islamists to inculcate their hate-based ideology among Arabs inside both the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The number of indictments of Arab individuals identified as Al-Qaida or global Jihad "activists", "miltants" or "energetic fanatics" -- the correct term is terrorists -- rose sharply in the past year, according to the report's authors. The signs of more trouble for us here in the future are hard to miss.

While some of the news coverage of death and destruction in Gaza is created with the above insights in mind (for instance "Hamas' Strategy of Escalation" published two days ago in the paper and electronic editions of the German news-magazine Der Spiegel), much of it is not.

A widely-published Palestinian-Arab, Israeli-resident analyst by the name of Daoud Kuttab, for instance, had the breathtaking chutzpah to start his critique of Israeli actions in the op-ed pages of the Washington Post on Tuesday with these words:

"In its efforts to stop amateur rockets from nagging the residents of some of its southern cities, Israel appears to have given new life to the fledging Islamic movement in Palestine."

There's a whole brigade of editorialists, spin-meisters and soldier-writers in the army of Israel-haters who write like Kuttab. For them, the terrorist hordes of Hamas fire off harmless, homemade toy rockets, and the mean and nasty Israelis answer back with sophisticated warplanes and guided missiles. It's excessive force! It's disproportionate!! It's genocide!!!

Those who manage the propaganda efforts for the Palestinian Arabs use the image of victimhood for all the usual reasons, and always have. This is good for winning sympathy and for impairing Israeli actions by demanding restraint even in the face of naked Palestinian-Arab aggression. But the 'amateur rockets' of Kuttab and his kind have killed and wounded hundreds of Israelis. He knows that. Most of his readers do not. Those who do know it are either ignoring the reality for political or ideological reasons, or making clear that it's simply of no consequence to them.

As of today, Friday afternoon, the vast Hamas arsenal of Qassams, Grads, Katyushas and other deadly but largely unguided missiles has put more than 250,000 Israelis under direct threat of being killed or maimed or left homeless by aerial attack. It's Kuttab's privilege to call this "nagging". But it's not nagging. It's life and death, when you use real-world terms and real-world intellect to analyze it. And it calls for life-and-death response.

The Hamas-sponsored terrorists of Gaza fire their missiles and plant their roadside bombs with absolutely no concern for the outcome, just so long as the victims are Jews. (Truth to tell, their actions make clear they don't really care if some of their victims are not Jewish. It's the thought that counts, which is why so many Gazan children have been maimed or killed in the past several weeks by mis-fired Gazan rockets.) And under international law, Israel has the right to respond with the force necessary to end the conflict.

And for those who doubt that Israel is using its weapon systems to avoid unnecessary harm to Palestinian-Arab Gazans, ask UNRWA how much of its infrastructure and operations has been impaired by the intensive fighting of the past week.

That Gazan mosque flattened by Israeli planes yesterday produced several explosions - it was filled with Hamas rockets and explosives. No one here in Israel expects outrage over the cynical hijacking of religion for purposes of terror; we take it for granted when discussing the terrorists and their tactics. But did your local news report that the Israeli army is phoning - in Arabic - into Gaza ahead of the pin-point bombings and telling families who live in targeted buildings, typically rocket warehouses and bomb factories on the ground floor, with private dwellings above them - to get out and save themselves?

Disproportionate is what you call it when terrorists and their media apologists use words like amateur and nagging to describe what they do. What they do is murder. And proportionate is what you do to stop them. Everything you do to stop terrorists is proportionate.

28-Dec-08: On standing firm

Haaretz columnist Amos Harel says:

"This is the harshest IDF assault on Gaza since the territory was captured during the Six-Day War in 1967. Palestinian sources in Gaza report that 40 targets were destroyed in a span of three to five minutes. This was a massive attack... Simultaneous, heavy bombardment of a number of targets on which Israel spent months gathering intelligence. The military "target bank" includes dozens of additional targets linked to Hamas, some of which will certainly come under attack in the coming days... Little to no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians. From Israel's standpoint, Hamas, which persistently fires rockets while using the civilian population as cover, had plenty of opportunities to save face and lower their demands. In stubbornly continuing to launch rockets during the course of recent weeks, it brought this assault on itself."

