2-Dec-12: As arch terrorist prepares to visit vipers' nest, reporters see major changes in his basic principles. Or do they?

Screen capture from CNN

One of the world's most prominent terrorists, Khaled Mashaal, since 2004 the "main leader" of the Hamas terror organization and the head of its political bureau since 1996, is going to make his first-ever visit [source: Washington Post] to the Gaza Strip this week.

WaPo is calling this "a sign of increasing boldness" after Hamas "held its own against an Israeli military offensive" and will be his chance to "congratulate its leaders and fighters for battling Israel" according to a senior - but "careful" - Hamas official in Gaza who "spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concern".

It's a propitious time to take a look at some of the open silliness that routinely affects media "experts" when they deal with the practitioners of child-murder.

Mashaal recently enjoyed a well-publicized on-air interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour in which she reflected the spirit of honest journalistic enquiry as she asked him: "Is it useful to kill civilians?":

"Let me give you the truth... We don't target the civilians... The resistance does not target the civilians... We are ready to accept a purely peaceful way, as long as we obtain our demands... Our people is the victim... The offer must come from the attacker [Israel]..." 

Noting that Ms Amanpour - like most on-camera reporters - evidently lacks the background information to demolish his absurd response, he presses on:

"I accept a Palestinian state according to 1967 borders with Jerusalem as the capital, with the right to return [meaning the entry of millions of Palestinian Arabs into Israel]..."

Somehow, the terrorist has been understood as implying that Hamas - whose declared, uncompromising, principal goal is to destroy Israel - has abandoned its ideology and is ready to accept something more moderate.

Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh understands Mashaal better than most Westerners, and has no qualms about stating clearly what is happening. Even while Mashaal was on CNN, his Gaza-based Hamas colleagues were talking - in the Arabic language - about continuing the fight against Israel until the "liberation of all our lands, from the sea to the river."

Writing for the Gatestone Institute think-tank on Friday ["How Hamas Is Trying to Fool Everyone"], Abu Toameh re-states the one essential principle that outsiders keep avoiding and/or denying:

"Is Hamas really on its way to moderation and pragmatism, as some Western political analysts and diplomats have come to believe? And what do some Hamas leaders mean when they say that they are ready to accept a Palestinian state "only" in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem? ...Mashaal's remark is nothing but an attempt to mislead the international community into believing that Hamas has endorsed the two-state solution and is willing to live in peace alongside Israel... Hamas has not changed or relinquished its dream of replacing Israel with an Islamist state that is funded and armed by Iran. Unless Hamas changes its charter, the talk about changes in its strategy only serves to spread the movement's campaign of deception."

He goes on to point out that the one true construction of Mashaal's statement is the opposite of what is being spun out of his words: Hamas knows it cannot achieve its goal of destroying Israel for now and will therefore take whatever land it can get from the Israelis... and then continue the fight to "liberate" "Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea".

In fact Mashaal said just that to Christiane Amanpour:

"Palestine, from the river to the sea, from the north to the south, it is my land. And the land of my fathers and grandfathers, inhabited by the Palestinians from a long time ago... but because of the circumstances of the region, because of the keenness to stop the bloodshed, the Palestinians today, and Hamas, have agreed on a program that accepts the 1967 borders."

Mashaal is not alone in putting things this way: first they take the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem. Then they use these as a launching pad in the process of eliminating Israel. Mission accomplished.

Abu Toameh again:

"Hamas is engaged in a subtle campaign to win the sympathy of the international community by appearing as if it is ready to abandon its dream of destroying Israel. Mashaal's remarks should be seen in the context of a new Hamas tactic aimed at turning the radical Islamist movement into a legitimate and recognized player in the international and regional arenas. Those who have been misled into believing Hamas's lies should be referred to the movement's charter, where it is clearly stated that "The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it…"

They know this. But they continue to ignore it. Why spoil a neat and compelling narrative by introducing facts?

30-Nov-12: With attention focused on the UN, the terrorists of Gaza show again how true they remain to core values

From the website of the BBC

It's a sunny and pleasant Friday here in Jerusalem. But in the south of Israel, it has been considerably less pleasant.

Perhaps intending to show just how broadly the Palestinian Arabs view their own national aspirations and how very flexible their leadership, their terrorist rocket-men fired a missile into Israel's Sha'ar Hanegev region around midnight this past night (between Thursday and Friday) and then again around 6:25 this morning. Yes, there is a ceasefire, but such matters are not always taken as seriously on the ground as they are in the air (the airwaves, that is).

In the words of the BBC, today was the day when

The UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to recognise Palestine as a non-member observer state - a move strongly opposed by Israel and the US. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said this was the "last chance to save the two-state solution" with Israel. Israel's UN envoy said the bid pushed the peace process "backwards", while the US said the move was "unfortunate". The Palestinians can now take part in UN debates and potentially join bodies like the International Criminal Court. The assembly voted 138-9 in favour, with 41 nations abstaining. Hundreds of Palestinians celebrated on the streets of Ramallah, in the West Bank after the result was announced.

Other voices, as well as other activities - witness the rocket-men's unsuccessful efforts to yet again try to kill them some Israelis this morning - are part of today's events. Times of Israel covered a different aspect of the voices from Ramallah that somehow are not being so well observed from outside this area:

A young university graduate roaming the empty square with a camera around his neck, his hair spiked up with gel, claimed he was not excited about the UN bid. ‘It’s all nonsense,’ said Khaled, a 29-year-old unemployed journalist who told The Times of Israel he would not be celebrating at night. ‘It’ll be like the Vatican. Have you ever heard of the Vatican doing anything?’ “We don’t want 67,” he said before running off with a group of friends, referring to the territories captured by Israel in the Six-Day War. “We want all of Palestine.”

There is no shortage of observers who see the events in New York, and perhaps also in Ramallah, as a step closer to peace. From our vantage point, we wonder what they're smoking.

