29-Dec-07: Security checkpoints? Who needs 'em?

The holiday season routinely attracts a seasonal spate of superficial and frequently quite silly news reports highlighting in the most negative way the security arrangements that Israel imposes on travelers in and around its territory.

Typical of the genre is a Canadian piece entitled "Easing tensions help tourism in Bethlehem" that includes this fairly typical approach:

The first Israeli checkpoint occurs just south of Nazareth -- one of more than 500 in the occupied West Bank, according to the United Nations. Coils of razor wire block the road. Further south inside the West Bank is Jenin -- an Islamic militant stronghold. Palestinian cars aren't allowed on many West Bank roads and queue up separately at checkpoints. Israeli cars aren't required to stop. Jerusalem sits about eight kilometres north of Bethlehem. But without the right identity card, Mary and Joseph would have to skirt east to the Jordan River valley.

Poor Mary. Sad Joseph. No other way to look at this than to pity them and their fellow Palestinian Arabs and blame the entire mess on those Israelis. As in this year's holiday card published by War on Want. (Sadly consistent with War on Want's years-long record of Israel-bashing and of missing the point about the Palestinian Arabs and their woes.)

Sorry, but we find this sort of amateurish, emotive, factually-inaccurate and context-less Middle East analysis, with its undertones of classical anti-semitic imagery, simply infuriating. Outrages like the War on Want's seasonal card get published because the reports of the price paid by Israelis day in, day out, for the actions of the terrorists go largely unpublished and unobserved. Go find, for instance, a report in your local media of the murder of two young Israeli hikers yesterday (Friday).

The sad reality is that Israeli security arrangements are desperately needed, and somewhat effective. Palestinian Arabs with guns, bombs, knives and suicide jackets routinely turn up at Israeli army road blocks.

A striking example: tonight, the IDF released a brief report of something that happened a few weeks ago:

The IDF and Shin Bet uncovered 6.5 tons of potassium nitrate hidden in sacks that were disguised as aid from the European Union, the army announced on Saturday. Security forces discovered the stash in the cargo of a Palestinian truck at a West Bank checkpoint earlier in December. According to the IDF, the material, hidden in sugar sacks, was planned to be used by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. "Potassium Nitrate is a banned substance in the Gaza Strip and the Judea and Samaria region due to its use by terrorists for the manufacturing of explosives and Kassam rockets," the IDF spokesperson wrote in a statement. "This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval," the statement read.

Care for some background reading on the many uses of potassium nitrate? Check out "The Anarchist's Cookbook - Explosives". And this: "All Qassams are fuelled by a solid mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate".

Strange and disturbing how so many column inches and blog stories are devoted to the inhumanity of intrusive Israeli security measures. And so little to their life-saving effects.

Those "sugar" sacks, ostensibly supplied as aid by EU sources, are laid out for closer inspection in an Israeli security facility in the picture below.

28-Dec-07: End-of-year special effort

The lives of two Israeli hikers ended a short time ago in a hail of Palestinian Arab bullets in the Hebron area. YNet, in a story filed an hour ago (2:20pm Friday, Israel time) says this was a terrorist drive-by shooting, the second in the past month, directed against ordinary civilian Israelis.

The victims, part of a group hiking near Telem Creek, were killed right away. There are additional wounded.

The published news report ends with this cryptic observation: "Ynet has further learned that Hamas was likely to claim the shooting."

Hamas is on the losing end of the power struggle among the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, and there's an impression they need to score more Jewish deaths to add to the annual tally before the year ends.

On the other front, Palestinian Arab terrorists from the Gaza Strip fired yet another in the depressingly long stream of Qassam rockets that have been directed at anything Jewish in Israel's western Negev. Fortunately no injuries or damages are reported but - as always - this was not the intention of the terrorists.

UPDATE: Saturday night - The victims of Friday's terrorist murder: Ahikam Amichai (20) and David Rubin (21). They are being buried in Jerusalem as we write this. Hashem yikom damam.

UPDATE: Monday 31-Dec-07 - The minister for "information" of the Palestinian Authority, in an especially brazen demonstration of chutzpah, is said this morning by the Jerusalem Post to have shared with reporters in Ramallah that he "does not rule out" the possibility that the murders resulted from a "dispute" between arms dealers. In plain language, that the Israeli hikers had intended to sell weapons to their Palestinian Arab assailants. His remarks encouraged another clown, the Palestinian Authority police chief of Hebron Samih A-Safi, to make the same sort of offensive statement to the Palestinian News Agency Ma'an. This sort of libelous rubbish plays well in the circles they move in (Ramallah, for instance, and Hebron and London). But it sickens informed Israelis who know something about the values of young men like the two Jewish victims (both of them graduates of elite combat units in the IDF) whose passion for the land, every inch of it, was the real motivation for them being killed. Lest there be any real doubt about the matter, it's also reported this morning that no fewer than 3 Pal-Arab terror groups have already claimed "credit" for the killings: Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

26-Dec-07: Rocket warfare - Wednesday

By 1:30pm today (Wednesday) five Qassam rockets, fired by Gazan Palestinian terror gangs, had crashed into southern Israel. Fortunately no reports of damage or injury. Yesterday's tally: 9 Qassams. And many people, even those deeply interested in events in this part of the world, have no idea it's happening.