But as Lenny Ben-David points out: "The blood libels against Israel have already begun", quoting as an illustration a Sean Rayment article in yesterday's Telegraph (UK): "The attack on the Gaza strip is proof that Israel is addicted to violence. Slaughtering 155 civilians, many of whom are women and children, can not be justified."

Lenny calls this

"An absolute blood libel. No military force in the world is as careful as the Israeli Defense Forces in differentiating combatants from the civilians surrounding them. Note this report from Bloomberg: "Most of the Palestinian dead were members of the Hamas security forces, including police chief Tawfiq Jaber and the head of the organization’s Security and Protection Service, Ismail al-Jabary, said Taher Noono, a spokesman for Hamas." Pictures from Gaza indicate this fact. Note these photos of Palestinian security forces hit in their bases. These are uniformed combatants of a force that declared war on Israel, and they are very legitimate targets according to international law."

His blog has the pictures.

Our guess is the blood-libel allegations against Israel will continue. The Hamas war effort demands it, and past experience shows they have little difficulty tapping into a pre-existing reservoir of knee-jerk commitment to the "weak" (Hamas) in their battle against the "strong" (Israel). The trouble, as we keep pointing out here in our blog entries, is the lack of awareness of how much trouble Israel absorbs with little or no reporting: the thousands of rocket strikes that no other country would ever take sitting down; the steady and deliberate escalation by the Hamas terror regime of threats and hostile actions, up to and including Friday of this week; the relentless indoctrination of Palestinian Arab children to hate and demonize Jews, Israelis, Christians and other non-adherents of the jihad-tainted religion to which Hamas subscribes.

When Sean Raiment, writing about Israel's action, says "this attack is both disgraceful and disproportionate", it's a fair bet he has very little concept of what it means to live next door to a full-blown jihadist regime. In fact two of them, since Hizbullah-land to the north is bristling with weapons and missiles that no one here thinks will remain in their wrapping for long.

Raiment is not alone, and we're not singling him out. He's simply an example of the superficial and ill-informed pap that characterizes a good deal of the analysis and reporting (typically, from a great distance) on events in our neighbourhood. Looking through the comments on his blog page and seeing Israel accused on carrying out a Holocaust, we're left with a feeling that, at very difficult times like this, it's our obligation to simply stand firm, head down, focused on doing what needs to be done to keep our society and children as safe as possible, and leave the critics and their agendas for another day.

27-Dec-08: Quiet and not-so-quiet deaths

As Israeli forces take decisive action today against the terrorist regime of Hamas-ruled Gaza, it's worth pausing for a moment to notice a pair of deaths that will go mostly unmarked. This is one small example of what it means to live in a terrorist-controlled area.

"A projectile fired by Palestinians fell short of its target in Israel on Friday, striking a house in northern Gaza and killing two schoolgirls... A rocket apparently fired by Palestinians on Friday killed the two Palestinians aged five and 13, Palestinian medics said. None of Gaza's militant factions claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on the house in Beit Lahiya. Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moiaya Hassanain identified the two victims as 5-year-old Hanin Abu Khoussa and her 12-year-old cousin, Sabah Abu Khoussa. Three other young people were wounded, Hassanain said. Hamas police said they were investigating the cause of the blast in Beit Lahiya village in northern Gaza, which medics said seemed to be due to a rocket aimed at Israel that had misfired. Gaza militants frequently fire rockets at Israel from the same area."

A longer report is here.

The deaths-by-Qassam losses are not limited to innocent Gazan Palestinian Arab children. An Israeli home in the town of Netivot, southern Israel, was struck earlier today by a "grad" missile fired by the Gaza-based terrorists. An Israeli civilian, 58-year-old Beber Vaknin, was killed inside the home, and four other innocents suffered moderate to serious injuries. JPost reports that "over 80 rockets and mortar shells struck areas throughout the western Negev... a rocket hit a house in the community of Mivtahim, seriously wounding one person and lightly wounding another. A Magen David Adom team treated the wounded at the scene."