APOLOGY: Sorry for the relative quiet during these recent turbulent days. We have been unable to update our blog for personal reasons, but hope to get back into the swing in the next 36 hours.

22-Nov-12: When the images of war are manipulated to favor one side, how complicit does this make the media in the death and destruction this time... and next?

Again and again, we encountered dishonest, distorted and manipulated news reporting in the fighting between Israel and the Hamas terrorist forces of Gaza in the past two weeks. We're enraged. But Shraga Simmons, an experienced observer and analyst of this kind of malicious, unprofessional media behaviour, has gone beyond anger, coolly pulling together several egregious examples in this brief online video so that its implications can be considered, and perhaps understood, by a larger audience.

They don't explain the war. They don't justify one side over the other. But they illustrate the active participation - knowing or unwitting - of some of the world's most influential news media in engineering a public opinion response by means of fraud.

21-Nov-12 UPDATED: The buses are exploding once again

Hamas has already demanded 'credit' for today's attempted mass murder
of bus passengers in central Tel Aviv

A public bus plying one of the central Tel Aviv routes became the scene for the latest escalation of the jihadist war of terror being waged against Israel's civilians. Around noon Wednesday, the bus was blown up, causing 21 people on board to suffer injuries, three of them "seriously" which can cover a broad spectrum of outcomes. We're awaiting further details. [UPDATE Friday November 23, 2012 1:15 am update from Times of Israel on an arrest and confession here.]

Times of Israel is reporting that a man was seen placing a bag on the bus and then fleeing. He was chased by police through the streets of Tel Aviv, and apprehended. We have heard that a second suspect was also caught, though we still await confirmation.

The people, making the necessary connection between this form of direct terrorism and the larger, ongoing terrorism executed by the rocketeers of Gaza, reiterated what Israelis know but of which they need to be reminded again and again: everyone on Israel's streets needs to be alert, and anything suspicious should be reported to the police without hesitation.

It's not too early for the terrorist groups to begin their claims of 'credit'. Hamas has announced in the last hour [source] that this was one of its projects (whether or not this is factually true). Celebratory gunfire is already reported [source] in the Gaza Strip this afternoon.

The cowardice of the relatively few beasts who place bombs on buses is matched and trumped by the vile hatred emanating from the much larger number of man-in-the-street supporters for whom the killing of commuters is a victory - provided those passengers are Jews.

For those who thought we have freed ourselves from the rule of the swamp and the darkest parts of the jungle, a reminder that our defensive war of life and death against the forces of hatred, racism and the religiously inspired maiming of innocents is not only not over but once again reaching for new and greater depths.

19-Nov-12: Excuse us while we go offline briefly

Back Thursday.

18-Nov-12: Years of untold self-inflicted harm: what Hamas does to its own people

Ashdod apartment building hit by Gazan rocket on Saturday [Image Source: AFP]

The Israel Defence Forces Spokesperson's Office has just quantified this evening what anyone (us included) who has been following the endless firing of rockets by terrorist thugs in Gaza these last seven years already knows: the terrorists keep misfiring a significant number of their rockets. These then crash onto the heads and houses of the Gazans. 

The IDF which tracks these things says [see its Twitter page] no fewer than 99 such explosive devices have 'fallen short' in the last four days.

Does anyone imagine these then evaporate into thin air? Because they never ever get reported in the news media, does this mean they don't occur? That such self-inflicted injuries don't happen? Of course it does not mean those things. We know what happens when they explode on landing. We have been watching those explosions for years. We have been absorbing those explosions at an extraordinary rate these past five days - all over Israel.

The IDF's Twitter page is under assault now from people who claim it's all so, so, so untrue. We feel for them. No one explained to them before how the tragic indifference of the Hamas rocketeers has exacted a price in human lives from their own communities for years. Our post of earlier today ["18-Nov-12: Fell short? Not just the Hamas rockets but the ethics of the journalists covering them"] has some additional background, going back five years.

Netivot, Southern Israel, November 12, 2012 [Image Source]

Their rockets do this to our homes at a distance of tens of kilometers. Imagine the harm that is done when they explode just a handful of kilometers from the firing site, on the heads and homes of their own people [Image Source: Channel 2 News screen-shot, today in Ashdod]

18-Nov-12: The Tzeva Adom sirens - this morning's status

This morning in the Tel Aviv area; the specific location we leave to readers to identify. Snapshot taken by a first responder. [Image Source]

From published sources, these are the times and places where incoming rocket warnings ("Tzeva Adom") were reported this morning (Sunday) - so far:

07:15 am Sha'ar Hanegev
07:45 am Sha'ar Hanegev
08:15 am Ashkelon (including direct hit on a residence)
08:35 am Haaretz says two people were injured by shrapnel after a Gazan rocket hit a building in Ashkelon. In addition, five people were treated for shock
09:00 am Ashkelon and Hof Ashkelon region
09:20 am Sdot Negev and Sha'ar Hanegev
09:30 am Sdot Negev and Sha'ar Hanegev
09:40 am Ashdod and Hevel Yavne region
10:00 am Eshkol region
10:05 am Ashdod
10:30 am Ashdod and Hevel Yavne region
10:30 am Ashkelon
10:30 am Hof Ashkelon region
10:30 am Tel Aviv, Givatayim and Ramat Gan. Haaretz reports that there were two rockets, and at least one was intercepted by the Iron Dome missile system. A car was set alight by an incoming rocket (photo above), but apart from the property damage, no one was injured.
10:35 am Rishon Lezion, Gan Raveh region
10:30 am Ashkelon and Hof Ashkelon region
10:40 am Ashkelon, Ashdod and Hof Ashkelon region. Haaretz says a rocket struck a residence in Ashkelon, causing severe damage to building; no immediate word of injuries
11:00 am Ashdod, Bnei Ayish region, and Hevel Yavne region
11:10 am Ashkelon and Hof Ashkelon region
11:15 am Sderot
11:25 am Sdot Negev and Sha'ar Hanegev regions. Haaretz says an Israeli was seriously injured by a rocket that crashed into the Sha'ar Hanegev region
12:00 am Hof Ashkelon region
12:15 am Ashdod and Hevel Yavne region
12:40 am Ofakim, Sdot Negev region, Merhavim region, Eshkol region, Bnei Shimon region and Sderot