UPDATE 10:30pm Wednesday: 15 (fifteen) Qassam attacks by the Gazan Palestinian Arab terrorists on southern Israel today; miraculously no injuries or serious damage. Channel 10 News (Israel) reports that despite the endless barrages, the IDF has decided to stick to a policy of no military response for the moment.

25-Dec-07: The season to be jolly? A different viewpoint

For many of our readers, today's a day for taking things easy, spending time with family, reflecting on shared hopes and achievements.

Over here in this war-zone, we've seen six Qassam attacks by the Gazan Palestinians on Israel so far today... and the afternoon is only half-way done. No injuries or damage so far, thankfully, but that's good enough for Islamic Jihad to announce that they claim ownership of these "gifts" i.e. take responsibility for these attacks-by-flying-explosives. This sort of hate-based random shooting in every possible direction is why they're called terrorists. The active connivance of the Hamas regime is why we, and much of the civilized world, relates to Hamas a terrorist organization.

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, a Pal-Arab Qassam landed in an open field within the area encompassed by the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council. Three more of this morning's Qassams crashed into open fields outside the southern Israeli community of Sderot, a city of almost 20,000 people. Two additional Qassam rockets landed south of Ashkelon near the security fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip.

We've learned the hard way how different it is to read about terrorism being practiced on others, and having the terror enter your own life. It's an experience that is hard to convey - a personal, intimate horror.

A young woman who is living in Sderot, Anav Silverman - originally from Maine in the US - has been working with the families who deal with terrorist attacks on a daily basis. She recently wrote the brief report below which we have her permission to share. NOTE: It would be a real service to the people enduring these daily attacks if her letter were passed around as widely as possible.

Here it is:

As part of my job in Sderot, I help facilitate tours in English for foreign visitors -- generally diplomats, government officials, and press personnel. The tours encompass all aspects of living in a rocket reality from visiting unfortified schools, viewing actual Qassam rockets, to speaking with area psychologists, and visiting with trauma victims and their families.

I always get a little shaken up when I visit a family traumatized by a rocket attack. Yesterday was no different, when I visited the Amar family, on Sinai Street, whose home was hit last Thursday. The first person that greeted me was Aliza Amar, sitting in her wheel chair in front of her partially destroyed home. She looks sad and forlorn, as neighbors come by to wish her and her family a quick recovery.

Aliza was hospitalized for almost four days for injury and shock. She explains to me that because she is physically handicapped, she has difficulty escaping to the bomb shelter, once the siren sounds. So when a rocket hit the Amar home on Thursday afternoon, December 13, Aliza, in her wheelchair, could not reach the shelter in time. The 15 seconds one has to escape to shelter once the alarm sounds was not enough time for Aliza. "The force of the rocket fall blew me off the chair, and I slammed into the kitchen wall" says Aliza.

Her home is a site of complete devastation. The ceiling over the kitchen has completely collapsed. The sunlight pours through, illuminating a basket of orange tangerines covered with dirt and dust. Debris covers the entire kitchen floor. A family photo lies nearby, its frame and glass broken into pieces.

"Everything went black, and the next thing I know is that I am lying in the hospital in shock." As Aliza speaks, her nine-year old daughter, Adi tightly holds her mother's hand. I ask her how she feels to have her mother back home but Adi does not respond. Her older brother, Moshe, is quick to explain that from all his siblings, Adi suffers the most from anxiety attacks. "Every time, the siren sounds, Adi runs to those photos of great and righteous rabbis on the living room wall, and kisses them, hoping they will keep her safe," says Moshe.

Moshe is serving his first year in the IDF army. He was not at home when the rocket landed, but stationed at the army base. "As a soldier in the IDF, my job is to guard the jail where the terrorists who launch the rockets are caught and held," says Moshe. "It is a very difficult job for me, especially when I receive a call notifying me that my home and family have been hit. I leave the army base to come to my destroyed home. What am I fighting for?" asks Moshe. " There is no limit to the number of terrorists in Gaza who continue to launch rockets freely against my friends and family in Sderot."

Indeed, Moshe's family is currently living in a hotel in a city nearby as it will take several months for the insurance company to rebuild and fix the extensive damage done to the Amar home. Moshe's father, Pinchas, explains that their house is not the only home that was hit in the Thursday rocket attacks. Their neighbors, the Sasson family, also experienced the rocket attack, although their house sustained less damage and is considered livable.

The mother, Shula Sasson, however was less fortunate. She was transported to the hospital for shock and was treated for brain damage. Her husband and children were also treated for trauma and waited almost a week for Shula's return home.

The Amar and Sasson families, along with the rest of the families on Sinai street, have experienced up to seven rocket attacks on their neighborhood. One of the most traumatic attacks took place in May 2007, when a rocket hit a synagogue which 30 minutes before had been full with 400 congregants. The families on Sinai Street have seen many miracles, but the shock and trauma which results with each rocket attack continues to increase among the residents here.

It is the silence of nine-year old Adi Amar which is perhaps most unnerving and reflective of the trauma which the children of Sderot live through. Although she barely spoke during my visit, Adi's sad and fearful eyes express her feelings more clearly than words. I leave the Amar home, overcome with a sense of helplessness that has come to define the current spirit of Sderot residents.

Anav works in the Sderot Media Center (which is doing more than anyone else around to throw some light on the daily war waged against ordinary people living in Sderot by the terrorist vipers of Gaza). She is a student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan. Thanks to Judy Balint of Jerusalem Diaries for making us aware of Anav's letter.