Israel, as most people know by know, mounted a lightning strike on multiple Hamas installations earlier today, causing colossal damage to property and life, and neutralizing a considerable part of what the terrorist regime is able to do. JTA, quoting Gazan sources, says "most of the dead were affiliated with the security forces, including Gaza City's police chief, although a number of the casualties were civilians. Hamas officials said at least 140 of the dead belonged to the terrorist group's militias."

There is no reason to think the terrorist regime and its powerful and capable backers are surrendering. They know the dark art of terror better than almost anyone anywhere. We can expect turbulent times. The price exacted by terrorism's practitioners is bound to continue to rise, with victims on all sides.

26-Dec-08: If you were a Gazan Palestinian Arab...

If you were a Gazan Palestinian Arab, what would you make of these unfolding events today?

• You're living in a tiny miserable space that your political masters and their friends misleadingly call "the most densely populated place on earth". (In fact, it's nothing of the sort. Tel-Aviv and dozens of other cities have a higher population density, but no matter.) In your tiny, not-quite-state-of-Hamastan, you have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Despite this, the regime that governs you makes blood-curdling threats they have little ability to carry out. Its spokesman Fawzi Barhoum is quoted saying "There is no chance of extending the calm". His colleagues are making sure this turns out to be true.
• In case the Israeli authorities were in any doubt about whether to finally taper off their policy of forebearance and patience under fire, and intervene violently in your life, the Gaza-based terrorists that operate according to Hamas-regime dictates in your cities - meaning right inside your buildings and in your densely-populated living areas, "intensified their attacks, firing at least 25 mortar shells at the South overnight Thursday and early Friday" according to this source. Hamas is leaving very little doubt that it wants a shooting war as soon as possible, and you and your family - among hundreds of thousands of other hostages who live in the very buildings where the massive Hamas terror arsenals are located - are going to be in the direct line of fire. Evidently Hamas wouldn't have it any other way.
  
• The Hamas regime chooses now, this week, to push (according to the London-based Arab newspaper Al Hayat) for the enforced introduction of sharia law: "Courts will be able to condemn offenders to... violent punitive measures [that] include whipping, severing hands, crucifixion and hanging. The bill reserves death sentences to people who negotiate with a foreign government against Palestinian interests and engage in any activity that can hurt Palestinian morale. According to the report, any Palestinian caught drinking or selling wine would suffer 40 lashes at the whipping post if the bill passes. Thieves caught red-handed would lose their right hand." It's been reported that Hamas issued some denials. But this report will probably help you understand - if you need help - that sadly it's true.
• Your devoted cousins, the Egyptians, are concerned that Hamas escalation is going to provoke a full-scale shooting war. So they decided today to reinforce the boundary that runs between them and your Gaza Strip, and to step up security along that boundary. According to this report, "Egyptian security forces are concerned that an IDF operation will lead to an attempt by Gazans to break through the Rafah border crossing." Out of concern for Egypt's interests and against yours, Egypt is redoubling the security that protects its territory - from you.
• Notwithstanding the unprecedented levels of mortar shell and rocket fire from your place into ours, the government of Israel opened its gates this morning (Friday) to allow trucks laden with humanitarian aid into Gaza. (Reminder: Egypt has a border with you too. But the trucks always come into Gaza from our territory, not from theirs.) If there are fresh stocks of supplies in your local Seven-Eleven this afternoon, you can thank Israel. A report decribes the aid: "90 trucks will deliver medicine, fuel, cooking gas and other vital goods into Gaza. The shipment includes a large donation of goods from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's wife as well as more than 400,000 liters of fuel and 200 tons of natural gas."
• Your hated enemy, our government, says via one of its veteran ministers that the humanitarian shipment was meant to be a message to the people of Gaza that they were not Israel's enemy. We don't know how hard it is to read the following lines, but we want you to have this opportunity to read them: "We are sending them a message that the Hamas leadership has turned them into a punching bag for everyone. It is a leadership that has turned school yards in rocket launching pads. This a leadership that does not care that the blood of its people will run in the streets."

Since they're living under a terrorist regime prepared to sacrifice everything it has on the altar of jihad, this is not a time to envy the Gazans, who make a great deal of the fact that this is the government they democratically brought upon themselves. But it is a time for picking sides. You need to figure out which side wants to live in peaceful neighbourliness and which side doesn't even know how to contemplate that idea.

