31-Aug-10: Reuters says Hamas praises the murder of four Israeli civilians

In the spirit of paying close attention to what the terrorists say, here is a Reuters report issued in the past hour.

Hamas praises West Bank shooting attack
GAZA | Tue Aug 31, 2010 1:35pm EDT
GAZA Aug 31 (Reuters) - Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip praised a shooting that killed four Israelis in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday but did not claim responsibility for the attack.
"Hamas praises the attack and regards it as a natural response to the crimes of the occupation," said Sami Abu-Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, adding that the attack was proof "of a failure of security coordination" between Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, opposes the peace talks starting in Washington on Wednesday and is not taking part. (Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; editing by Tim Pearce)

We googled Hamas and "natural response". There are more than 3,200 hits at this time. This 'natural response' pose works far better than telling the truth - that the jihadists will do whatever it takes, including sell their own people down the river and impose misery on everything, everyone, within reach in order to express their utter loathing of people who fail to comply with their religious dictates.

Jihadist terror (as My Right Word points out tonight) has been a constant in our relationship with the Arabs, forcefully expressed by the repeated and constant resort to terror throughout the past ninety years up to and including tonight.

31-Aug-10: Once again, the terrorists deliver their message

Israelis know from bitter experience that when Palestinian Arab political leaders are arm-wrestled into taking part in discussions about peace with the Israelis, other Palestinian Arab political leaders will take the opportunity to remind the onlooking world that they are really, really desperate, and will murder Israeli civilians to show just how desperate.


Tragically it's happening again tonight.


In the past hour, at the entrance to the Israeli community of Kiryat Arba, south of Jerusalem, four Israeli civilians were shot dead by Palestinian Arab gunmen. We know less than all the facts at this stage. But we know enough to report that the four, traveling in one car, were probably residents of Beit Hagai, in the Judean Hills south of Hebron. YNet quotes ambulance officers saying the victims include two men aged about 25 and 40, and two women of about the same ages, one of them pregnant. The attackers apparently followed up the initial volley of shots by walking over to the vehicle and shooting the two couples again at close range before fleeing the scene - a cold-blooded, hate-driven execution of innocents. The vehicle was sprayed with dozens of bullets.


The attack took place just as the Ramadan fast was ending at nightfall. Ynet quotes a Palestinian Arab security official saying this is the work of Hamas. It then quotes Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas terrorist spookesperson, saying the attack was not meant to foil direct peace talks starting today in Washington, but that the negotiations had failed even before starting.


Listen to the words of the jihadists: "This is a natural response by the Palestinian resistance to the enemy's crimes, and is proof that despite the resistance's persecution by the security services and despite Israel's crimes, the Palestinians are capable of responding to these crimes. This is proof that the Palestinian resistance is living, breathing, and kicking."


The jihadists speak very clearly. The question is whether the rest of us are listening.


UPDATE Wednesday morning:  The victims of last night's Hamas ambush and executions are Talya and Yitzhak Ames the parents of six children 18-months-old and up; Cochava Even-Haim; and Avishai Schindler. All were residents of Beit Hagai.

30-Aug-10: Norwegian tentacles

When police arrested a suspected al-Qaida cell in Norway last month they turned up the makings of a bomb lab tucked away in a nondescript Oslo apartment building. Officials say the suspected plot against this quiet Nordic country was one of three planned attacks on the West hatched in the rugged mountains of northwest Pakistan by some of al-Qaida's most senior leaders. The other plots targeted the bustling New York subway and a shopping mall in Manchester, England... Authorities say the ringleader of the Norwegian plot is 39-year-old Mikael Davud, an Uighur who came to Norway in 1999 as part of a U.N. refugee program and then became a Norwegian citizen eight years later. Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group in China, claim oppression at the hands of authorities there. Davud was arrested July 8 along with suspected accomplices Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak Bujak, a 37-year-old Iraqi Kurd, and a 31-year-old Uzbek national, David Jakobsen. Both are permanent residents of Norway.
Source: Norway 'Bomb Plot' Underscores al-Qaida Pitfalls (AP/Washington Post)