23-Dec-07: Sunday update

Within the last hour (it's Sunday mid-afternoon here), yet another Qassam rocket despatched from the northern Gaza Strip crashed into Israel and exploded. This time, it hit an unnamed kibbutz described by YNet as being "within the Sha’ar Hanegev regional council". That's an area that encompasses 10 kibbutzim, one moshav, one privately-owned farm and a village for immigrants – a total of 6,000 citizens. Fortunately no reports of injuries or property damage, but that's not the intention of the terrorists.

UPDATE 6:30PM Sunday: YNet says a Palestinian-Arab Qassam rocket fired this afternoon (Sunday) from the Gaza Strip landed near a factory in an industrial park south of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. The paper published the picture of a Carlsberg factory on its website (reproduced above), with a caption reading "Factory Hit". If so, this is not the first time the same plant has been hit by incoming Qassams - see this report from February 2006. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, declaring: "We fired an improved Al-Quds rocket."

UPDATE 10:30PM Sunday: JPost says the day's tally of Qassams that were fired into southern Israel by the Gazan terrorists gangs reached five with the latest landing near a building in the center of Sderot. It evidently failed to explode. This was not the intention of the terrorists. Also today - a single Qassam rocket landed near a police station in Sderot, but did not explode. The rocket caused slight damage to the outer wall of a nearby home.

UPDATE Monday morning: On Monday, two mortar shells and a rocket launched from Gaza landed in open fields in the western Negev region, causing no injuries or damage.

22-Dec-07: Saturday night explosion

YNet reports that a Qassam rocket crashed into an industrial park in Sderot, southern Israel tonight (Saturday night). No reports so far of injuries or property damage. But this was not the intention of the terrorists who fired it from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

21-Dec-07: Friday is their holy day

Two Qassams have crashed into Israel in the past few hours. Today is Friday, the Moslem sabbath. No matter: the terrorists and their rocket launchers have no respect for lives or religious sensibilities. (Religious services in far-away Pakistan were the target of an unrelated jihadist attack, an especially monstrous one, this morning.) That includes no respect for our lives, for their own lives, for the lives of their own children or for the principles of their own religion. Today's rockets landed in open fields, according to YNet. That was not the intention of the terrorists.

20-Dec-07: Attacking school-yards

Daily rocket attacks on southern Israel are a routine part of this ongoing war. The terror groups, operating right out in the open and with the full knowledge and co-operation of the 'government' in the area (meaning the Hamas regime) try their luck several times each day, as often as they can.

Very occasionally the Israeli forces eliminate them while they're in the act (about 3% of the time, and here's an example of what happens when they do) but mostly they get away with it. There's no guidance system on their primitive explosives so when they fire them off, they have no control over what's going to be hit. Sometimes it's desert sands. Sometimes it's their own houses and families. And sometimes they strike it lucky and manage to hit a house, a store, a school, a car. Their goal, as we keep writing here in this blog, is to cause harm, damage, injury, loss of life - whatever. Their strategy is as simple as that. This is why they're correctly termed terrorists.

Thursday morning, four of their mortar shells struck south of the Kissufim border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, to add to the three Qassam rockets that landed during breakfast - see our blog entry of this morning. No injuries were reported in these incidents. Then around 11 AM today (Thursday), they came perilously close to having themselves a real payday when one of their Qassam rockets crashed into Israeli territory (not disputed, not military, not 'occupied') and injured ten children in the playground of Gil Elementary School in the beleagured city of Sderot. 8 others were treated for the effects of trauma. The attack occured around 11 AM. The school's psychological and counseling team is said to be getting reinforcements right now from other schools and nearby cities.

This is the scenario Israelis constantly fear: that the thugs of Gaza, with their endless supplies of explosive materials, their constantly renewed and frenzied hatred, and their disregard for human lives whether ours, our children's or their own children's, will strike it lucky. The odds are against us. These people can and do send hundreds of rockets into our homes month after month. It's so common that almost no one outside this country pays any attention. And when they do, it's frequently to under-report the damage and losses (UPI's bulletin in the past half-hour, for instance, ignores the Israeli children injured and rushed to emergency care) or to make sickening equivalences based on body counts. "So few Israelis are dead", it's said. "What's the big deal?".

Or as Ed O'Loughlin, who writes for two of Australia's best newspapers from here, put it recently:

"Since peace talks were abandoned in 2000, 12 Israelis, including three minors, have been killed by Palestinian missiles in a deadly game of tit for tat across the border between Israel and Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians and militants, including five children in the past fortnight, have been killed by artillery, tank and air strikes, which Israel says target only terrorists."

Conveying the picture in this sadly distorted way makes O'Loughlin far from unusual among his agenda-driven peers in the scribbling profession. They too routinely ignore the 2,380+ rockets (the IDF's number - others put it higher) that have been fired into Israel's western Negev in the last six years (165 Qassams and mortar shells this month alone - an average of eight rockets or shells per day), killing 10 people and sending some 1,600 others to get treatment for shock. In other words, the context. It would be interesting to know what he makes of the fact that Honest Reporting yesterday bestowed him with its less-than-coveted Worst Moral Equivalence Award for 2007. Great work, Ed.

