31-Jan-09: Cease. Fire.

Far from the probing eyes and attention of the world's observers, another Palestinian Arab rocket was fired from the northern Gaza Strip into Israel this morning (Saturday). This is the third such firing since a cease-fire was declared on January 18.

Today's rocket crashed into an open area near a kibbutz in the Ashkelon area. (The Israeli authorities prefer not to be too precise about these matters - why tell the terrorist savages how accurate or inaccurate their calculations are?) Fortunately no casualties or damage resulted from the attack. This, of course, was not the intention of those who fired it.

On Thursday, a Gazan rocket was fired into Israel's Sha'ar Hanegev region. On Wednesday another landed in the Eskol region. Both rockets landed in open areas, causing no casualties or damage. But for the people living in the target zone, several hundred thousand of them, the fear of another deadly hit remains a constant in their lives.

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

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

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

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

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

Hello,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But only you can move the wheels of history.

Regards,
Yishai G.

19-Jan-09: Graphic outcome

Scott Stantis gets it.



So does Theo Moudakis.

15-Jan-09: Public Relations and Gaza

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

PR and Gaza
By FRIMET ROTH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once upon a time, reporters wrote words like these:

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

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

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

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

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

11-Jan-09: European pathologies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4-Jan-09: Why Hamas equals terrorism: reminder #79

The entry of Israeli ground forces last night into Gaza came a full week after Israeli planes destroyed some of the most important strategic installations of the Hamas regime.

A week, it needs to be pointed out, in which Israeli forces gradually assembled on the edges of Gaza where it meets southern Israel. A massive, step-by-step build-up of forces. Thousands (we're guessing - this is not 'inside' information) of Israeli service personnel, vast quantities of heavy equipment, the heavy and slow-moving paraphernalia of war.

What exactly did Hamas do during that week?

They don't lack for fighters or equipment. Their strength is formidable. As terrorist organizations go, they have strong, wealthy and dedicated backers, and the terrifying volleys of missiles that were fired into the skies of Israel - missiles that did not grow on the date palms of the Gaza Strip - are evidence of the resources at their disposal.

For a week, they had the Zionist enemy within firing range, just across their back fence. Sitting ducks.

And for a week, all of last week, Hamas did not (as far as we can tell from published reports) fire even a single shot in anger at the assembling masses of Israeli ordnance and fighters a mere stone's throw from their emplacements and towns.

Why not? Because they had far more important targets: the homes and schools and kindergartens and residential suburbs and city centers of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beer Sheva, Kiryat Gat and of course Sderot.

Not just single shots. Not just a missile or two. Entire barrages, dozens of them at a time, at any target in southern Israel they could reach. They didn't discriminate. They didn't care and never do. But shooting at their enemy's soldiers and bases and military equipment - that somehow did not figure in their script.

The Hamas goal then, and for the past eight years of this ongoing war, was the goal that unites practitioners of terror wherever they operate: find the women and children in playgrounds and crosswalks and cafes and restaurants; seek out the elderly quivering in their living rooms and bus shelters. Shoot and bomb the weak and the defenceless. Those are the quality targets. Those are the true objectives. This is what jihad has come to mean for the fanatics who confront and threaten civil society in every part of the world, and who stole the beautiful life of our daughter.

This is why the Hamas jihadists are terrorist thugs, and why they must be stopped.

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

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

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

Melanie Phillips, The Spectator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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