29-Aug-10: Tentacles into UK

Britain Faces New Terror Wave
Duncan Gardham (Telegraph-UK)
Over the next 5 to 10 years, about 800 prisoners - in jail for non-terrorism offenses - are due to be released after having been radicalized in jail, says Prof. Michael Clarke, head of the Royal United Services Institute, in a report published Friday. They will be joined by convicted terrorists serving short sentences who, once freed, are likely to be just as committed to the cause of jihad as before they were jailed, the report claims. The report serves as a stark reminder that the threat from Islamist terrorism remains "severe," indicating a terrorist attack is considered "highly likely." The level was raised from "substantial" in January...
While previous al-Qaeda tactics involved so-called "spectacular" attacks, the report warns that the terrorist group's leaders, such as Yemeni preacher and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, are encouraging individuals to launch less sophisticated but equally deadly attacks on crowded places. Their targets have also changed from concentrating on aircraft to including attacks on trains, hotels and sporting events.
More

27-Aug-10: The tentacles of the terrorists

Suspected terrorist (left) in previous media appearance

Far from our borders this time, a couple of home truths about terrorism and terrorists.

“They exist not only in remote countries but through globalization and the Internet, they have links in our country and all through the world...”  - Prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper.

“To hear how well organized they appeared to be, and connected internationally... is quite scary...”  - Anthony Seaboyer, head of proliferation security research at Queen’s University Centre for International Relations, Canada

The Canadians are right. The terror networks do have a global reach. All of us, along with our children, are in the cross-hairs of their religiously-inspired, barbaric plots.

The published comments come in the wake of arrests yesterday in Canada by the Royal Candian Mounted Police. Three home-grown terrorist suspects are charged with plotting to make and detonate improvised explosive devices as well as financing terror groups operating in Afghanistan. A full report is here. The targets of the terror plot, presumably located in Canada, have not yet been publicized - that information is to come out in court.

Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh, 30, and Misbahuddin Ahmed, 26, were arrested in Ottawa, and Khurram Syed Sher, 28, in London, Ont. The plot stretches back to Iran, Pakistan and Dubai - and no, we're not expecting the zealous legal enforcement authorities in Dubai to show quite the energy they displayed in a recent murder investigation with an Israel connection.

A McGill medical school graduate and resident, and pathologist in a hospital near London, Ontario, Sher has recently been studying pathology at Ontario's St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital. He attracted publicity by an appearance on Candian Idol, a television talent quest. He's likely to get more publicity now.

It's odd, to those of us who think in conventional terms, that some terrorists are doctors. And television personalities.

20-Aug-10: Some more things that Hamas is good at

Lauren Booth empathizing with Gaza's hungry masses

Yesterday we wrote about one thing that Hamas is really good at. Readers of this blog know we make no secret about belonging to the camp that holds that Hamas is extremely bad at a long list of things. (We have our reasons.) The Hamas leadership is among the ugliest to have ever ground its foot on the heads of the people it pretends to lead.

Now, today, there are small signs of a public pushing back by some of those Palestinian Arab Gazans. How much of a push-back remains to be seen.

Homeless Gazans seize Hamas government building 

By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Fri Aug 20, 2010 10:25am GMT
GAZA (Reuters) - Forty families whose houses were destroyed in conflict with Israel took over a building belonging to Gaza's Hamas rulers this week in a sign of dissatisfaction with the Islamist movement's failure to provide shelter. Angered by living in tents for two winters and now baking in the midst of an intense heat wave, the squatters took over the unfinished apartment house and have already resisted one police effort to evict them. "The heat and cold hurt our children. Where are you?" read a banner pasted on the wall of the building, in the first overt move against government property since Hamas seized power strip in 2007, ousting forces loyal to the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Bassam Jamil, one of the squatters, said 43 families had moved into the building which was still under construction in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip. It belongs to the Hamas-run housing ministry. "We have lost faith that anyone will rebuild our homes. We have taken shelter in the building from the heat in the tents we've been living in," Jamil said. Thousands of homes and factories were destroyed by Israeli bombing and shelling in a 3-week offensive in Dec-Jan 2008-09 against Hamas militants, to stop them firing rockets at Israeli towns close to the Gaza Strip. International donors pledged nearly $5 billion in reconstruction aid but no money has arrived, partly because of the feud between Hamas and Fatah. Israel's blockade of the territory also restricts supplies of cement and steel, which it says could be used for military purposes by Hamas. Earlier this week, Hamas police tried to evict the families but were confronted with resistance by women and children. The building has 44 unfinished apartments. The squatters say they are still better than tents. They have fitted their own doors and are now asking city authorities to turn on electricity and water.