20-Dec-07: Thursday morning attacks

We report these attacks though they make for repetitive reporting and don't allow for that much analysis. But what can you do? We've discovered that there are very few places anywhere in the media world where a person can learn about the endless attacks on Israel and on the Jewish communities that live here. So to this morning's update:

Two more Qassam rockets fired from north Gaza (entirely controlled by the Hamas regime) landed in open fields in southern Israel, not far from the western Negev city of Sderot. Another landed a bit earlier just south of Ashkelon. No injuries and no damage. But that's not the intention of the perpetrators. They're single-mindedly interested in any damage, any loss of life, any outcome that will express their foaming hatred of everything and everyone on our side of the fence. What does this have to do with them asserting their right to a peaceful life and creating a better, healthier society for themselves and their families? Not much. Terrorism doesn't actually have any redeeming virtues.

19-Dec-07: Wednesday morning on Israel's southern front

Yet another Qassam was fired into Israel this morning from the Gaza Strip where Hamas is in total control. It landed on the northern edge of the city of Sderot in an open field. No injuries or damage are reported. A few minutes later, another Pal-Arab Qassam rocket landed near Kibbutz Zikim (population: 330; main activities: raising avocados and mangos, managing a large dairy herd, and manufacturing polyurethane). Zikim is where a toddler was injured by a previous rocket attack on Monday. The actor Bob Hoskins worked there as a volunteer thirty years ago. Several female soldiers who were stationed nearby (Zikim is right on the Gaza border) escaped physical injury this morning but were treated for shock. A heightened state of alert has been declared at all the nearby army bases. The heroes of Islamic Jihad, ever alert to the opportunities to damage fruit-bearing fields, claimed credit for this morning's life-threatening vandalism.

Yesterday (according to the Jerusalem Post), the terrorists fired 9 Qassam rockets and 12 mortar shells into southern Israel.

18-Dec-07: Will the latest billions encourage Pal-Arab moderation? Not so likely

The voice of Palestinian-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh is consistently one of those worth hearing, even as it's ignored by mainstream media and political analysts. Today, as he has done frequently in the past, Abu Toameh delivers some painful insights:

Since its establishment in 1994, the PA has received nearly $6.5 billion in international aid. The assumption was that economic prosperity would weaken radicals and boost the moderates among the Palestinians. But hundreds of millions of dollars went into secret bank accounts or to build villas for senior PA officials.

The international community that was pouring money on the PA did not seem to care about the stories of financial corruption and embezzlement. Nor did the donors pay attention to the fact that Arafat was inciting his people not only against Israel but also against the same "infidels" who were signing his checks.

While the billions of dollars promised at the Paris conference on Monday are likely to improve the living conditions of the Palestinians and strengthen their economy, there is no guarantee that the financial aid will have a moderating effect on many of them.

This money is mainly designed to keep Fatah in power and prevent Hamas from taking over the West Bank. Unless the PA changes its rhetoric and starts promoting real peace and coexistence with Israel, the millions of dollars are not going to create a new generation of moderate Palestinians.

The only way to undermine Hamas is not by channeling billions of dollars to the PA leadership, but by offering the Palestinians a better alternative to the Islamist movement.

And what are other Arab voices saying about the promises of 7.4 billion US dollars over the coming three years? Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian PM, is quoted today saying that the results "exceeded our expectations". Literally - since he had asked for a "mere" 5.6 billion. Hamas called the conference and its outcome "a dangerous conspiracy", "coating poison with honey". A Lebanese paper editorializes that "Like the Lebanese people, the Palestinians have been cursed by years of dismal governance by bunglers and crooks... [and therefore the outcome was] necessary but not sufficient."

And the World Bank, which knows something about economics but evidently very little about what it means to live next door to a terrorist regime, restaurant bombers, self-immolators and assorted religious lunatics, says "the situation will improve only if Israel eases restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and goods." Simple, really, when you look at it that way.

18-Dec-07: Giving foreign aid to terror-dependent regimes is an unbearably expensive deal

Steven Stotsky has published a thought-provoking commentary on the monumental amounts of money being shoveled into the collective maw of the insatiable Palestinian authorities. The significance of his observations goes well beyond politics.

If he's right - and we think the case he presents is well put together - the donor conference ("Paris donor nations pledge billions for Palestinians") that gathered yesterday and pledged upwards of $7 billion to the Mahmoud Abbas regime has conspired to create a humanitarian disaster.

Have a look at the chart on the right. It shows the relationship between the number of terrorist murders of Israelis carried out by the Palestinian Arabs, and the scale of foreign aid delivered to the Palestinian Arabs a year earlier. The fit is remarkable.

Here are the references that go with the chart:

• Correlating Palestinian Aid and Homicides 2000-2007 (Stephen Stotsky, 2007)
• Will Massive Infusions of Aid Rescue the Palestinian Economy? (Stephen Stotsky, 2007)
• Aid and the Delegated Fight against Terrorism (Jean-Paul Azam, University of Toulouse and Alexandra Delacroix, SGAM, Paris, 2005)
• Palestinian Authority's tax payer-funded open spigot must be closed now (Daniel Pipes, 2007)

And here's an abstract of what this really bad news means, as articulated by Dr Daniel Pipes:

In 2006, the European Union and its member states gave US$815 million to the Palestinian Authority; the United States gave $468 million. Other donors brought the total haul to $1.5 billion. This week's Donors' Conference for the Palestinian Authority aimed to pull in a further $5 billion or more. No matter how many millions of Palestinians there are in the West Bank and/or the Gaza Strip (you can take your pick of guesstimates), we're talking of a vast windfall for each Pal-Arab man, woman and child. "Well, it's a bargain if it works, right? [says Pipes] A few billion to end a dangerous, century-old conflict - it's actually a steal." But he refers to the innovative research done by Steven Stotsky, relying on World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other official statistics. Stotsky demonstrates that every $1.25 million of budgetary support aid translates into one death that year. So does foreign aid cause violence? No. But can it seriously be said, in light of this, that foreign aid is the way to promote moderation and combat terrorism? At least let's be ready to ask the question. Azam and Delacroix's article "Aid and the Delegated Fight Against Terrorism" finds a "robust empirical result showing that the supply of terrorist activity by any country is positively correlated with the amount of foreign aid received by that country". Theirs is a statistical analysis, not a political one; it says that the more foreign aid, the more terrorism.