18-Nov-12: When war journalists are injured, there are at least two different explanations

The lobby of the luxurious Alderia Hotel in Gaza City from where
brand-name reporters representing the Guardian, the New York Times
and others, are based at this moment [Image Source: Aldeira hotel website]

Foreign journalists have been injured in Gaza during the current fighting there. One view, widely propagated, is this is what the Israeli side wants. Another view is this is the natural consequence of Hamas placing its weapons systems, and especially Israel-facing rockets, deep inside residential neighbourhoods, mosques, hospitals, apartment buildings, office buildings and so on.

On the other hand, all sides evidently share the view that the luxurious Aldeira hotel (not everyone seems to know such places exist in Gaza) where the foreign journalists are based is safe ground. So how clear is it that Israel is out to get them? And how deep is the trust that foreign journalists evidently have in the accuracy and reliability of IDF targeting? Evidently quite deep.

AFP knows about the injuries. It just doesn't know why the reporters got hurt.

Israel bombards Gaza Strip: media building hit in air strike   

[Source: AFP] November 18, 2012 - 4:53PM
Fresh Israeli air strikes on Sunday hit a Gaza City media centre and homes in northern Gaza as the death toll mounted, despite suggestions from Morsi about the ceasefire. "At least six journalists were wounded, with minor and moderate injuries, when Israeli warplanes hit the al-Quds TV office in the Showa and Housari building in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City," Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP.

AP talks to the reporters inside the damaged Gazan buildings. It accepts without question - perhaps out of professional courtesy - their view that this is a deliberate effort by Israel to distort the news.

Israel attacks Hamas media operations in Gaza   

[Source: AP]
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli military widened its range of targets in the Gaza Strip on Sunday to include the media operations of the Palestinian territory’s Hamas rulers, sending its aircraft to attack two buildings used by both Hamas and foreign media outlets... Bassem Madhoun, an employee of Dubai TV, said two missiles hit the 15th floor of the building where Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV studio is located. Rescue workers evacuated several people who had been wounded. Building windows were blown out and glass shards and debris were scattered on the street below. Some of the journalists who had been inside the building at the time were taking cover in the entrance hallway. Mohammed Shrafi, a Palestinian cameraman, said he was in the street filming when he was hit by shrapnel coming down from the building. Asked why Israel was targeting media centers, he replied, “they want to keep us from telling the truth.”

The Daily Mail  one of the farthest-reaching voices on the web, lets us hear how Hamas operate, but unfortunately draws no inference from this first-person testimony.

Hunted by drones, dodging rockets and tank shells: An ordinary family's nightmare trapped inside Gaza's dead zone     

[Source: Daily Mail UK] PUBLISHED:01:12 GMT, 18 November 2012| UPDATED: 01:12 GMT, 18 November 2012
Ahmed Abu Hamda is a 42-year-old radio producer in beleaguered Gaza City, where he lives with his wife Suha and sons Mostafa, three, and Mohammad, two. Here he tells how life there has become a nightmare for him and his family.
"Since Wednesday, they have moved eastwards into the heart of Gaza City. The first indication that the fighters have taken up position near your house is the whoosh of a rocket as it roars past your window, often followed just seconds later by the ground-shaking impact of an Israeli counter-strike. Even if you manage to stay away from the obvious targets – the Hamas security compounds, weapons stores, arms manufacturing workshops and rocket-launchers – the violence can follow you."

The New York Times' Jody Rudoren, evidently in Gaza against her will, knows about the roar of explosives close by, but not about the Hamas rocket emplacements in the neighbourhood.

Jody Rudoren's Facebook Page

[Source] Worst night yet in terms of being awoken by shelling. Three separate times, some seeming quite close -- not in the sense that I'm worried about the hotel being hit, just in terms of level of noise, etc. One assault apparently was on a building where local journalists work. There have also been reports that Hamas is not allowing foreign journalists to leave; several colleagues are planning to try to cross this morning, so I'll let you know. Not an issue for me: my editors aren't letting me leave!

She also filed this report for today's New York Times

Israel Bombs Government and Media Sites in Wider Attack

[Source: New York Times]
Among the buildings Israel hit overnight were two containing the offices of local media outlets. A statement from the Israeli Defense Forces initially described one of its targets as “a communications facility used by Hamas to carry out terror activity against the state of Israel.” Within minutes, the I.D.F. recalled that statement and replaced it with one referring to “a communications antenna.”
Salama Marouf of the Hamas media office issued a statement condemning what he called an “immoral massacre against the media” and calling the attack a “confession” by Israel “that it has lost the media battle.” Six journalists were injured in the first attack, around 2:30 a.m., in the Shawa and Hossari Building in downtown Gaza City, which houses two local radio stations -- one run by the militant Islamic Jihad -- and the offices of the Ma’an Palestinian news agency as well as the German broadcaster ARD. One of the journalists injured on Sunday, Khader Zahar of the Beirut-based Al Quds satellite channel, lost a leg in the explosion, which hit its 11th-floor studio.
At 7 a.m., a missile dropped from an Apache helicopter hit the top of the 15-story Al Shoruq Building, also downtown, witnesses said. The target was the Hamas channel that broadcasts locally, Al Aqsa, but the building also contains offices of the Al Arabiya television network and the Middle East Broadcast Center which runs it, as well as the live studio position of the Iranian television station, and two production companies -- Gaza Media Center  and Mayadeen -- that provide services for Fox News, Sky News, CBS and Al Jazeera.
Nobody was injured in that attack. Witnesses said that everyone in the building fled after a warning missile was fired in the stairwell, two minutes before the attack on the roof.