The Gazans, as opposed to most of the world's media, know perfectly well that Gaza is not "the world's largest prison". Far from it. The narrow coastal strip has sleek restaurants, luxurious stores, extravagant villas, current model cars, a lavish lifestyle... but this, of course all depends on who you are. But why spend so many words on explaining. Let the images speak for themselves. Please spend 8 minutes watching a video that will place today's anti-Hamas demo into perspective and, by way of bonus, perhaps might also provide a different way of thinking about that thoughtful and dedicated human rights activist Lauren Booth.

The video clip is here. You might be surprised by what you see.



Hamas is good at selling out its own people. It's very good at sacrificing the future of its subjects' children in the name of bitter age-old hatreds and prejudice. And it is simply outstanding, world class, at denying reality and forcing a vicious religious ideology down the throats of simple people.

19-Aug-10: What's Hamas good at?

Try it

In a little-noted but sadly familiar incident, the Gaza City clinic of the French medical organization HELP Doctors was raided by men from the Islamic terror organization Hamas on Tuesday morning. The French say the clinic's equipment and files were seized. It had previously been ordered closed by the Islamist Hamas regime after caring for some 5,000 patients since it opened in April 2009. Its role had been to provide free health care to diabetics, according to the organization's announcement. HELP Doctors said the closure "violates international humanitarian law."

Back in January 2009, the French medics had a different sense of Gaza's reality: "They were "utterly shocked" by the situation on the ground in the Gaza Strip [this report said at the time]. Several of the doctors said they could not believe "the overuse of power by the Israeli army" while another said he saw "internationally forbidden weaponry [used] against civilians."

While they're waiting for the international humanitarian law police to show up and take their statement, someone might point out to the idealistic, dis-equipped French that the goons of Hamas have never had the slightest compunction about undermining, destroying or hampering outside efforts to do for the Palestinian Gazan Arabs what the Hamas regime itself does not.

They have, for instance, frequently rocketed the very Israeli power stations that deliver energy to Gaza [video clip here].

To get a sense of what Hamas is really good at, we suggest Googling the expression "Hamas vows revenge". We did it just now. There are about 76,000 matches.

17-Aug-10: Right under the UN's noses

An uncommonly plain-spoken report from Associated Press says what Israelis have known for some time, and which is going to continue to be un-noticed and not acted upon by people outside of Israel until it's too late:

... Hezbollah is moving fighters and weapons into the villages of south Lebanon, building up a secret network of arms warehouses, bunkers and command posts in preparation for war. The Israeli military has begun releasing detailed information about what it calls Hezbollah's new border deployment, four years after a cross-border raid by its guerrillas triggered a 34-day war... Hezbollah, which is armed by Iran and Syria and is more powerful than the Lebanese military, stayed out of the Aug. 3 fight. But its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, threatened that he would intervene next time. He has also said that if war breaks out again his forces will fire rockets into Tel Aviv. Neither side has signaled that another war is imminent, but the Israelis' unusual openness about what they claim to know of Hezbollah's preparations seems to have two goals: to show the reach of their intelligence, and to stake their claim that if another war breaks out and many civilians die, it will be because Hezbollah placed its armaments and fighters in their midst. 
Israel's military says Hezbollah has changed strategy since the last war, moving most of its fighters and weapons from wooded rural areas into villages. It says the aim is to avoid detection and use to civilians for cover if war erupts. The military says all of this exists under the nose of 12,000 international peacekeepers who, by their own count, conduct up to 340 patrols a day in south Lebanon but are hobbled by a hostile population and rules preventing them from searching private property.

Reading the text of the infamous - but unanimous - UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006, purportedly ending the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, feels now like the most cynical of bad jokes.

And as Israelis are only too aware, the threat in the south is no less active.