Or in terms that we here in Israel cannot ignore: the better funded the Pal-Arabs are, the stronger they become -- and the more inspired to engaged in armed terror. We're perfectly aware that some might disagree with our conclusion, and we're not arguing that we're right though we clearly do believe we are. But here's the point: people's lives depend on understanding that financial aid to the Pal-Arabs has to be far more carefully monitored than in the blood-soaked past. Doing it the same way as it is being done at present and in the past decade and a half is going to produce another catastrophe.

One death (as we've learned) is unbearable. Hundreds, thousands - that's beyond unthinkable. Who (from among the politicians, the journalists, the analysts) can confidently say we're not on the verge of exactly that sort of disaster?

17-Dec-07: Toddlers as targets

Barely reported, and therefore virtually unnoticed, a rocket attack from Gaza yesterday (Sunday) resulted in a direct hit on a dwelling in southern Israel, injuring a 2-year-old child.

The Qassam slammed into a house in Kibbutz Zikkim. The child was playing on the living room floor with his mother sitting a few meters away. The Qassam rocket launched by terrorists from the northern Gaza Strip struck the side of the small kibbutz home. Mother and son were evacuated to Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center for treatment. The JPost report says the house has a "secure room" but the family did not hear any take-cover alarm.

Two hours after the Zikkim strike, another rocket hit a nearby kibbutz.

Islamic Jihad, Syrian-based and funded by Iran, claimed responsibility for Sunday's attacks. A week ago, they announced that their rockets now have an enlarged range, up to 22 kilometers, enough "to hit the far north of Ashkelon". Qassam rockets are normally reckoned to have a range of about 12 kilometers. IJ also boast that they recently formed a suicide brigade of "70 youths, including females". Brainwashing and manipulating impressionable young people into becoming human bombs has long been part of IJ's modus operandi.

CNN, quoting Israeli military sources, says more than 3,600 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza into Israel since Israel removed its communities from there in 2005.

UPDATE (Tuesday 18-Dec-07): YNet describes a remarkably surgical Israeli counter-strike.

15-Dec-07: Qassam hits factory on Friday

More warfare from the Palestinian Arabs. A Qassam struck a factory into Israel's western Negev area on Friday, in the latest of the ongoing waves of Qassam rocket attacks emanating from Hamas-controlled Gaza. The attack caused property damage to the factory at Kibbutz Gevim. No one was injured. This was not the intention of the terrorists.

14-Dec-07: The ongoing rocket attacks - an overview

"For the Palestinian terrorist organizations, rockets and mortars serve as an asymmetric response to Israel 's military superiority. They are simple, available and cheap."

From a new study published today by Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The chart above, documenting Qassam attacks on the Israeli communities bordering the Gaza Strip, is from the study too. Click to read the whole depressing report. And note the impact on the rate of rocket firings of the abandonment of the Israeli communities inside the Gaza Strip in 2005.

14-Dec-07: When they write "home-made rockets", think about this home

Reporters and their editors, when they report at all on the Qassam rocket attacks on Israeli communities, frequently refer to the home-made nature of the Palestinian-Arab weaponry that has been fired several thousand times during the past two years. Amnesty International (among others) routinely does it too. It's a convenient and entirely dishonest way of diminishing the threat to lives of this particular form of warfare.

Today's print edition of Haaretz has this photograph (at right) of a kitchen in a Sderot apartment, destroyed in an attack yesterday, causing injuries to a female resident. It's unlikely this picture, or any like it, appears in the media in your part of the world. But the fact is that without understanding what's being done daily to the lives of people who live in this apartment and in other parts of Sderot and everywhere else in southern Israel and in the rest of Israel on a daily basis, it's impossible to understand why we Israelis are so agitated about having a terrorist regime on our southern border.

And why the constant protests of NGOs (for instance "Oxfam Criticizes Israeli Restrictions" and "Red Cross says Gaza crisis worsening under Israeli restrictions" in the global media yesterday) coupled with their silence and inaction in the face of murderous Pal-Arab terrorism, sound so hollow and inappropriate.

Additional scenes from the attack yesterday (Thursday) on Sderot below.







Not knowing about this makes it impossible to understand why Israel devotes so much attention, energy and resources in attempting to neutralize the terrorists waging this ongoing war on us from Gaza.

12-Dec-07: Raining death

Five rounds of rocket attack on Israel today. A total of 22 Qassams... so far. More than one an hour. Did the news media in your community tell you that? Or will they only report it when one or more of those deadly rockets causes a bloodbath?

11-Dec-07: 2,000 rockets

A Qassam rocket fired by terrorists in Hamas-controlled Gaza struck an industrial center in southern Israel this morning.

