…If there was no rocket fire from this non-disputed enclave, there would be no Israeli response, and nobody would be dying. The sorry fact is that both before and after Israels withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, terrorists in the coastal enclave have been firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel, gloating when they maim Israelis and crying foul to the international community when Israel hits back and, inadvertently, hurts the Gaza civilians whom the terror groups have placed in harms way.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
08 July ’14..

Israel’s formal counter to the missile war waged against us by the terrorists of Hamas now has a name as of midnight this past night: Operation Tzuk Eitan [Hebrew: מבצע צוק איתן] which the IDF is translating as Protective Edge.

It’s been a violent and dangerous day, and there’s no reason to think the acts of terror from Hamas and the other jihad-minded grouplets in its domain are about to taper off. Quite the contrary.

This evening, there’s an indication of how dangerous this can be, with the report an hour ago of a failed infiltration by Palestinian Arab terrorists in the vicinity of Kibbutz Zikim (main outputs: mangos, avocados. dairy products, polyurethane) on the Mediterranean sea shore a few kilometers north of the northwestern end of the Gaza Strip. Israel Radio’s news report says they came by sea and were met with fire from an IDF force: an IDF soldier was lightly injured in the exchange. Police, according to Times of Israel

have been deployed in great numbers to the area to prevent additional infiltration attempts from the Gaza Strip into Israel. [Times of Israel tonight]

At Israel National News, they say four infiltrators were killed but the authorities are taking no chances that there might be others as yet undetected. So the roads to and around Zikim are now closed.

Tzeva Adom incoming rocket warning sirens were heard throughout Israel’s central metropolis earlier this evening: Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Kfar Shmaryahu, Rishon Letzion, Nes Tziona, Beit Shemesh, Rehovot, Gadera, the Gezer region, Yavne and other communities. Israel National News says there was a barrage of “several rockets“, and that the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system made one or more mid-flight hits. No damage has yet been reported. That report says these were M75 rockets, “a domestic creation produced by Hamas in Gaza which features a long range“, launched from Beit Hanoun in Gaza. At Times of Israel, they say Palestinian Islamic Jihad

has taken responsibility for the rocket fire on Tel Aviv. The rocket was most likely an M-75, which is made in Gaza and based on the Iranian Fajr rocket.

(Continue)
http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/8-jul-14-look-back-at-day-so-far.html
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…Now let the IDF deal robustly with the people behind the indiscriminate shooting of rockets against Israeli civilians. Without outside interference. So that everyone has a chance for a more peaceful future.

Ilya Meyer..
Times of Israel..
08 July ’14..

Fatah to Israel: Prepare your body-bags.

Obama to Israel: Fatah is a partner for peace.

Obamas words came on the same day as Fatahs body-bag warning

Lets understand the background: Hamas, Jihad Islami and other terrorists in Gaza have been attacking Israeli civilians with rockets, sometimes at a rate of up to one per minute.

But thats nothing new since January this year Gaza terrorists from the Hamas unity government have fired more than 450 missiles at exclusively civilian targets in Israel. Of course, that figure doesnt include the 12,000 missiles that the Gaza terrorists fired at Israeli civilians in the previous 9 years.

Read that again, slowly: one rocket every 60 seconds landing on a school, hospital, apartment building, road. And the world community speaks with one voice: NOT to demand that the terrorists stop their human rights violations, but to demand that Israel behave with restraint.

After more than a week of warnings and a gradual increase in its military response, Israel last night finally went on the offensive with Operation Protective Edge to try and stamp out the constant mortal threat to its citizens from Gazas unceasing barrage of rockets.

Mahmoud Abbas leads the Palestinian Arab Fatah government in the Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria. Fatah demands that Israel make a gift of Judea and Samaria to them so they can create a third Palestinian Arab state there (alongside Jordan and Gaza), but Fatah is too proud to negotiate over it. Fatah just demands. Fatah has now responded to Israels measured military actions in Gaza by warning all Israelis everywhere to prepare body-bags since Jewish blood is going to flow in rivers because Israel has the temerity to try and prevent the ongoing murder of its citizens.