The IDF fired on two suspects Monday (says YNet) as they were busy planting an explosive device near the security fence intended to keep jihadists in place on the Gazan side and away from Israeli civilians and settlements. A soldier sustained shrapnel injuries when an already-planted explosive hidden near the fence went off. Israeli fire resulted in the death of one of the Gazan-Palestinian-Arab terrorists who, according to Haaretz, was Basem Da'ama (YNet has his name as Bassem Dragma.) This was an Islamic Jihad terrorist who took part in an exchange of fire during March 2010 that led to the deaths of IDF soldiers Eliraz Peretz and Ilan Sviatkovsky.

13-Aug-10: Did Israel use illegal chemical weapons to deal with terrorists?

For those of us troubled by the way norms accepted by the global community are trampled underfoot by a well-connected, highly-ideological central government, there's a truly horrible story emerging today via the German media. It  involves breaches of international law beyond, it has to be said, any reasonable doubt about who did what to whom.

Yet again, a weak but determined minority find their efforts to assert a fragile independence crushed via the brutality of an arrogant government willing to go to any lengths. Der Spiegel magazine's current edition lays it out in simple but sickening terms:

"German experts have confirmed the authenticity of photographs that purport to show Palestinian fighters killed by chemical weapons. The evidence puts increasing pressure on the Israeli government, which has long been suspected of using such weapons against Palestinian militants. German politicians are demanding an investigation... It would be difficult to exceed the horror shown in the photos, which feature burned, maimed and scorched body parts. The victims are scarcely even recognizable as human beings."

Read the whole appalling piece here. When you do, you may quickly realize that the story does not concern Palestinians or Israelis, despite the slightly doctored text and illustration above. [Clue: It's about what the Turks have done and are doing to the Kurds.]

The original undoctored Reuters image is at
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,711536,00.html

Now that you know the real elements of this horrifying abuse of power and breach of international norms, let's ask a few questions:

• Where is the international outrage? Is the BBC covering this? The New York Times? CNN? [As of now, the answer is no.]
• If those who grew apoplectic over the events on board the Mavi Marmara in June see the grotesque actions of the Turks as somehow less report-worthy, are they being challenged to answer why?
• If the outrage of international organs like the UN Security Council, Human Rights Watch, global church groups, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and others is so blatantly selective and does not extend to demanding the Erdogan regime gives an account for its actions, then how authentic is their outrage when it's directed at Israel as it so often (out of all proportion) is?

If you check Google News online right now, as we just did, you are likely to find that no news publication other than Der Spiegel, who broke the story, along with several Israeli sources, have published anything about this. 

Here is the Jerusalem Post's Benjamin Weinthal reporting from Germany:

"A forensic report from Hamburg University Hospital confirmed that the eight Kurds had been murdered by “the use of chemical substances. Turkish Kurdish human rights members delivered photos in March to a delegation of German politicians, Turkey specialists, and journalists. The bodies in the photos were severely deformed and torn to pieces; the photos formed the basis for the forensic report. Hans Baumann, a German expert on the authenticity of photos, confirmed that photos had not been doctored. The eight Kurdish PKK members were killed last September. The 31 photos, according to German media, are so disturbing that news organizations have been reluctant to publish them. The murdered PKK rebels – two women and six men – range in age from 19 to 33."

 Let's see what else we can learn in the coming days from the German spotlight on this atrocity.

9-Aug-10: We, bereaved families, must remind Israelis what releasing prisoners entails

One of this blog's authors has an op-ed in today's Jerusalem Post. Its publication marks the ninth anniversary of the savage massacre on 9th August 2001 by Hamas agents in the center of Jerusalem at the Sbarro restaurant. Our daughter Malki was one of the people murdered there that day. We are determined that her memory will not be erased.

Nine years after the Sbarro massacre
By FRIMET ROTH 

A version of this article was first published in the Jerusalem Post (online 9-Aug-10; print edition 10-Aug-10)

We, the bereaved families who feel the pain of terror every day must remind Israelis what 'releasing prisoners' for Gilad Schalit entails.

It's been nine years since my daughter Malki was murdered in the suicide bombing of Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant and terrorism denial is still rampant.

Foreign diplomats may still preface their complaints against Israel with the formulaic "Israel has some genuine security concerns and they have to be met." But after that obligatory line, most feel free to attack Israel with no holds barred.

Some of Israel's home-grown critics don't even bother with such political correctness. Our security is no longer a justified concern in their view and they have no compunction about saying so. Suicide bombers? Intifada? Israeli terror victims? Not in their history books.