Two more Qassams joined the tally this evening (Tuesday) but caused no injuries or damage; this was not the intention of the terrorists.

A toy factory was reduced to rubble in the same area by another Qassam attack yesterday (Monday).

Some two thousand rockets have pummeled one small Israeli city - Sderot - so far this year. Repeat: 2,000 rockets, just this year.

Now what would be a disproportionate response to that?

UPDATE (Tuesday 9:15pm): Haaretz is reporting that Palestinian officials have warned that Israel Defense Forces raids in the Gaza Strip are endangering "the newly revived peace process". They're referring to Israeli actions in Gaza a day before what the newspaper terms "the first Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in seven years". What sort of peace process do those Palestinian "officials" have in mind that is not endangered by 2,000 terrorist rocket attacks on a small, never-disputed city in southern Israel?

UPDATE (Wednesday 12-Dec-07 at 8:10am) And four more Qassam rockets fired by the terrorists into civilian areas of southern Israel this morning. Not rocks, ladies and gentlemen, and not attacks on military or industrial installations, and not fired from remote and inaccessible locations where the local Hamas regime perhaps can't get to them to stop this. No, a far simpler and straightforward scenario: 4 Qassams, fired from the same general area (flat, treeless, densely populated) into any part of southern Israel that the thugs and their lethal weaponry can reach. YNet says two of the rockets landed in opens areas in the city and two others near the security fence dividing northern Gaza from the civilized world.

UPDATE (Wednesday 12-Dec-07 at 8:50am) Eight Qassam attacks so far this morning, according to YNet. But both Haaretz and the YNet Hebrew site are saying 14.

UPDATE (Wednesday 12-Dec-07 at 10:00am) Seventeen Qassams so far this morning. One crashed into Sderot - two women require hospital treatment.

9-Dec-07: Not politics. Survival.

It's endlessly frustrating to us that the very personal experience of suffering fear, pain and loss through the actions of the terrorists isn't better understood outside Israel.

We've heard much the same sort of criticism expressed by non-Israeli victims of terror, regarding people in and outside their societies. The problem is neither unique nor local. It partly comes down to human nature, and partly to the deliberate downplaying of the pain and of the dangers.

Who does this downplaying? Politicians, analysts, people from the media and the terrorists themselves. All of them, in their different ways, need to be educated, re-oriented, criticized and, where appropriate, stopped. Terrorism is analogous to a highly threatening physical illness. You need to find ways to defeat it and quickly. Otherwise it destroys you.

One of Israel's senior politicians has gone public today with a call that is noteworthy more for its
being rare and unusual than for its clarity, accuracy or sense.

Dichter: 250,000 under Qassam threat if we don't act
'Palestinians conducting war of attrition against Negev communities,' internal security minister tells cabinet. 'We must not allow any mistakes that may raise the number of Israeli communities facing the Qassam threat'
Roni Sofer | Published: 12.09.07, 12:35 / Israel News
Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter warned Sunday of a tenfold increase in the number of Israelis subjected to a "war of attrition" should Ashkelon and nearby communities also fall under the threat of Palestinian terror and Qassam rocket fire. "We must check to see where we went wrong and deal with the problem of Sderot if we do not want to face the same problem when Ashkelon, Ofakim and Netivot will enter the cycle of rocket fire and terror," he said during the weekly cabinet meeting. "We must complete the fortification plan for Sderot and the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip." According to him, Palestinian terror organizations, led by Hamas, are "conducting a war of attrition" against Sderot and the rest of the western Negev communities. The minister said the number of Israelis facing the threat of Palestinian terror may increase from 25,000 to 250,000. "Qassam attacks are being carried out daily and we have also seen an increase in mortar fire directed at IDF bases near the Strip," Dichter told the ministers. "Statistics indicating an 8% drop in the number of students in Sderot are extremely worrying. We must not allow any mistakes that may raise the number of Israeli communities facing the Qassam threat." During the cabinet meeting, ministers were updated by IDF Home Front Command officials on the progress made in the fortification of educational and public institutions in the Negev region, which is expected to cost between 1 and 1.5 billion shekels ($258-387 million). The army also presented cabinet members with a fortification plan that would also include Israeli communities such as Ashkelon, Netivot and Ofakim, which are within the range of the Grad missile (range of about 25km) and other surface-to surface missiles the Palestinian terror groups have in their possession. The cost of this plan is estimated at NIS 5.5 billion ($1.4 billion).

The minister says 250,000 people are at risk, but it's actually all Israelis - all 7.1 million of us - who are under direct, concrete threat. Terror doesn't recognize national boundaries, and the Hamas regime in particular has never, not for a moment, made a secret of its goal to destroy this country and remove the Jews who live here. This Hamas press release of less than two weeks ago states the Pal-Arab plan about as clearly as you could want.

Do our comments strike any of our readers as a political viewpoint? The way we see things, in the Middle East conflict and the war of the Arabs against the Jews you can hold just about any viewpoint on the spectrum - and still be totally opposed to the terrorists.