It's disappointing that the "Beirut-based Al Quds satellite channel" gets mentioned in Jody's piece, but without pointing out who its owners and operators are: the terrorists of Hamas. Al Quds TV is quite notorious for children's educational programming that idealizes and glorifies suicide and murder... for children. A notable example of Al Quds' odious culture is the 2009 masterpiece "All Palestinians Suckle the Use of the Gun with Their Mother's Milk".

In the interests of context and professional background, we wish all the reporters now risking their lives in Gaza were made to watch the now legendary 2009 video clip [here] of Al-Arabiya correspondent Hanan Al-Masri [background here]. She hears an explosion, and is startled because she fears the Israelis are attacking. Then, not realizing she is being recorded, she uses her cell phone to check in with the local authorities who tell her it's a GRAD rocket, freshly launched on its path to anything Israeli. And it was fired from the basement of the Gazan building that houses her company's studio - the building from which she was reporting. Haaretz immortalized the moment in "Gaza reporter caught on tape confirming Hamas fired rockets near TV offices".

But that was way back in 2009 and now forgotten.

18-Nov-12: Fell short? Not just the Hamas rockets but the ethics of the journalists covering them

Israelis take cover in a pipe used as a bomb shelter, after a rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, November 15 in Kiryat Malachi, Israel [Image Source: CNN]

Wars are complicated and messy. So, sometimes, we form our views about them, and about the parties fighting them, from simpler things. Things like photographs.

On Friday, the Egyptian prime minister came visiting Gaza. He was not there long - an hour or two. Long enough for the insiders of the Hamas regime to arrange (engineer?) some photo opportunities, one of which ignited a firestorm of sympathy, attention and invective against the Israeli actions in this war, and literally, physically brought the Moslem Brotherhood politician to tears [see "Stop the carnage: Egypt PM weeps for Palestinian boy killed in airstrike and calls for truce"]. You can see the photo of the dead child in many places on the web. It's a tragic image, and one we prefer not to place on this page because it's a child there that is dead, and there ought to be a limit to how much an image like that gets exploited. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

CNN published a video clip yesterday (Saturday) featuring the child and the tragic back-story. It's here.

Small boy caught in Mideast crossfire          
CNN | Added on November 16, 2012
CNN's Sara Sidner reports from Gaza on how a small child became a symbol of civilian casualties.

The experts at CNN have it right; the child's death is a symbol, but of something else: the malevolence of the terrorists who routinely use deaths on their own side to advance their political and theological campaign. Watch the video and see the articles that envelope the photo that has been published in dozens of places. You are left in no doubt that this horrible thing (it certainly is horrible) was Israel's doing, and that Israel seeks the deaths of Gazan children.

But is it?

In reality, as we pointed out last night, the rate at which terrorist rockets that are intended to hit Israeli civilian targets drop short and fall on top of Palestinian Arabs is incredibly high.

Even more incredible is the way the mainstream news media, surely aware of the facts, deem it unworthy of being reported. We commented on this earlier today ["18-Nov-12: Contemplating rockets"] and in the past

• 5-Nov-12: Incoming missile alert at 11:30 this morning
• 14-Oct-12: Early Sunday evening missile attacks
• 8-Sep-12: Familiar routine: rocket and mortar attacks during Sabbath
• 5-Jul-12: The terrorists of Gaza routinely mis-fire, dropping rockets on their Arab neighbors's heads. When do you hear about those self-inflicted injuries?
• 22-Jun-12: Killing little children, then turning them into martyrs and blaming it on other people
• 2-May-12: Terrorists' rocket falls short, crashes near security fence
• 7-Aug-07: What disaster have these thugs wrought on their people

and numerous other times. Someone needs to note these things.

When those terrorist rockets fall short, as they do day after day, landing on the heads and rooves of ordinary Palestinian Arab Gazans, people suffer and are sometimes killed. But no one pays attention because it does not fit the conventional Israelis-are-strong-and-evil-while-Palestinians-are-weak-and-no-alternative narrative.

Now comes the estimable Elder of Ziyon and does what the mainstream media would have done if they had cared to look behind the conventional narrative. He joins the dots: "Dead child cradled by Egypt's PM was killed by Hamas!" No need for us to re-state his analysis since you can read it. It leads to the conclusion that the lifeless Gazan child, Mahmoud Sadalha, whose body was presented to the Egyptian prime minister as if it were the key to the city was almost certainly killed by one of those 'fell short' Palestinian Arab rockets.

The record shows that the people who put together the mainstream news find it embarrassing to be corrected in this way. Not surprising then that they don't make great efforts to draw attention to what they have done.

We - who one way and another pay the price for the demonization and hatred that follows from such manufactured lies - must.

18-Nov-12: Contemplating rockets

Rockets in Gaza City: Iran's government controlled news media carried this picture on November 14, 2012 prior to the Israeli attack on Gaza in a news report praising what it calls 'Palestinian resistance fighters"

The EU-funded GANSO website continues, as it has for a long time, to refer to those deadly Gazan missiles as HMRs. This peculiar choice of acronym evidently stands for "home made rockets" even though it's likely some proportion of them are actually imported to the Gaza Strip from Iran. 

Whatever the real motivation of the GANSO people when they call them HMRs, these things are very different from home-made cookies and home-made soup. 

Consider what the reaction would be if the Israeli side took the Brussels-funded 'activists' and their terminology and motivations at face value. Meaning if these deadly missiles really are home-made, and if GANSO's statistics are right and they're fired into Israel by the hundreds, perhaps the right response to the home-made weapons is to focus the IDF's massive fire power on the homes that make them. 