Writing recently in Haaretz, columnist Merav Michaeli described a variety of possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her conclusion?  It is incumbent upon us to "want to live in peace. Not in security, but in peace."  Her column was even entitled "Not in Security, but Peace" in case the message was not clear enough.

Terrorism denial is the foundation on which the Free Gilad Schalit campaign has been built. At some point, its legitimate effort to pressure all involved parties to free Schalit was hijacked. Today its goal is nothing short of maligning and undermining Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his unwillingness to release every last prisoner demanded by Hamas.

This campaign could not have galvanized so many - some estimate 200,000 joined its eleven-day march to Jerusalem last month - without the groundwork laid by terrorism denial. Were the faces of the 1,000 innocent Israelis murdered during the second intifada still fresh in Israelis' minds, warnings about the dangers of a mass prisoner release would not be dismissed as casually and as persistently as they are being now.

The statistics are chilling. According to government numbers, some 45 percent of released terrorists return to terrorism, while the rate of recidivism among Hamas members is 63%. And yet these numbers impact fewer and fewer Israelis.

Instead we hear Mayor Yoel Levi of Ramle, in an address to the Schalit march participants, calling the warnings against a prisoner release "scaremongering".

And we hear Noam Schalit, Gilad’s father, refer to them as "doomsday scenarios from twenty-five years ago."

In the current climate of terrorism denial, such attitudes gain traction with ease. It is left to the bereaved families to fight this dangerous phenomenon. We, who feel the pain of terrorism every minute of every day, must remind Israelis what "releasing the prisoners" to free Gilad Schalit entails. We must refresh the short collective memory of who those prisoners are, what they did and what can we expect them to do in the future.

Ahlam Tamimi is one prisoner that Hamas wants freed. As a woman, she garners much sympathy for their cause. The mere mention of "woman" and "prison" in one sentence is a surefire tearjerker.

But here are the facts. Tamimi is a mega-terrorist. She is responsible for the deaths of fifteen men, women and children, all of them civilians. She transported 10 kg of explosives hidden in a guitar case into west Jerusalem, handed them to her accomplice and escorted him through the city center disguised as a Western tourist. She led him to the target she herself had selected, an eatery filled with families eating lunch. She then warned her "weapon" to wait fifteen minutes before he detonated the bomb - allowing her enough time to escape unharmed.

After her conviction, Tamimi smiled with pleasure upon learning from an interviewer how many children she murdered. She told Ynet: "I am not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel’s existence… Discussions will only take place after Israel recognizes that this is Islamic land.” She has served only six years out of sixteen consecutive life terms.

Does any rational human being believe that this monster will enroll in a flower arranging course when she is released? Or sit at home writing a novel?

Former prisons commissioner Orit Adato, a staunch advocate of selective release of security prisoners, maintains that some prisoners must remain imprisoned. When asked "Do you think it is possible to rehabilitate the 'ideological' security prisoners?" she replied: "Not the hard core cases."

But neither expert views nor cold statistics are welcome by those eager for a mass prisoner release.

An extraterrestrial landing on earth for the first time would be forgiven for thinking that Netanyahu himself is holding Gilad Schalit captive. In a July 31 speech, marking the 1,500th day of Gilad's captivity, Noam Schalit addressed Netanyahu regarding his son: "Stop abusing him" he said, adding "A captive soldier is not a piece of real estate."

The truth is, Netanyahu has agreed to release 450 prisoners in negotiations with Hamas and another 550 unilaterally as a gesture to the Palestinian Authority. The 450 to Hamas includes over 100 terrorists who murdered more than 600 Israelis. Netanyahu has only refused to release the "mega-terrorists," those responsible for the six most horrific terror attacks of the second intifada.

However Netanyahu's concessions have not won him any friends among the Free Schalit activists. Nor did his call to the international community "to line up alongside the State of Israel and our unequivocal and just demand that our abducted soldier be returned immediately" impress them. They want nothing short of the fulfillment of every Hamas demand.

And with the Israeli media's unstinting support, the chances are they will ultimately win the government's acquiescence.

Columnists and reporters alike have stooped to absurd hyperbole in their coverage of the Schalit campaign.  Haaretz's Yoel Marcus wrote last month of the march: "It was the most spontaneous, humane and impressive demonstration ever held here. At the risk of sounding schmaltzy, it was good to see the face of the beautiful Israeli."