25-Dec-08: Tit for Tat?

With hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians now under active day-and-night missile attack by the Hamas regime's Gazan thugs and their rockets, it's an especially irksome experience to read how this is being portrayed by some of the big-name news agencies.

An AFP report, put out this afternoon to thousands of media channel subscribers around the world, is a depressing example. In the wake of yesterday's massive bombardment of southern Israel from Hamas-ruled Gaza, AFP says "escalating violence has dimmed prospects of a new truce... after a day of tit-for-tat attacks between the Israeli army and Hamas". Read the entire piece carefully and you will get no sense at all that the Gazans did all the rocket firing, and that Israel has been patiently holding back from launching its far-superior weaponry at the terrorists. A person unfortunate enough to be raised exclusively on a diet of Agence France Press reports on the Jihadists-versus-Israel conflict would have not a clue of the degree of Israeli restraint and of Hamas provocation. Tit-for-tat? We call it classic agenda-driven reporting.

The Times of London, in an article this afternoon entitled "Pope appeals for peace in Middle East against backdrop of violence", manages to use the same puerile analogy: "His appeal came against a backdrop of tit-for-tat strikes between Hamas militants in Gaza and Israel after the breakdown of a truce." Their article, at least, did include details of the Hamas missiles raining down on Israeli civilian settlements and quotes an un-named person speaking in the name of the Israeli foreign ministry who says what the overwhelming majority of ordinary Israelis are saying: "The main objective is to reach a durable truce. If that proves impossible, all other options will be examined."

Al Arabiyeh describes yesterday as "a day of tit-for-tat strikes around the Gaza Strip, an impoverished territory of 1.5 million sandwiched between Israel and Egypt." This is a recurring theme: earlier Al Arabiyeh reports have characterized the steady escalation of terrorist actions on Israel's southern border as a "series of tit-for-tat attacks involving Israeli raids against Islamist militants and showers of largely ineffective rockets fired into Israel from Gaza".

That's really the heart of the problem: the deaths of innocents under the hail of rocket-powered explosives, flung into the air daily by Gazan thugs who don't care where they land is nothing more than a minor issue for people like Al-Arabiyeh's reporters and editors. This is true even when those rockets hit Palestinian pilgrims en route to Bethlehem as one of them did today (described here).

Al Arabiyeh, AFP and many media channels like them are so intent on purveying a strong-versus-weak narrative to advance the Palestinian Arab cause that they have crossed a morally-indefensible line, becoming apologists for terrorism and its perpetrators.

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".

23-Dec-08: On truces and hope

As winter sets in, things have been getting uncomfortably hot. Here's a taste of what it can mean to live in the same neighborhood as thuggish barbarians.

Sunday, 15 rockets and mortars were lobbed into Israel from Gaza. Those who do the firing don't give a moment's thought to what they might hit. It matters to them not at all. For them, any target of any sort is legitimate so long as it's located inside Jewish territory: schools, power stations (and especially the Ashkelon power station that feeds electricity into Gaza), buses, shopping centers, car parks, farming villages, old-age homes, kindergartens. They don't deny it.

Sunday's tally: a greenhouse at Moshav Netiv Ha'asara was hit early Sunday morning, shrapnel-wounding one of the workers. A private dwelling in Sderot was almost completely destroyed in a direct hit by a Gazan Qassam - the sole resident, a single woman, was inside and shaken but not seriously hurt. (You can see here in the picture above.) A Qassam rocket landed next to a factory in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. And a Qassam rocket crashed into Ashkelon's southern industrial area.

Monday, in the words of the Christian Science Monitor, "Although the Islamist militants called for a 24-hour halt in attacks on Monday for mediation, the region seems once again to be at the brink of another escalation over Gaza." Reuters reported that "Palestinians in Gaza observed a 24-hour halt to rocket fire against Israel at the request of Egyptian mediators..." and then helpfully explained that it was not exactly a complete halt; in fact (if you skip to the bottom of the long article) "The hold on firing seemed to be observed, with only two rockets and a mortar reported to have been fired on Monday from Gaza, and a rocket and four mortars shot on Sunday night."