Bernard Lewis, one of the great scholars of the age when it comes to Islam, put the matter sharply and well in an essay called "On the Jewish Question" published just two weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal. Prof. Lewis asks 'What is the conflict about?' and suggests there are two possibilities, and not more. Either "it is about the size of Israel, or about its existence." His analysis is neither political nor complicated:

"If the issue is about the size of Israel, then we have a straightforward border problem, like Alsace-Lorraine or Texas. That is to say, not easy, but possible to solve in the long run, and to live with in the meantime. If, on the other hand, the issue is the existence of Israel, then clearly it is insoluble by negotiation. There is no compromise position between existing and not existing, and no conceivable government of Israel is going to negotiate on whether that country should or should not exist... Without genuine acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State, as the more than 20 members of the Arab League exist as Arab States, or the much larger number of members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference exist as Islamic states, peace cannot be negotiated."

Not politics. Survival.

7-Nov-07: Escalatingly lethal fireworks

Israel, as we routinely note here, has absorbed daily barrages of rockets with what we regard as unbearable restraint. Barrages that the mainstream media largely bury and ignore, but barrages nonetheless, that have cost Israeli lives and brought chaos into cities, towns and homes of southern Israel with barely a murmur of protest from anyone.

During this past year, it's been known that the IDF and the Shin Bet have built their strategy around two red lines. Crossing them would trigger the sort of response that Israel's military can deliver but very strongly prefers not to. Those red lines are: (1) an improvement in the range of the Qassam rockets of the sort that would place the major Israeli city of Ashkelon (population around 108,000) within firing range of the Gazan terrorists. And (2) the development of an ability by the terrorists to store their rockets for longer periods of time.

Haaretz reports this afternoon that one red line has now been crossed, and the other is very close. The paper says "Hamas has recently upgraded its Qassam rocket capability in the Gaza Strip, raising grave concern in the Israeli defense establishment. Senior defense officials say that Hamas is now able to store the rockets for a relatively long period, which would allow the organization to launch a large number of Qassams at one time."

The paper says Hamas had difficulty, until recently, in storing its Qassam rockets. The explosive charge is volatile and can (and does) explode when stored for more than a few weeks.

"This is one of the reasons behind Hamas' haste to launch most of its rockets as soon as it gets them. When firing rockets is politically inconvenient, Hamas hands them over to smaller organizations such as the Islamic Jihad, various Fatah factions and the Popular Resistance Committees to launch them in its place. In previous periods of escalation between Israel and Hamas, such as last year's Independence Day, Hamas fired almost 300 rockets in a few days before running out of supplies."

According to Haaretz, Israel's defense establishment is concerned that Hamas will accumulate an arsenal of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rockets, enabling it to fire hundreds of rockets a day at Sderot for several days and prompting Israel to take extreme measures.

"The improvement in rocket-storage capability followed the entrance into Gaza in recent months of Palestinian terror experts, mostly via the Rafah crossing from Egypt. These experts, members of Islamic organizations, trained with Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon and Iran. Alongside the ability to store rockets for longer periods, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, with Iran's help, are expected to increase the Qassam rockets' 15-kilometer range, which would place Ashkelon and dozens of small communities in the northern and western Negev within rocket range."

As concerned as Israelis are with the clear direction indicated by this report, most of our fellow-citizens would prefer to see the armed forces sit by the sidelines will the perpetrators of daily terror are dealt with in less-intrusive and dangerous ways.

We routinely get hate-mail here "explaining" to us the inherent justification of acts of terror against Israel and Israelis. We understand the hypocrisy and don't let it bother us too much, and the same goes for most other Israelis.

Our point is that when confronted with existential dangers like this one, and when appealing to the sense and morality of onlookers and the world "community" has no effect, you are left with no option but self-help. This has long guided this country's leaders and it looks like we're not far away from the resort to self-help once more. Sadly, that's part of the price of living in an era of uncontrolled terror and widespread ignorance of the price it exacts from civil society.

5-Dec-07: Pal-Aab terror rocket strikes Israeli residence

Yet another Qassam rocket attack on Israel today. This one resulted in a three-storey residential building in southern Israel being hit today (Wednesday) causing heavy damage. Haaretz says several people were left suffering from shock. The rocket hit long-suffering Sderot, a city located close to the sealed border with the Hamas-infested Gaza Strip.

YNet, in a report filed this evening, says the rocket, fired by Palestinian terror groups from Gaza, struck the roof of a private home this evening. It says four people were treated by emergency services for shock, including a 50 year-old who complained of chest pains, and an apartment, home to an elderly couple, suffered damage. Fortunately they escaped serious injury but were treated for shock at the scene.

The Qassam attack happened just as national Teacher's Association chairman Ran Erez was addressing a rally organized by student and teacher organizations as well as various charity groups. The demonstration, held under the banner of 'Enough with the apathy – we're coming to Sderot' was opened with the lighting of a special Hanukkah menorah made of Qassam shells.

In addition to the Qassams, JPost reports that four rounds of mortar fire were directed into Israel from Gaza today, fortunately without causing any actual harm.

Meanwhile the defense minister Ehud Barak, together with IDF's chief of staff Ashkenazi and head of Southern Command Galant, visited soldiers of the IDF's Gaza Division this evening. They were briefed by division commanders on recent operations including the killing this past week and a half of some 30 terrorists in clashes with IDF forces in the area. YNet quotes Barak discussing the possibility of launching an extensive counter-terror campaign in the region with the soldiers: "We know a large-scale operation in Gaza is just a matter of time, but we are not trigger happy… we still consider such an operation a last resort." The defense establishment believes that an IDF operation in Gaza is inevitable, especially considering the growing support for Hamas and other terror organizations in the Strip.