Here is "the face of a beautiful Israeli" I would like this country to see today. It’s the face of a fifteen-year-old girl who cared passionately about disabled children and volunteered with them in myriad settings. Who loved and nurtured her own profoundly disabled sister unconditionally. Who studied the flute for years and played classical music on it that brought tears to my eyes. Who kept a diary throughout the last year of her life in which she detailed her activities in school and in her youth movement. Who recorded alongside those anecdotes the names of the victims of every terror attack perpetrated that year. Whose wish for the coming new year, which she did not live to see, was that her family remain close and supportive of one another. It is the face of my daughter, Malki, z"l.

On August 9th for the last eight years, I have urged others to remember the Sbarro bombing and its fifteen victims. One of them was Malki. Five others were the members of one family, a mother, father and three of their eight children. Another victim was an only child who was pregnant with what would have been her parents' first grandchild. One of the "injured," not even counted among the fifteen dead, is a young mother who has remained in a deep coma since that day.

This year, I beg you not only to remember them but to also to remind another person, someone who may have fallen prey to terrorism denial.
...

The author is a freelance writer in Jerusalem. She and her husband founded the Malki Foundation (www.kerenmalki.org) in memory of their daughter Malki who was murdered in the Sbarro restaurant massacre in 2001.

Thank you to the good people of CIF Watch for publishing a reminder today of Malki's life. Also, to Carl in Jerusalem who wrote last week on his Israel Matzav site on the day we commemorated the ninth anniversary according to the Hebrew calendar.

8-Aug-10: Mid East oil potentates look on as Gaza's sole power plant shuts down

We're witnessing one of those too-rare moments where the undoubted suffering of ordinary Arabs is 100% caused again by the arrogance and apathy of their own leaders.

The difference this time is that no rational onlooker can fix the blame on Israel.

There's a striking irony about yesterday's shut-down: in the midst of a fierce heat-wave impacting Israel and our neighbours, Gaza's air-conditioners are dead because... they don't have enough oil. Oil.

Here's the AP report:

Engineers shut down Gaza City's sole power plant on Saturday because of a lack of fuel, switching off electricity to some half a million people in the midst of a heat wave. The fuel for the plant is supplied by the rival Palestinian government in the West Bank, which says it has reduced shipments because Gaza's Hamas government is behind on payments... For the past few months the plant has supplied just six to 10 hours of power a day because of the ongoing problems with getting enough fuel from the West Bank government... Gazans who can afford to buy generators use them to supplement the shortage. The noisy machines crowd the sidewalk and fill the air with gasoline fumes in Gaza City's commercial district. But a complete power cut is expected to deepen the misery in Gaza, where residents have suffered through a sweltering heat wave — severe even by the standards of this hot, dry seaside enclave. Temperatures have soared well over 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) for the past few weeks. Gaza's rulers, the militant Islamic group Hamas, are meant to collect utility bills and send the cash to their rivals, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which use it to buy the fuel.

Full story here.

Fo the record, as Ynet points out, the plant provides 20% of Gaza's power, mainly to Gaza City. The rest of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip gets its electricity from Egypt and Israel.

"The power plant has been shut down three times in the past for similar reasons. Gaza's Hamas rulers are meant to collect the utility bills and the rival Western-backed Palestinian Authority is supposed to buy the fuel. [But] Hamas isn't sending enough money. The militant group [of course] denies the charge."

Reminder: For years, Hamas has been intermittently rocketing the very Ashkelon power station that produces power for Gaza.

3-Aug-10: Were they on the Lebanese side? We mean the IDF soldiers, not the Reuters editors

Below is a screen shot of a Reuters image that is being used by media channels all round the world right now. The caption reads: "Israeli soldier is seen on crane | An Israeli soldier is seen on a crane on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border near Adaisseh village, southern Lebanon August 3, 2010. Israeli artillery shelled the Lebanese village on Tuesday, wounding two people, after Lebanese Army troops fired warning shots at Israeli soldiers along the usually quiet but tense frontier, witnesses said".