You're in the vicinity of Hamas, friends. It's called a truce when "only two rockets and a mortar" are fired into your home - in the Reuters lexicon, at any rate.

Today, Tuesday, 6 Gazan Qassam rockets were fired into Israel. Two crashed into undisclosed parts of the Eshkol region. Two more exploded in the Shaar Hanegev region. One exploded right on the security barrier separating Israel from Gaza. And one was fired into a kibbutz, also in the Shaar Hanegev region just after dark this evening.

Then this evening, three Gazans were detected rigging explosives near the fence the runs between Israel and the Gaza Strip, right next to Netiv Ha'asarah, an agricultural settlement. The Israeli soldiers who spotted them exchanged fire with the well-armed terrorists who managed to hurl a grenade in their general direction before being permanently and irrevokably removed from the conflict by the Israelis.

This being the Middle East, the elimination of three murderous thugs, hiding explosives next to an agricultural community's fence characteristically gets reported this way by AFP: "Israel fires on Gaza militants denting truce hopes". Just like those Israelis to go denting people's hopes all over again.

In Lebanon, by contrast, the Daily Star is running a clear-eyed editorial in tomorrow's edition, headlined "Palestine's own leaders aren't doing its people any good". Extract:

"Fatah and Hamas, are... more concerned about prevailing in their internal power struggle than they are about the welfare of the people they claim to represent. Anyone can operate a militia, chant empty slogans, and compete with other militias to see who can do more damage... Kicking this self-defeating habit is a prerequisite for any meaningful progress on the road to Palestinian liberation. Should the current leaders be unable or unwilling to make the necessary changes, they should give way to a new generation..."

Now that's something worth hoping for.

21-Dec-08: "Confront the depths of evil"

One of this blog's two authors has an op-ed piece on Yediot Aharonot/YNet's website today.

Confront the depths of evil
Despite critics’ advice, media coverage must not downplay horrors of terror
Frimet Roth
Published: 12.21.08, 11:07 / Israel Opinion

"Ignore them dear, and they will stop bothering you."

Haven't we all trotted out that line when our children have come sobbing about school-yard bullies?

But is it sage advice for us – the targets of terror?

Some Israeli pundits seem to think so. Columnist Guy Bechor wrote recently on Ynetnews: "The more the media covers terror attacks, the more we encourage them…we must restrain the coverage, its sensationalism and its horrors."

He was responding to Hamas' 21st anniversary rally. With characteristic sadism, the event included a skit performed by a terrorist pretending to be Gilad Shalit in an IDF uniform. Kneeling on stage before some 300,000 celebrating Gazans he moaned twice in Hebrew: "I miss my Mom and my Dad."

The call for self-censorship was echoed that evening by former Mossad chief, Ephraim Halevi, who accused Israeli television news producers of impropriety by broadcasting the Hamas anniversary performance. He insisted that Israel plays into the hands of its enemies by disseminating such attempts at emotional blackmail. They know how bound every Israeli is not only to his own, but to all Jewish children, especially those in uniform who risk their lives to defend the nation.

Not long ago, the Israeli reporters Ben Caspit and Yigal Ravid expressed related, though far more superficial sentiments. They lamented all the precious media time that was spent on terrorism reportage during the second Intifada. Yet they didn't voice any concern about its impact on terrorists. Presumably, it was just the tiresome repetition of it all - terror attack after terror attack - that irked them.

Bechor maintains that self-censorship was exercised in the 1990s in the wake of suicide bombings. "This neutralized some of the horror and achievements of terror," he asserts.

He provides no sources for this brash claim and it doesn't ring terribly true. For one thing, in the ‘90s, the threat from terrorism was only a distant cousin of the tentacled monster that we now call Islamist Terror. There were simply fewer such attacks then. Media attention or not.

Second, it is a fact of life that terrorism, by its very nature, instills horror, regardless of whether or not that is the terrorists' aim.

Nevertheless, nobody can accuse Israelis of letting that horror paralyze them. On the contrary, we are consistently praised for our determined adherence to normality even under extreme conditions. Bechor's absurd call to "establish an international media convention… to minimize the achievements of Islamic terror…" sounds pointless.