But best of all, today, even as Fatah warns Israeli civilians to prepare large numbers of body-bags for the civilians that the Palestinian Arabs intend to murder, President Obama publishes an op-ed praising Abbas, Fatah and the prospects for peace. Eerily, on the same day that Abbas and his Fatah party warn Israelis to prepare mass body-bags, Obama writes in President Abbas, Israel has a counterpart committed to a two-state solution and security cooperation with Israel.

Which begs the question: is Obama as out of touch with reality, as cold to human suffering, as Abbas is?

Or does Obama, like Abbas, believe that human suffering is terrible, but only if it does not involve Jews or Israelis?

Heres a message for Obama: STOP trying to equate Israels defensive responses with the US-supported Palestinian Arab governments offensive terror against Jewish civilians. There is no moral equivalency here. At all. Get real or get out of office. Because right now you are a liability to your proud nation and to the people of the Middle East. All the people Israelis, Iranians and Arabs; Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. Your naivety is embarrassing and it is causing mayhem from Iraq to Israel, from Lebanon to Libya, from Syria to Somalia.

Resist the habit of a political lifetime and keep your restraining hands off Israel this one time. Because unlike you, we understand that Israel has to get the job done, once and for all. Otherwise Palestinian Arab violence will continue returning to haunt both Arabs and Israelis ad infinitum. You may be comfortable with that prospect, but we arent. For goodness sake, even the EU has expressed its complete support of Israel in the face of the Palestinian Arabs onslaught. EU ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen says the EU would like to express its unreserved solidarity with citizens of Israel and that the indiscriminate shooting of rockets against civilians can never be a legitimate response, no matter what your grievances.

Now let the IDF deal robustly with the people behind the indiscriminate shooting of rockets against Israeli civilians. Without outside interference.

So that everyone has a chance for a more peaceful future.

Heres hoping someone at the White House has the time and ability to read these words.

Link: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/rocket-diplomacy/
Ilya Meyer is deputy chair of the West Sweden branch of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association. He blogs about Israel and Swedens relationship with Israel at ilyameyer.com

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…Doubtless, Burgs message will resonate with those who, in another era, would have warmly endorsed Karl Marxs maxim that the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. The fact that we are still having this same conversation is precisely what should alarm us.

Ben Cohen..
Commentary Magazine..
07 July ’14..

Israels Haaretz newspaper will tomorrow (today) host the grandly-named Israel Conference on Peace in Tel Aviv. In a crammed schedule across twelve hours, an intriguing array of speakersIsraelis, Arabs, Europeans, and Americans, left-wingers and right-wingerswill address economic development, human rights, access to water, the prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough, and other critical aspects of this particular Middle Eastern conflict.

As is often the case with such events, one can tell a great deal about the nature of this conference through whats not being discussed, as well as who isnt in attendance. Despite Israels location in one of the most violent and illiberal regions of the world, the conference does not deem the threat posed by Irans nuclear program, or the conquest of vast swathes of Syria and Iraq by the Islamists of ISIS, as worthy of a separate sessionevidently, all that is secondary to the fate of the Palestinians. However, since two prominent Palestinian leaders, Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat and businessman Munib al Masri, have already pulled out of the conference, citing as a reason respect for the feelings of the Palestinian people in the light of the developments of the last few days, one might legitimately wonder whether the Palestinians share the conviction of the Israeli left that in times of crisis, dialogue is of paramount importance.

Yet to portray this conference as a dialogue between Israelis and Palestiniansas UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon does, in an op-ed that praises Israeli civil society for its vibrancy in speaking out against incitement, while ignoring the integral role that incitement plays in the articulation of Palestinian goals­rather misses the point. There is another agenda here, one that centers upon promoting the idea among Jews that racism and bigotry are inherent in the notion of a Jewish state.

