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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Some notable news links

Keeping up with the news is a bit overwhelming. I thank my commenters for linking to interesting stories. Here are a few that caught my eye:

The rocket that hit the school in Beersheba was made in China. Not quite homemade. It was also designed to spread lethal pellets over a large area, which would be considered yet another war crime for anyone who actually bothers to accuse Hamas of war crimes. (h/t busywolf)

Arutz-7 reported that Hamas executed at least 8 Fatah men (accused of"collaboration") trying to escape from prison during Israeli airstrikes on Sunday, quoting Yediot Aharonot. The New York Times mentioned the executions without saying how many deaths there were. I will add 6 to the self-death count to be as conservative as possible (I already had mentioned two.) (h/t henrik)

YNet published an "alert map" showing how many seconds Israelis have to find cover after hearing a Code Red alert. Notice that the range of rockets is now much larger than Gaza itself, which means that "buffer zones" would be meaningless.

Which brings up Moshe Arens' analysis of how to stop the rocket fire - he looks at all the possible alternatives that people suggest and that have been tried, and concludes that there is no alternative but IDF ground forces going in and taking full control of the rocket launching sites.

UPDATE: Commenter Henrik also pointed out an IHT article about executing "collaborators" in Gaza hospitals; I couldn't find his but found this version of it and it appears to be different people than the earlier article. So I am adding 6 more to the self-death count.