Not only haven't Israelis succumbed to fear, on the contrary, many have grown worryingly apathetic. A sizable portion of the public and its leaders are eager to engage with our most threatening neighbors in unconditional dialogue, to grant them concessions and to refrain from logical military responses to their actions.

Finally, the depraved Hamas performance last week is nothing new. It is reminiscent of earlier theatrics designed at once to "entertain," to emotionally torment and to incite Palestinians to fresh murders. Here is just one example:

In August 2001, a Hamas terrorist massacred 15 Jewish men, women and children in Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant. My fifteen-year old daughter, Malki was among the victims.

In September 2001, Hamas set out to commemorate one year since the start of the Second Intifada. Toward that end, students at al-Najah University in Nablus erected a tent-replica of a Sbarro restaurant. Inside they displayed a grisly re-enactment of the August bombing, including fake body parts and pizza slices strewn on the floor. An Associated Press photograph of Palestinian students walking under the mock Sbarro shop-sign appeared in most international media services. Nobody argued then that the students' hateful handiwork ought to be concealed.

Confronting the depths of Hamas' evil can be painful. And burying your head in the sand can be awfully tempting.

But we are all grown up now. If the terrorism of our neighbors is downplayed, widespread complaisance will set in. How can any government garner support for crucial deterrent and responsive strategies from a tranquilized public?

Journalists and editors, do your job. Report all current events, however heart-wrenching they may be.

...

Frimet Roth is a freelance writer in Jerusalem. She and her husband founded the Malki Foundation in their daughter's memory, which provides support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child.

20-Dec-08: Now we're officially into the post-calm period...

The Palestinian terrorists in Gaza fired two Qassam rockets into Israel's western Negev area last night (Friday). Earlier on Friday, Palestinian gunmen took pot-shots at farmers working the fields of Kibbutz Nir Oz in Israel's Eshkol region. A number of vehicles sustained bullet damage but fortunately no one was injured. As we repeatedly point out, this is never the intention of the terrorist thugs. It's simply the most they are able to manage, and they don't lack for opportunity or freedom to keep trying.

During Saturday, 8 Gazan Qassam rockets struck open areas along Israel's border with Gaza including two that landed near Ashkelon. In addition, a dozen mortar shells were fired by the Gazan terrorists into Israel during the afternoon, landing in Israeli towns and communities around the central and northern parts of the Gaza Strip.

One struck a youth clubhouse at a kibbutz close to the Gaza Strip. Had it been filled with teenagers, the attack might have gotten some news coverage. But it's nothing more than the latest in a multi-thousand-attack list of rockets, mortars, sniper-fire and bomb-plantings perpetrated by the Islamicists of Gaza in their ongoing struggle to kill Jews. (We're open to other ways of looking at this. But be prepared to substantiate any alternative viewpoints.)

Names of towns and specific locations are rarely included in our reports or in the Israeli media as a security measure. Why give the barbarians any help with their targeting?

Israelis are not expecting the steady escalation of Gazan demonization, racist rhetoric, bullets, mortars and rockets to end anytime soon. A pity the process is getting so little media coverage outside our country. How are people going to make sense of the inevitable robust Israeli response if and when it comes?



Above: From this evening's home page at the Haaretz website.

Update: The day's tally of missiles fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza into Israel for Saturday: 13 Qassams, 23 mortars. And it's still only 11:15pm. How much of this was reported where you live?

19-Dec-08: Hints of what to expect post-Tahadiyeh

Keep in mind when looking at the newsagency pictures below that the strictly authoritarian Hamas regime controls the images that go out to the newsagencies, and via these images and the heavy hand it imposes on journalists and photographers controls and spins the propaganda message it considers best for its interests. And today's message is..?

19-Dec-08: Post-Tahadiyeh

This morning, 75 minutes after the Hamas terrorists publicized what they called the "official end" of the half-year tahadiyeh (calm, quiet, truce) with Israel, 3 Qassam rockets were fired from northern Gaza into southern Israel. All 3 landed in the Eshkol and Sha'ar Hanegev regions. YNet says there are no reports of injuries or damage, which is of course not the intention of the terrorists. The Gazans say the launching cell returned to its base unharmed.