Imagine the devastation if that were Israel's strategy. Plainly it's not, as the relatively small number of casualties so far attests. 

We have commented here several times about the revelations that appear almost daily in the GANSO bulletins about rockets that are fired by the Gazans and fall short. In simple terms, these are rockets that fail to cross the border and end up crashing onto the heads and homes of the Palestinian Arabs who live in the areas adjacent to the border. Some have been killed, many have been injured, and it's all self-inflicted. This has been happening since the Gazan rocket campaign against Israeli civilians began in 2005.

Now here's the interesting thing. 

Though the numbers of rockets being flung (it's the right word) at Israelis by the terrorist gangs of Gaza has risen exponentially since Wednesday, the GANSO bulletins don't seem to have noted even a single "fall short" since then. Suddenly, all the missiles are successfully getting over the border and hitting their Israeli targets.

That's very likely nonsense. If the Gazans have one fall-short for every 3, 4, 8 or 9 (and there is some fresh indication, but whatever the actual number is) of the rockets they fire at Israel, then there must have been many dozens such fall-shorts in the past four days: dozens of rockets falling onto the homes and heads of Palestinian Arab subjects of the jihadist Hamas regime. 

Keep the thought in mind when casualty figures for dead and injured Palestinians are next published. 

Also bear in mind the proven history of cruel contempt that the Hamas elite have demonstrated over the years for their brothers and sisters. This video, not new but timely and still accurate, conveys some of that.

The Christian Science Monitor reminds us of how different the Hamas rocket strategy is from Israel's:

Israel insists its targeting is precise and focused on militants. Hamas makes no such claim, and, in fact, can't; the rockets fired from Gaza are the very definition of indiscriminate, hugely imprecise and more likely to kill civilians than anyone else.

We offer some strategic insights now into those Gazan Palestinian Arab rockets, drawn from a fresh Stratfor Global Intelligence analysis report:

• Gaza may be manufacturing long-range rockets locally. If this is the case, a significant ground force offers the Israelis the best chance of finding and neutralizing the factories making these weapons. The Israeli Cabinet on November 16 approved Defense Minister Ehud Barak's request to call up 75,000 reservists, significantly more than during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. 
• The Israeli army meanwhile is strengthening its presence on the borders with Gaza. Primary roads leading to Gaza and running parallel to Sinai have been declared closed military zones. 
• Tanks, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery and troops continue to stream to the border, and many units already appear to be in position.
• The Israeli air force remained active throughout the night of Nov. 16-17, striking at targets across the Gaza Strip including key Hamas ministries, police stations and tunnels near the border crossing with Egypt. 
• The IAF reportedly carried out strikes in Rafah's al-Sulan and al-Zahour neighborhoods, as well as east of the al-Maghazi refugee camp. According to IDF reports, the air force carried out a rapid and coordinated military strike, targeting approximately 70 underground medium-range rocket-launching sites in the less than an hour. The IDF claims direct hits were confirmed. 
• The IAF will increasingly target Hamas militant defenses ahead of any ground invasion. Already the IAF has bombed militant defensive positions, particularly in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
• Startfor's figures show that Gazan rockets launched AT Israel on Saturday were about 80. About 57 actually landed in Israel. It quotes the IDF saying 640 rockets were launched against us since November 14, with 410 actually landing. Those that did not are (we presume - Stratfor does not say this) either intercepted in mid-air or - as we noted above - fell short. 
• It quotes an IDF statement that Iron Dome interceptors have so far successfully stopped 90 percent of the rockets "though this may be an exaggeration". Or not.

On the subject of made-in-Gaza rockets versus the imported kind, Stratfor explains why this will affect Israel's decision to execute a land-based attack, which so far has not happened:

"Beyond rocket launch sites and caches, which Israel is currently targeting with its airstrikes, it would need to target production sites and those who would be responsible for manufacturing the rockets. Furthermore, it will be significantly harder for Israeli intelligence to form an accurate picture of the number of these rockets locally constructed in Gaza... Israeli intelligence likely did not anticipate how many long-range rockets had escaped its first wave of strikes, and the fact that Hamas may have been producing these weapons could explain Israel's lack of complete information. Hamas recognizes that these long-range rocket attacks have only increased the likelihood and intensity of an Israeli ground incursion. A significant ground force offers the Israelis the best chance of finding and neutralizing the factories making these long-range rockets as well as the shorter-range Qassams. Hamas and the other militants therefore are actively preparing their defenses for the anticipated incursion and are likely laying improvised explosive devices, setting up road blocks and defensive emplacements and sorting out their ranks and tasks."

On Saturday afternoon, the propaganda apparatus of Hamas put out a Twitter tweet that reflects both its leadership's malevolently messianic mindset and its undiminished appetite for inventing realities for consumption by (we assume) its fans:

"Al Qassam's operation #ShaleStones is going well in achieving historic goals, Liberation of occupied #Palestine started...we are coming #IDF

We have reason to believe the IDF leadership will be waiting and watching.

18-Nov-12: Mesmerizing YouTube video captures the surreal nature of being under massive terrorist rocket attack

We invite you to view a slice of ordinary/extraordinary life in Israel in this video.

Be'er Sheva is an ancient/modern desert city that most people visit, if they ever go there, because of its first-rate university (Ben Gurion) and its hospital, one of the busiest in Israel. But like many forgotten places in various parts of the world, it's also home for a certain number of people, nearly 200,000 of them.

Now that Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and practically every other Israeli community in the southern half of Israel have experienced the blood-chilling sound of air-raid sirens in the past three days (and in some places, many repeats of the experience), it may be interesting for people living far from here to see and hear what it feels like from the ground.

We don't know the exact number, but the residents of Be'er Sheva have experienced dozens of incoming missile warnings since Wednesday night. The one captured in this video involves multiple rockets flying in from Gaza. Through the magic of videography, they appear here as floating fairy lights in an ink-black sea of heavens above the ground-level festivities of an ordinary shopping center.