Let's hope the Reuters fact-checking people and picture editors have done a better job than on those previous occasions involving Israel where Reuters ended up with red faces. Because from what we have been hearing, the tree cutting and general maintenance being done by the IDF soldiers in the images was co-ordinated ahead of time with the UNIFIL offiers, and took place on the Israeli side of the so-called Blue Line.

3-Aug-10: A reminder of how much terror the Lebanese have visited upon us before today

A long, depressing list.

And the even more depressing perpetrators (below): the Iran-funded, Iran-nurtured Hezbollah jihadists who today constitute the central and most important element in the tensions and terror that plague Israel's northern border.

3-Aug-10: Minutes before the shooting broke out today

The upper of the two images on the right (from AP) is captioned: "A Lebanese soldier holds his rifle as Israeli troops patrol the border fence in the southern border village of Adaisseh, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010. Lebanon and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border Tuesday in the most serious clashes since a fierce war four years ago."

The Israelis are the soldiers in the background, on their own side of the fence, working with a mechanical mobile crane to install something (according to some reports, a camera.) The distance between the two forces could hardly be closer.

By the way, how odd do you think it that newsagency photographers AND offiers from UNIFILwere present as the Lebanese took position, aimed, and eventually fired?

The lower image, more or less a counterpart to the first, shows the broader picture. It's captioned: "An Israeli soldier is seen on a crane on the Lebanese side of the Lebanese-Israeli border near Adaisseh village, southern Lebanon August 3, 2010. Israeli artillery shelled the Lebanese village on Tuesday, wounding two people, after Lebanese Army troops fired warning shots at Israeli soldiers along the usually quiet but tense frontier, witnesses said."

Meanwhile the day is wearing on and so is the shooting and rising tension. A few minutes ago (Tuesday 4:00pm Israel time), the IDF spokesperson's office issued a statement laying out its view of what has been going on up north. Around the middle of the day, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) fired on an IDF position along the Lebanese border in northern Israel, says the IDF spokesperson. The force was inside Israeli territory, carrying out routine maintenance that had been co-ordinated with the United Nations force in the area, UNIFIL. The location of the clash is east of Metula, an Israeli town. The incident occurred west of the internationally recognized "Blue Line" (the border between Israel and Lebanon) and east of the security fence. In other words, the attack was made on Israeli soldiers operating inside Israeli territory.

The statement says IDF forces returned fire with light arms right away, aiming at the LAF forces. The IDF also used artillery fire, and shortly after that, an Israel Air Force (IAF) helicopter fired at the LAF Battalion Command Center in Al-Taybeh, damaging several LAF armored combat vehicles. It closes with the traditional life-must-go-on formulation: "The Israeli public in the Galilee region to carry on with their routine way of life."

Routine, this surely is not.

There is considerable tension here, given what Israeli intelligence has been saying for months: the Lebanese and the Hizbullah forces are equipped with tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, targeting our cities, towns and homes. We blogged about this two weeks ago - read "20-Jul-10: Protecting the lives of ordinary people... who happen to be Arabs", and please view the video there.

3-Aug-10: Shooting and sounds of explosions on Israel-Lebanon border for past 2 hours

It's too early to be able to put things into a responsible perspective, but it's clear that a non-trivial flare-up of hostilities broke out on the Israel-Lebanon border within the past two hours. This comes a day after terrorists fired rockets into Israel's southern-most reaches.

The little we can say at this stage from a variety of partial sources is that Israeli and Lebanese (not Hizbullah) forces exchanged heavy fire, with massive explosions being reported in the general region of Israel's northern border; according to one source, all the explosions are on the Lebanese side of the fence. An IDF statement issued in the last few minutes says IDF soldiers "were on routine activity in Israeli territory, in an area that lies between the 'blue line' (the internationally recognized border between Israel and Lebanon) and the security fence, and thus within Israeli territory" when the shooting began from the Lebanese side.

IDF soldiers were performing routine operations in a border-area enclave within Israeli territory when, according to YNet, they came under fire. Residents throughout the northern areas of Israel, familiar with what it means to live in the shadow and firing range of missile-rich enemy forces, have been instructed by Israeli Home Command to enter their secured rooms and bomb shelters.

2-Aug-10: When they try to convince you the Qassams are not a serious threat...