That is why, in the collection of articles assembled by Haaretz to accompany the conference, you will find Gideon Levy, one of the papers resident anti-Zionists, declaring preposterously that a Jewish state means a racist, nationalistic state, meant for Jews only. You will find an official Haaretz editorial insisting that the murderers of the Palestinian teenager, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, are the descendants and builders of a culture of hate and vengeance that is nurtured and fertilized by the guides of the Jewish state. And you will find a longer meditation on the same theme by Avraham Burg, the scion of a leading Zionist family and the former Speaker of the Knesset, who concludes that the root of Israels problem lies (as he describes it) in the anti-gentile culture that distinguishes the Jewish faith.

To anyone familiar with the historical trajectory of anti-Zionism, this linkage between an antagonism towards non-Jews that is underscored by Jewish religious beliefs with the very existence of a Jewish state is nothing new. In Judaism Without Embellishment, a notorious anti-Semitic screed published by the Soviet Union in 1963, Trofim Kichko asserted that all of Judaic ideology is impregnated with narrow practicality, with greed, the love of money, and the spirit of egoism. The Jewish state, Kichko went on, expresses these values through its discrimination against non-Jews.

What is new and worrying, however, is the revival of this discredited anti-Judaic discourse by those Jews and Israelis for whom a Jewish state is, by definition, a racist endeavor. Writing in a tone that is slightly less contemptuous than that adopted by Kichko, Burg says, in his Haaretz piece, The element of distrust of other nations is woven into the fabric of the way Jews operate. This stems not only from persecution and hatred, ghettos and bloodshed: It is also an internal and active choice expressed through our normative system of halakha (traditional Jewish law), which ensured this mode of thinking.

For Burg, this emphasis on Jewish separatism, embodied in dietary laws, Sabbath observance, and restrictions on intermarriage, has been incorporated into the pathological view of Jewish-gentile relations practiced by the State of Israel. Three millennia of fiendishly complex history are summarized thusly: The State of Israel is continuing to employ the strategy of alienation that was always practiced by the Jewish people. We cast all our cumulative historic accounting onto our Palestinian adversaries. They fulfill the present needs; in the past we had Pharaoh, Haman, Antiochus, Khmelnytsky and Hitler. Now its the Palestinians turn.

Its tempting to submit that no form of Judaism would pass Burgs ethical test. Had Judaism claimed for itself, as Christianity and Islam did, the status of universal, transcendent truth, he would be denouncing its imperial character. As it is, Judaisms acceptance of its lot as a minority faith, along with the rules and practices that such minorities necessarily adopt to preserve their independence, is defamed as a form of racism. The logic of such a mindset determines that anti-Jewish persecution, insofar as it reinforced these separatist tendencies, was a perverse gift to the ideologues of Jewish separation.

A century ago, the sin of the Jews was their perceived internationalism. Hitler railed against international Jewish financiers, while Stalins prosecutors denounced the influence of rootless cosmopolitans. These days, the polar opposite is true: now, the perceived sin of the Jews is their aggressive, religiously-centered nationalism, which prevents them from realizing that the attainment of peace, as Burg argues, is the total, completely beneficial alternative to all our historical phobiasa condition that can replace or erase them. Never mind Hamas, Iran, ISIS, or Mahmoud Abbass double talk: the true enemy resides within us.

Doubtless, Burgs message will resonate with those who, in another era, would have warmly endorsed Karl Marxs maxim that the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. The fact that we are still having this same conversation is precisely what should alarm us.

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/07/07/haaretz-portrays-judaism-as-the-obstacle-to-peace/

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“…Over the past week the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack has been used hundreds of thousands of times, often to distribute pictures claiming to show the effects of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza” however…

BBC Trending..
07 July ’14..
H/T Daled Amos..

Graphic images are being shared on social media to show how people have been affected by the renewed tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

israSpin

Over the past week the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack has been used hundreds of thousands of times, often to distribute pictures claiming to show the effects of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.

A #BBCtrending investigation has found that many of these images are not from the latest conflict and not even from Gaza. Some date as far back as 2009 and others are from conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Produced by Neil Meads

Link: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-28198622

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