Then one after another in rapid succession they are extinguished. The reality of what is happening is much less poetic, but astonishing when you pause to think about it: an anti-missile technology that did not exist anywhere in the world is now knocking these terrorist flying bombs out of the sky as the ordinary folk who are the actual targets of an attempt to kill them in quantities watch from below and quietly applaud.

It's larger than life. But it's life. Our life, for now.

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

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

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

EU’s Ashton Blames Hamas for Israeli Raids on Gaza

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

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

Hamas Detains Foreign Journalists in the Gaza Strip

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

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

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

Israel texts Palestinians in Gaza

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

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

17-Nov-12: Saturday night update

Sabbath in Ashdod [Image Source: Times of Israel]

We were off-line for the 25 hours of the Sabbath, plus some time before it to get ready, some time after it to clean up and re-organize for the week. But as much as any self-respecting Jewish Sabbath-observer wants to establish a firm disconnect between the life of the workaday week and the special atmosphere of the Holy Sabbath, a war that's going on around you makes that a special challenge.

A handful of vignettes from our Jerusalem vantage point:

• Like practically everyone, we try to stay in touch with family members. That ordinary, human need to be in contact with loved ones doesn't go away when there's electric tension in the air; quite the opposite. We were Skyping with a close family member living in the south - meaning (in these days of medium-range rockets that can be operated by even the dopiest of terrorist thugs) south of Tel-Aviv - in the last few minutes. As has happened far too many times recently, he had to run from his computer and rush his family to shelter in mid-sentence. To say that people are on edge is understating it.
• There have been contradictory indications of what we can expect from the Hamas side during these evening hours. On one hand, IDF head of Southern Command Tal Rousso addressed a press conference tonight; we heard it in the car while driving our children to their home tonight. Rousso  was upbeat, speaking in terms of the IDF's successes in destroying a large proportion of Hamas’s weapons and rocket. Haaretz quotes him tonight declaring that "We devastated their long range weapons arsenal, but there is still a lot of work left." The but is well understood by everyone here.
• TOI's useful ongoing timeline speculated on the fact the rocket fire from Gaza had reduced "a trickle" since nightfall, a possible sign, it wrote, "that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are beginning to feel the effect of IDF strikes. The army has hit some 950 targets in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the operation, including symbols of Hamas power, such as the prime minister’s office, in the last day. They have also taken out a number of rocket launchers and missile arsenals."
• On the other hand, a swathe of major southern communities including Ashdod, Ashkelon, the Yavne region and the Yoav region were all subject to rocket attack warnings at about the time we sat down to write this post some minutes ago. Fortunately no fewer than four GRAD missiles (according to TOI's report) were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system on their way to Ashdod in that evening attack. Achievements like this, impressive as they certainly are, are no antidote to the horror of being on the ground, bathed in the wail of sirens, waiting for the boom.  
• As of about 8 tonight, the count of rockets fired at Israel from Gaza was on the order of 150 (again, that comes from TOI). Four of them made direct hits on people's homes, and ten people were injured in those attacks. The Israeli death toll stands at three, with dozens injured. On the Palestinian Arab side, their reports say 40 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, including 17 civilians, and hundreds more injured. 
• Israel's Galei Zahal, the army radio station, reported on tonight's 8:00 pm news that there are 43 dead on the Gazan side. Relate that back to the hundreds of sorties Israel's aircraft have flown since Wednesday night and it points to a very high degree of care to destroy things while avoiding hurting people. We're fully aware that it's a conclusion the enemy will reject or ignore. But anyone who cares to look closely at the way the IDF instructs its soldiers knows that there is no army anywhere taking greater care to avoid civilian casualties than the IDF. (A bunch of online videos [here] illustrates the point.) 
• This will probably be ignored too but it shouldn't. Despite the thuggery to which Israel is subject at the hands of the terrorists, the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza is going to be opened tomorrow (Sunday) morning so that food and medical supplies can be transferred to the waiting arms of Hamas. Times of Israel reports that the arrangements for opening the crossing were made by the IDF in coordination with the Palestinian Authority (which represents its rival/enemy Hamas in such matters) and international mediators. Yet another reason why people call this an asymmetric war: our side against the thugs.
• We're still shaking from our own experiences of the past day. Friday evening, just as we were at the door to walk to synagogue for evening prayers, Jerusalem came under rocket attack. The city - at least the part where we live - was silent in the pleasant, peaceful way it usually is as the Sabbath descends and work activity ends. But a few minutes after the candles were lit, the hills around us echoed with the blood-curdling sound of the air-raid warning siren - from the same physical device that had just sounded to broadcast the start of Shabbat, but playing a very different sequence of notes, the rising and falling of the siren's wail. We now know, though we did not at the time, that a number of M-75s or Fajr-5 missiles (both are mentioned in today's reports, maybe two of them, maybe three or more) crashed to earth south of Jerusalem. TOI says the explosive landings were in the Gush Etzion area, less than 10 kilometers from here. Fortunately, according to the reports, no injuries, no serious damage.

No reason to expect this to be over quickly.