18-Dec-08: Neighbourhood thuggery

Tuesday of this week: 11 Qassam rocket attacks on Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza.

24 Qassam rocket attacks on Wednesday.

Now it's Thursday morning: five rockets have already crashed into civilian parts of Israel - the terrorists have clearly gotten a green light to escalate from their jihadist masters in the Hamas regime. And it's not even 9:00 o'clock in the morning.

Reminder: this is not warfare directed at some military presence. The Gazan Palestinian Arabs are concerned to fire their explosives anywhere they can, just so long as it is over their fence into the homes and streets of Israelis. This is why they are correctly called terrorists.

17-Dec-08: Qassam strikes all day

It's Wednesday evening here, and so far today the thuggish terrorists (sorry, militants) operating from Gaza under the protection, leadership and inspiration of the Hamas regime have sent at least 20 Qassam rockets into southern Israel.

Without in any sense being aimed at the target (something the Palestinian Arab terrorists cannot do, and do not do since any strike on anything Israeli fulfills their goals) one of them exploded in the parking lot of a large, crowded shopping center in Sderot. Two people were injured by shrapnel; another suffered ear damage. Medical teams also treated numerous shock victims at the site of the explosion.

YNet says Israeli air force teams located and fired at a ready-for-use rocket launcher in northern Gaza very shortly after the shopping center attack, evidently neutralizing it, but no word about the terrorists who were getting ready to fire it. Both CNN (constitionally incapable of describing the people who fire rockets into supermarket car-parks as terrorists) and BBC, among others, describe the IAF actions as being "in response".

We disagree. It's not "in response" when you spot a criminal thug fresh from carrying out a deliberately life-threatening action getting ready to do the same again. That's called preventing an attack; protecting your life, property and community; taking pre-emptive action against terrorists; or plain self-defence.

17-Dec-08: How exactly is it worse when there's no truce?

Eight Qassam rockets were fired into civilian areas of Israel this morning already, and it's not even 10:00am. The tally yesterday was 11 rockets plus one mortar shell.

16-Dec-08: There's still a truce?

The terrorists of Gaza, not content with massive soviet-style rallies earlier this week (see the picture at right) and highly-public warnings about an imminent end to their "commitment" to a "truce", busied themselves today with steady bombardment. As usual, their target was any part of Israel within reach.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization claimed responsibility for firing four Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel at 8:45 this morning (Tuesday). All four landed in open fields in the Eshkol region, near the Israeli border with Gaza.

Three more rockets (and unconfirmed reports say six) were fired into Israel from Gaza later today. One of them landed next on a school sports field near Sderot where a group of youngsters were playing soccer. One boy, suffering from shock, was evacuated by Magen David Adom ambulance medics for hospitalization.

The IDF later found, bombed and destroyed the rocket launcher near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

Meantime, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak is continuing to call for an extension of a cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza area: "We are not deterred from an operation in Gaza but we are also not rushing into one. Calm will be met by calm. But if there is no choice we will act when and where we see fit."

It's highly likely, given what we know about terrorism in general and the Hamas regime in particular, that no one is listening.

YNet points out that in all of 2007, more than 1,200 rockets and 600 mortar shells were fired into Israel from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. 2008 is not yet over, and the total for this year is close to 2,900 rockets.

14-Dec-08: On it goes

A Qassam rocket exploded Saturday morning in an open area near the southern Israeli town of Sderot (source). Later two mortar shells landed in open spaces in the Negev. A day earlier (Friday morning), two Qassams fired from northern Gaza landed in Israel's western Negev region.

Living under constant bombardment like this must be nearly as unbearable as knowing that practically no-one knows about it or understands your reaction since these stories are too frequent and too 'minor' to be reported by most media channels.

12-Dec-08: CNN's Gaza crisis

Everybody knows that Gaza is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. The news media don't allow us to forget it for a moment.

Whether the focus is on petrol shortages, blackouts or the dearth of Israeli shekels in Gazan banks, as was the case last week, the public is constantly reminded that Israel is "strangling" the innocent Gazans.

