Friday, April 25, 2008

25-Apr-08: Gunmen at work

It's been a busy Friday Passover-week morning in this ongoing war.

Israelis driving their vehicle in the Samaria district were attacked early this morning by Palestinians hurling fire-bombs (home-made weapons in the language of the mainstream media). No injuries, thankfully, but that was not the intention of the terrorists.

In the southern city of Ashkelon (home to 110,000 Israelis), three Qassam rockets fired by Gazan-Palestinian-Arabs crashed this morning. One struck a cemetery on the city's southern side, damaging tombstones.

A fourth Friday morning Qassam rocket was fired into Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, not far from Ashkelon. Fortunately no injuries in any of today's Qassam landings.

In the Nitzanei Shalom industrial park (the name means buds of peace), near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the outcome of this morning's terrorism was less banal. Two Israelis who worked there as security personnel were shot dead. Terrorists sent by Islamic Jihad infiltrated the industrial zone overnight and shot them dead at close range. Their intent, it appears, was to carry out a larger massacre, but the factories were shut down and mainly deserted for the Passover week. The dead men are Shimon Mizrahi, 53, of Beit Hefer, and Eli Wasserman, 50, of Alfei Menashe. In August 2002, another Israeli, a truck driver working in that industrial park - Shani Ladani, 27 - was killed, shot dead at close range by Palestinian-Arab terrorists in the same place.

It's unlikely anyone from the mainstream media will pay much attention to this aspect of the killings, but the fact is the industrial park at Nitzanei Shalom was one of nine industrial zones established in 1995 by the government of Israel to provide work and economic advancement for Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

 Seven factories are located today in Nitzanei Shalom. They make cartons, plastic parts, exterminator sprays and other items while coping with an ongoing war against them, brought on by the same sort of logic that leads the Palestinian-Arabs of Gaza to repeatedly attack Israeli fuel-transfer points (for transfer into Gaza) and then wail that there's insufficient fuel.

Some 700 Palestinian-Arabs are today employed in the park where today's killings were carried out. The premises are secured by Israelis like the men murdered this morning.

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