16-Nov-12: Tel Aviv targeted a second time, and some responses

2:45 pm update

• After seven years of non-stop rocket attacks on Israeli civilian targets by the Gazans, the president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, who knows this as well as any local leader does and has presumably just been briefed by his prime minister, says (according to Times of Israel) that Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip constitute “a blatant aggression against humanity”.
• From eye-witness reports, we understand Ashdod has absorbed multiple volleys of rockets since 2:00 pm this afternoon. The pressure on the residents there is relentless. This however does not constitute an aggression against humanity, blatant or otherwise, in the view of the Egyptians or of the many governments and non-governmental crowds that are, at this moment, protesting in the streets against Israel.
• Israel's president, Shimon Peres, expressed a far more rational view: "No one doubts the justification of this operation, We cannot abandon women and children to the insanity of Hamas".
• Over at the real-time war blog The Muqata, they're telling us something we didn't know about our neighbours here in Jerusalem: "2:33 PM Arabs throwing rocks in Ras Al Amud neighborhood of Jerusalem in response to IDF airstrikes on Gaza." 
• Tel Aviv came under rocket attack around 1:30 pm today. We are not there, and don't plan to contribute to any enemy's intelligence. But we can repeat what others are saying. Sky News reports that Israel's police spokesperson "said no injuries were reported and that a rocket landed in the ocean. Sirens wailed across the coastal city on Friday afternoon shortly before a loud explosion. The Twitter account of the armed wing of Hamas AlqassamBrigade said: "Al Qassam Brigades shelling Tel Aviv-Tel El Rabee with M75 homemade projectile." If a Gazan rocket reached Tel-Aviv 75 kilometers away, it was no home-made production.

16-Nov-12: Friday midday update

Kiryat Malachi, Thursday [Image Source: Telegraph UK]   

Here's an updated brief snapshot at 1:00 pm on a sunny but extremely tense Friday.

• It continues to rain rockets here. The official IDF talley is 67 Palestinian Arab rockets, fired from Gaza, that struck Israel today. They continue to be fired at us with all the power that the terrorists can summon up.
• The total since Wednesday is 335.
• The Iron Dome system intercepted 55 rockets in mid-air, today alone. (That number and the others above have almost certainly grown since we started writing this post.)
• If Israelis expected the rate at which the terrorist forces in Gaza fire rockets into the cities, towns and farming communities of southern Israel to diminish after the events of Wednesday evening, it is not working out that way. Homefront Defense Minister Avi Dichter, quoted in Times of Israel this morning, says we should expect "hundreds of rockets per day to be launched at Israel from Gaza over the coming days".
• Egyptian prime minister Hisham Qandil has come (to Gaza) and gone. CNN quotes an un-named source in Israel's Ministry of Defence saying that "during the Egyptian prime minister's visit, 50 rockets flew out of Gaza toward Israel". Very surprising. Not.
• Al Ahram, the official news channel of the Egyptian government, is saying his visit this morning was (a) "to show solidarity with the besieged coastal enclave", to voice "unconditional Egyptian support for the Palestinians", (c) "to intensify Cairo's efforts to secure a truce and end Israel's "aggression"" [Aggression in the Al Ahram version appears in quotation marks, which is almost refreshing.] And "he will also, according to sources involved in preparing his trip, avoid escalatory language". 
• The IDF's Givati brigade is making no secret of its plans to be part of a comprehensive land-based invasion of Gaza as soon as the top brass gives the order. Over at YouTube, there's a very brief (half minute long) video of the preparations.
• EU minister of foreign affairs Catherine Ashton issued a statement at noon today saying how "deeply concerned at the escalating violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip" she is. She deplores the loss of civilian lives on both sides. Hamas rocket attacks "which began this current crisis are totally unacceptable for any government and must stop. Israel has the right to protect its population from these kinds of attacks. I urge Israel to ensure that its response is proportionate.” 
• A civilian vehicle came under fire from the Gazan side at Nahal Oz, southern Israel, in the late morning. Turns out one of the passengers (or the driver) was a Reuters employee who is lightly wounded. [Maan has some coverage.]
• Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has condemned the attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip. She is quoted saying "the rocket attacks will not help the Palestinian campaign for self-determination.... The government condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip and calls on Hamas to cease these immediately. Australia supports Israel's right to defend itself against these indiscriminate attacks. Such attacks on Israel's civilian population are utterly unacceptable.''
• John Lyons, reporting for The Australian newspaper from Jerusalem, says that in the longer term, "Australia, which takes up a seat on the Security Council next year, would back steps towards a negotiated two-state outcome as the only genuine means of preventing the recurrence of violence."
• It's Friday, the Moslem sabbath. In Iran, worshippers by the thousand have taken to the streets of Tehran after Friday prayers to protest “Zionist crimes in Gaza” according to the Fars News Agency. They are chanting “death to Israel” and “death to America.” Similar protests are reportedly taking place at various other cities across the country.

16-Nov-12: Snapshotting the turbulence

Gaza Thursday

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

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

More later.

16-Nov-12: An insignificant footnote to today's round-the-clock rocket attacks on Israeli cities, farms and communities

Erez Crossing, where Gazans daily cross into and out of Israel  [we snapped this picture in September 2012]

From "One hour in Israel" on the BBC Watch website - reflecting on a day (Thursday) during which 305 rockets [source] were flung at Israeli civilian targets, accompanied by the fervent prayers of the rocket-men in Gaza for dead Jews and Israeli destruction:

Also today, fourteen Palestinians from the Gaza Strip were admitted into Israel for medical treatment in Israeli hospitals – as happens almost every other day of the year. [More]

Warfare of the kind being waged across the Israel/Gaza border is often called asymmetric. This illustrates why.

15-Nov-12: Now nuclear experts say Israel under-estimated Iranian threat

Inside one of Iran's nuclear facilities [Image Source]    

Remember those far off days in the dim, distant past (you know, three months ago, more or less) when analysts, journalists and human-rights 'activists' accused Israel of overstating the dangers of an Iranian bomb? See for instance "Iran War Threat Drastically Overstated By Israel Lobby and The Economist" from August 2012. And "Bibi's Chutzpah" in Foreign Affairs a whole month ago.

