For, we can hear the reporter highlighting an underlying common feeling that Israel should be passive in the face of 700+ rocket attacks for the year and the Israeli view that keeping a million Israeli civilians under harassing artillery attack is intolerable and justifies targetting terrorist infrastructure, operations and leaders in defence of Israel's civilians:
It would be helpful to see the pattern of rocket hits in recent days coming from Gaza:
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| The pattern of rocket strikes from Gaza (Fr Haaretz) |
Well known UK Journalist and Author, Melanie Phillips, gives some background:
[H]ere we go again. In the four days from Saturday until yesterday, Islamic terrorists under the Hamas umbrella fired more than 120 rockets from Gaza at Israeli civilians, along with a number of mortar shells. Some hit civilian homes and factories; some civilians were lightly wounded and others treated for shock. Some million or so inhabitants of southern Israel have been under siege from such attacks for years, with air raid sirens giving people just a few seconds to find shelter. If there weren’t so many shelters, there would be more casualties.
None of this has caused the slightest concern in Britain or the west. The rocket attacks have barely been reported. But today, Israel finally took action. In a targeted drone strike on Gaza it killed Ahmed Jabari, the leader of Hamas’s military wing and second-in-command of the Iranian proxy al-Qassam Brigades, a man who was linked to hundreds of terror operations and human bomb attacks over several decades, and his second-in-command, Raed Al Attar.
If you look at the video footage of the strike, you can see the care the Israelis took to avoid other casualties, waiting until the terror commanders’ car had passed other traffic before striking it.
Rocket attacks on Israelis are not news; Israeli military action to defend Israel against such attacks is. Suddenly, media indifference has been transformed into media hyperactivity. And in the eyes of the British media and foreign office Israel is at fault; astoundingly, it is apparently Israel which is responsible for inflaming the situation, not the Palestinians. Never mind the 120 rockets in four days or the 50 further rockets this evening, including 17 Grads fired at the city of Beersheva; or that since the beginning of 2011, 1,100 rocket have been fired on Israeli targets, 797since the beginning of this year; or that a staggering 5274 rockets have been fired from Gaza at southern Israel since 2006 (what’s that – you had absolutely no idea about the scale of these attacks? Of course not – the British media haven’t bothered to report them. Didn’t you know? Israeli victims don’t count – especially when not enough of them actually die to meet the British definition of ‘proportionality’).
Never mind the fact that this current round of violence started when an Israeli Defence Force jeep was attacked by an anti-tank missile, wounding four IDF soldiers. Never mind that Hamas have hidden rocket launchers under civilian homes in Gaza, thus once again turning the Palestinian population into human shields . . .She adds, tellingly:
Israeli forces are also targeting terrorist weapons stockpiles in Gaza; it has been reported that the Israeli Air Force struck a suspected stockpile of advanced Fajr 5 missiles smuggled into Gaza from Iran. Doubtless the BBC and Foreign Office think that Iran’s involvement in smuggling in such missiles aimed at murdering civilians is not an escalation of hostilities -- but destroying these missiles and thus protecting innocent people from being murdered is.In addition, there has been talk of Hamas using anti-aircraft missiles against Israeli aircraft. Where did these come from? Libya, from the stockpile of reportedly 20,000 such held by Ghaddaffi, many of which have been smuggled out to terrorists.
So, we are seeing an interconnected pattern of conflict, from Libya to Iran and doubtless beyond to Afghanistan.
Blend in the Iranian nuke weapons programme approaching the "red line" within months, the rise of an openly hostile Muslim Brotherhood based regime in Egypt, the Syrian civil war with the Iranians backing the Government and Al Qaeda linked Jihadists many insurrectionists.
Toss in the Syrian Chemical weapon stockpile and the still smouldering Benghazi and wider embassy attacks -- we should not be unduly distracted by an oh so conveniently timed sex scandal that takes key possible witnesses [and, more importantly, experienced decision-makers] off the table -- and we can see a very broad pattern at work.
The IslamIST winter in the Middle East is brewing up quite a perfect storm. END
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F/N: To track and understand the ever-volatile Middle East and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, I suggest:
Jerusalem Online (daily) Video News
Michael Totten
Jerusalem Post
Arutz Sheva
Haaretz
Al Jazeera
ICEJ News
Understanding the underlying spiritual, geo-strategic and geo-political issues behind the Middle East conflict and the Romans 1-style breakdown and decadence of our civilisation
Balancing and rounding out our views on the history of modern Israel
A balancing reference on "myths vs corrective facts" on the Arab-Israeli conflict
The Red Line to nukes and the global threat of Iranian Mahdism
If/when terrorism strikes where you are . . . run, hide or fight if you have to