But last week, CNN's Ben Wedeman chose to report on the shekel crisis in Gaza from the market-place. Normally a popular site with Middle East correspondents for its photogenicity, it was a poor choice in this context.

Behind Wedeman were stalls overflowing with a cornucopia of attractive and colorful fruit, vegetables and other fresh produce. Close-ups of wads of US dollars being doled out to employees or counted by satisfied owners were featured as well. Wedeman's claims that the Gazan economy was on the verge of collapse and that people were in dire straits wasn't very convincing.

That same day, viewers were shown heart-wrenching images of Zimbabweans in the throes of starvation and a cholera epidemic - a truly horrific humanitarian crisis. So the Gazan footage was just a tad confusing.

Somebody at CNN must have noticed the blunder: unlike most other reports, this one was never aired again and there is no transcript of it or reference to it anywhere on the CNN website.

12-Dec-08: Same old same old

Here we go again. The same boring old reports. So boring that no one, other than a tiny handful of Israeli sources, bothers to publish anything about them.

Two days ago, on Wednesday, a deadly Qassam rocket launched from Gaza landed in an open field near a kibbutz in Israel's Sha'ar Hanegev area. No injuries or damage were reported in the attack, which occurred as the area's children were making their way to local schools and kindergartens.

It's continuing this morning (Friday). A rocket was fired by Gazan terrorists, landing in Israel a few hours ago near a kibbutz in the south of the country. Another rocket from the same source crashed into a location near the security fence separating Israel from the Hamas-controlled enclave.

Earlier this week, Yediot Aharonot (an Israeli daily paper) calculated that 215 rockets - and possibly more than that number - have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel since November 4.

Israel's response so far? There are two.

AFP says: "In a goodwill gesture to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose effective control extends only to the West Bank, an Israeli cabinet committee gave its approval to a list of 230 Palestinian prisoners to be freed this week."

And yesterday trucks carrying 100 million shekels ($25 million) were allowed into the Hamas-run Gaza Strip "to ease a shortage of banknotes in the Israeli-blockaded territory, Palestinian bank officials said... Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak approved the transfer of the 100 million shekels following a request from Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer. The Israeli central bank said in a statement it did not want to be responsible for the possible collapse of the Palestinian banking system. Barak had also come under pressure from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and Middle East envoy Tony Blair to transfer the money. Western officials said the cash was needed to protect Abbas's standing in the Gaza Strip, which Hamas Islamists seized in June 2007 after routing secular Fatah forces loyal to the Western-backed president."

Protect Abbas's standing, they write? So how about this: Most Palestinians believe Mahmoud Abbas's term as prime minister should end right now. A poll released yesterday (Thursday) by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows 64 percent believe he should leave office and go home.

And as for the overall benefits of trucking Israeli currency into a neighbourhood controlled by terrorist thug gangs, Haaretz quotes senior Palestinian Arabs officials including PA Prime Minister Fayyad saying "in private conversations" that "there is no way to check whether the entire sum really reached the employees for whom it was earmarked. Some of the banks' branch managers and tellers cooperate with Hamas" and the Israeli cash can easily (read: certainly was) snatched by Hamas.

So just to summarize:

• Most consumers of news around the world do not even know (since the reports do not get published) that Israel continues to be under steady bombardment from terrorists operating with the active support of the government of their region (Hamas).
  
• These attacks are exclusively directed at civilians. Terrorism, by any definition.
• Israeli losses are not heavier than they already are only because of the incompetence of the terrorists. In any event, the terrorists do not aim at specific targets since any target inside Israel meets their needs.
• Israel for its part continues to make gestures of conciliation, this time allowing Israeli banknotes to be trucked in to Gaza's banks. Financial corruption being endemic and endless in their world, and Israeli being principal victims of its effects, this gesture is puzzling in the extreme.
  
• Israel continues to provide a deeply unpopular lame-duck political hack (Mahmoud Abbas, the Holocaust-denying head of the Palestinian Authority) with unparalleled support through shortening the prison sentences of, and releasing, convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists. His voters, for their part, tell him he needs to quit now.

As we said: same old same old, all over again.