Well guess what? Associated Press is running a major syndicated story today which argues strongly that Iran is already at the threshold of having weapons-grade uranium and Israeli doubts about this are wrong. It's called "Iran ready to ramp up nuke program", and here are some selected quotes:

• Iran is on the threshold of being able to create weapons-grade uranium at a plant it has heavily fortified against Israeli attack, diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday, calling into question an Israeli claim that Iran had slowed its nuclear time table.
• One of three diplomats who discussed the issue said Iran was now technically ready within days to ramp up its production of 20 percent enriched uranium at its Fordo facility by nearly 700 centrifuges. That would double present output, and cut in half the time it would take to acquire enough of the substance needed to make a nuclear weapon, reducing it to just over three months.
• Such a move would raise the stakes for Israel, which has said it believes the world has until next summer to stop Iran before it can get nuclear material and implied it would have time to decide whether to strike Fordo and other Iranian nuclear facilities...
• All three diplomats are from member nations of the IAEA, which is scheduled to release its latest report on Iran's nuclear program as early as Friday. They demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss restricted information with reporters.
• Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak's assertion earlier this month that Iran has "essentially delayed their arrival at the red line by eight months," is in line with the timeframe laid out by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September, when he spoke at the U.N. General Assembly...
• Washington and its allies also fear that Iran is enriching uranium to reach the ability to make such arms...
• The Vienna-based IAEA, in its last report in August, said that Tehran had doubled the number of centrifuges at Fordo within three months to more than 2,000. Diplomats since then have told reporters that hundreds more have been installed, bringing the total to nearly 2,800, or full capacity for Fordo.
• Iran has a far larger enrichment plant at Natanz, in central Iran, which churns out uranium enriched below 4 percent. But the 20-percent material being produced at Fordo is of greater concern to the international community because it can be turned into weapons-grade uranium of 90 percent purity much more simply and quickly—and because the facility, near the holy city of Qom, is well protected against attack.
• Tehran "should be in a position to produce enough (material) for two or three" nuclear warheads by the summer, if does decide to double output in the next few weeks, said Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency's deputy director general in charge of the Iran file until 2010.

Now we're half expecting a UN Security Council emergency session to be convened next week so they can condemn Israel for miscalculating the gravity of the threat from Iran and for failing to adequately warn the rest of the world.

15-Nov-12: A tale of two planets

Not Gaza [Image Source]   

Nothing in the post below is meant to convey light-heartedness in the face of death. Human life is precious. Dealing with that preciousness contemptuously is immoral and disgusting. The fact that so many people are guilty of that contempt does not lighten its wrongness in any way.

A Reuters syndicated report, carried by many news channels today, tells us that Hezbollah, the terrorist force sitting on Israel's northern border with its soldiers and its rockets deeply, deeply embedded in Lebanese villages and homes, has denounced Israel’s strikes of the past 24 hours on Gaza, terming them “criminal aggression”.

With no evident sense of shame, irony or its own street-theatre performance, Hezbollah angrily proceeds to call on the Arab states to “stop the genocide”. That's Israeli genocide, presumably of the Gazan nation. 

Egypt's Moslem Brotherhood, spiritual elder brother and mentor of Hamas, takes up the theme and moves beyond name-calling, demanding that there be a ‘Day of Rage’ in Arab capitals tomorrow (Friday). They will surely get their way.

It's hard not to observe that Palestinian Arab rockets have been crashing onto the heads of Israelis for days, weeks, months and years with barely a raised Israeli voice in response. Now that Israel has called off the silly game and taken steps to end those terror attacks from Gaza, it's Israel which is accused of mass killing.

To put this into a quantitative context: the death toll among the Gazans since the start of Israel's Pillars of Defense campaign, has reached 16 people and that's according to Hamas - see a report published in the past hour [source]. As acts of genocide go, some observers would call it a kind of failure.

Meanwhile on another planet far, far away, something considerably closer to genocide is well underway but most observers have lost interest and have turned their gaze elsewhere. CNN reports tonight that 95 people were killed in a variety of ways today (just today) in the catastrophe that is Syria: 46 of them in Damascus and its suburbs; 14 in Homs. 

The overall Syrian talley up to and including today, according to CNN, is an almost incomprehensible 37,387. (For the record, other sources say the number is higher.) Are onlookers calling this an act of genocide? 

And keep in mind that no one is predicting an early end to it. The tragedy of the human losses in Syria is growing steadily from staggering to obscene. And no one is doing anything meaningful to stop it.

15-Nov-12: Rishon Lezion was rocketed this afternoon. Now it's Tel Aviv's turn.

Image Source: Haaretz  

At about 6:30 this evening (Thursday), air raid sirens wailed all over the Tel Aviv area for the first time since the Gulf War of 1991. Initial television coverage included no small measure of skepticism that the warnings were backed by something factual and actual. But in the last few minutes it has become clear that indeed a long-range Gazan Palestinian Arab rocket, probably from the Fajr family, crashed to ground on one of the Tel Aviv area's beaches.

Haaretz reports (at 6:45 pm) that it struck in the Holon area. Holon is a municipality in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. Other sources say "Tel Aviv area" without further detail, and some are saying whatever was fired did not end up on the land i.e. it/they probably fell into the sea. Everyone seems to agree there are no injuries or damage.

Without overstating anything, an attack on Israel's central metropolitan area - even without casualties or damage - changes significant aspects of Israel's security calculations. Commentators here are saying in the past few minutes that a ground operation directed at Gaza seems more likely than an hour ago.

Rishon Lezion was struck - actual explosions - by two rockets at about 4:45 this afternoon. Rishon is only 12 km south of Tel Aviv. No casualties were reported.

As we write this, just before 7:00 pm, there is yet another wave of rockets in the skies over Be'er Sheva, and over most of the communities in the south - a great swathe of them. This surge of attacks appears to be based on short and medium range rockets (Qassams, GRADs) in the Gaza arsenal, and not the longer-range Fajrs.

More than 200 Gazan rockets have been fired into Israel so far today. Channel 10 news says 105 of them were intercepted in mid-air via the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Developing.