Think of these scenes below when some journalist or editor tries to convince you (as happens chronically in some parts of the media) the Qassams are not a serious threat. The video shows the facility we mentioned in 1-Aug-10 More Incoming Qassams. The good people at Sderot Media Center say the hydrotherapy rehab center at Sapir College provides therapy and workshops for special-needs adults and children from the Western Negev. The incoming Qassam totally destroyed it. Don't overlook the shrapnel holes.

2-Aug-10: More rockets, more sources, more targets - same ongoing war

Eilat - the hotel zone

The reports this morning (Monday) are still not entirely coherent. But it's clear that someone, somewhere, has given the instruction for the jihadists across the fence to increase the stakes.

This is not happening in a vacuum. We (but not the mainstream media) have reported on a steady shower of Qassams, Grads, mortars and other projectiles fired by the terrorists of Hamas-occupied Gaza into anything Israeli over the past few days. [They don't care what or whom they hit, damage, injure or kill. This is exactly why they qualify to be called terrorists. There is no larger strategy.]

In the past few hours, several rockets evidently originating in Egyptian-controlled Sinai were fired in the general direction of the southern Israeli holiday resort of Eilat. Two (according to the Jerusalem Post) fell into the Red Sea; two more crashed into Jordan and did real damage; one landed in the vicinity of Eilat, fortunately in an open area just north of the hotels zone.

YNet is reporting that the one that reached Jordan landed near the Intercontinental Hotel in Aqaba. AFP says, quoting Jordan's interior minister, that it was a Grad-type rocket and that it injured four people, one of them seriously. Our readers will remember that a Grad was fired into Ashkelon this past Friday, narrowly missing a high-rise apartment complex. Grads are not so common in these parts, though it seems we had better start getting used to them.

Eilat, Israel's most popular tourist city, is hardly a stranger to terror attacks though the editors at the BBC give the impression that they think otherwise. In its inimitable style, BBC World is currently reporting that "Eilat, which is a popular tourist resort, has largely been spared from rocket and other attacks."

Well, not exactly. This past April, two rockets landed in Eilat and in Aqaba which abuts it. In 2005, a rocket fired from Jordan landed next to Eilat airport and two others missed a US Navy vessel docked in the port of Aqaba. Someone claimed credit in the name of "Al-Qaida", whatever that means, but the culprits have never been conclusively identified. A Palestinian bomber killed three men working at an Eilat bakery in January 2007. Both Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs (one of Arafat's enduring contributions to the culture of the Palestinian Arabs) claimed the credit for that attack.

1-Aug-10: More incoming Qassams

Idealized image of a Qassam rocket as a gift
being delivered to us Israelis, depicted
on the Hamas Al Qassam website [www.alqassam.ps]
ThisOngoingWar.blogspot.com

A Qassam rocket fired by terrorists in northern Gaza Saturday night crashed into the roof of a regional therapy center for people with disabilities, located in the Shaar Hanegev area, near Sderot. Fortunately there are no reports of injury. YNet quotes a firefighter, seeing smoke billowing from the building: "I have no doubt that had there been people in the building – it would have been a major disaster. It's a miracle..." Serious damage was caused to the building, according to Haaretz which reports that the structure's rooftop and most of the second floor of the building were destroyed.

[For the record, this was the fourth time - according to YNet - that the western Negev rehabilitation center took direct hits from incoming jihadist-terror rockets. The facility serves children with special needs, disabled IDF veterans, victims of terrorist attacks, and post-traumatic stress disorder patients.]

Tonight's rocket fire comes after the IDF responded to Friday's daytime rocket attacks on Israeli civilians from jihadist Gaza. We reported that here: 30-Jul-10: Firing on Ashkelon again

During Friday night, IDF aircraft mounted a pinpoint aerial attack on targets in Gaza during which a well-known Hamas figure, Issa Abdul-Hadi Al-Batran, was reportedly killed. An Iranian news-site calls him one of Hamas' commanders. AFP is a little more precise, terming him "a senior field commander". UPI says he was "a senior Hamas military commander and had survived five previous attempts on his life by Israeli forces". Maan News, a Palestinian Arab source, calls him the leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades. The Guardian reports that he was also a rocket-maker, adding that the targets hit in Friday night's air strike included a military training camp in Gaza City, smuggling tunnels under Gaza's closed border with Egypt and Al-Batran's shack on the outskirts of the Nusseirat refugee camp.