None of this reportage appears in any mainstream news source outside Israel as of this posting. Most people, including those with an interest in developments in the area, have no idea any of this is happening and will be easy prey for the hostile headlines-to-come describing a lack of 'proportion' in Israel's actions. The sight of Israeli children (see picture above) cowering below tables for shelter from incoming rockets will be unknown to them.

3-Dec-07: The murderers are the Pal police. Who'd have guessed?

Three members of the Palestinian Authority police have confessed to the murder of the young father shot to death in his car in a drive-by shooting two weeks ago. (We reported the terror attack in "20-Nov-07: A worrying escalation")

IDF arrests cell that murdered Israeli in West Bank
Palestinian policemen behind shooting of Ido Zoldan two weeks ago apprehended by Israel, Palestinian security forces. 'We told the settler's family that we would reach every cell member – and so we did,' IDF official says | Efrat Weiss Published: 12.03.07, 00:06 / Israel News
The IDF arrested members of a cell responsible for the murder of Ido Zoldan two weeks ago close to the northern West Bank settlement of Kedumim, it was cleared for publication on Sunday. According to army officials, the arrested men are Palestinian policemen from the nearby village of Qadum. The IDF reported that two of the men, Abdullah Braham and Jafar Braham, were arrested on the night of the murder. A third terrorist, Fadi Jama'a, was apprehended by Palestinian security forces. The cell members are all 22 years of age. Security sources said that during their interrogation by Shin Bet the men admitted to committing the murder, and even disclosed the weapon used in the shooting. They said that on the night of the murder they waited by the side of the road for an Israeli car to pass. The gunmen then proceeded to follow Zoltan's vehicle, then opened fire as they went driving passed it. The attack occurred on November 20 at around 11:30 pm near the Palestinian village of Funduk. Magen David Adom paramedics who were called to the site attempted to revive Zoldan, a resident of Shavei Shomron, but pronounced him dead a short while later. An IDF official told Ynet after the cell was captured "Immediately following the murder we told Zoldan's family that and the residents that we would reach every cell member – and so we did. The IDF will continue to hunt down terrorists." Shortly after the attack, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's military wing, announced that it was assuming responsibility for the event. A spokesman for the organization said that the terror attack was "an act of protest against the Annapolis conference and a response to Israeli crimes". Zoldan was survived by his wife Tehila and his two small children, three-year-old Aharon and one-year-old Rachel.

(The Palestinian police officer beating some of his fellow citizens in the photo above is not directly connected to this story. The PA has many violent young men to choose from when it recruits. Despite the evidence of the mayhem caused by adding active terrorists to the ranks of the police, several public figures from outside this area have called on the Palestinians to do more of the same.)

This is what we know to expect from their police. Is there a reason to expect a better outcome when we release their convicted prisoners? 150 of them left Ketziot Prison on their way to the Erez crossing and the Bitunia checkpoint a few hours ago. 143 other Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel ("as part of a goodwill gesture by the Israeli government to the PA") earlier. Some 429 of them will be free on the streets (408 in the West Bank, 21 in Gaza) by the end of today. The convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti says this release is a joke but he's very wrong.

2-Dec-07: If the major media don't report it, did it happen?

We believe a certain proportion of the irrational knee-jerk hostility to Israeli self-defence measures stems from sheer ignorance. Hardly any media channel outside Israel reports the near-daily rocket attacks on Israeli towns, communities, settlements, houses, schools and cars. All of Israeli society ends up paying the price when people - and that includes politicians, journalists and public figures of influence - don't get the basic facts.

This afternoon yet another Qassam rocket landed in an open field in southern Israel close to the Gaza Strip from where it emanated. (See "27-Nov-07: A rocket attack every three hours" for some of the context.) YNet says there were neither injuries nor property damage - but as too many people seem to forget, this was not, and never will be, the intentions of the terror-minded thugs who fire these things. They want to kill. Two additional Qassam rockets struck Israel's western Negev region earlier today. No injuries or property damage there either.

Ynet and Haaretz both report that a Palestinian opened fire at soldiers at the Qalandiya checkpoint north of Jerusalem this afternoon. He arrived at the checkpoint, one of the many which Israel's critics say need to be dismantled in the interests of peace, and pulled out a gun, opening fire at Israeli soldiers. He pulled off two shots before his pistol jammed and IDF forces overcame him. Another Palestinian, waiting at the checkpoint, was injured by the shooting. He's now in hospital for treatment.

As we've noted here, Israelis are especially watchful and edgy (see 25-Nov-07: Heightened anxiety) about escalating terror attacks this past two weeks. Security forces raised the official alert level across Israel to the highest level a week ago. Intelligence reports point to many of the numerous anti-peace factions among the Palestinians (see "Hamas: Jews Out") aiming to pull off a showcase attack in connection with the Annapolis peace conference process. YNet describes how security forces are now deployed in crowded places and hitchhiking posts, both around the seam line area and in city centers. The defense establishment currently has pinpoint intelligence regarding 10 potential terror attacks and general alerts concerning 10 others.

UPDATE: Sunday 5:15pm - Haaretz is reporting that eight mortar shells, fired from the Gaza Strip, have landed near Kibbutz Nahal Oz; no injuries reported. YNet says there were ten mortars. People live and work all over that area.

UPDATE: Sunday 9:30pm - Today's toll of mortars fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip, according to Haaretz, has climbed to fifteen.