Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 14, 2021

Palestinians in Lebanon building rockets

Three rockets were launched towards Israel from Lebanon yesterday.

Hezbollah denied being behind the attack, and Palestinian factions told a Lebanese newspaper that they were behind it, in solidarity with Hamas.

Times of Israel says that according to Al Jazeera, they were fired from near the Rashidiya Palestinian refugee camp in Tyre.

That does not appear to be true. That camp is some 22 km from the Israeli border and it seems unlikely that anyone in that tiny camp can build a rocket with that range.

Naharnet says that the rocket was fired from an area north of Naqoura, which is only a few kilimeters from Israel and much more likely.

The smaller rockets do seem to have been built in the Rashidiya camp, though. The Lebanese army found three rockets near that camp. They were small, similar to the original Qassam rockets from Hamas.

The Lebanese people are not likely to warm their already chilly feelings towards Palestinians if the "refugees" try to start a war with Israel from their territory.

And why do the Palestinians in camps in Lebanon need to build rockets, anyway? The only reason would be to try to start a war that Hezbollah would not be able to avoid joining; unless they think they need them for intra-faction fighting.

05/13 Links Pt2: President Rivlin: We must remember we are one country; Noah Rothman: Progressivism’s Moral Atrocity in the Middle East; With Israel under Attack, Watch for Progressive Anti-Semitism

From Ian:

President Rivlin: We must remember we are one country

My fellow citizens of Israel: I am very concerned about the difficult scenes we are witnessing on the streets. I call and plead with all leaders, citizens, parents - do everything in your power to stop the terrible thing that is happening. We are currently amidst the danger of rocket fire, yet are dealing with civil war for no reason. There are people need to let the police take care of things. Please stop this crazy madness.

I call on all the rioters – stop and do not make things worse, we are one society, one country. You can not say I am a citizen but against it, and you can not say I am any more of a citizen. It's time to calm the public. Religious leaders, local leaders, ministers, MKs – we all need to wake up to the same country, the same jobs. These things are getting worse and God forbid, we could lose what we have created – the State of Israel.

Ours is not a simple country, but we have educated ourselves, despite the differences of opinion, among all parts of the nation. All of these things need to remain at the level of debate, God forbid we become enemies. There is a war between civilians. The country belongs to us all.

How hard was it for us to overcome and establish such a wonderful country. Sometimes there are arguments but it is our job to let the army do its job, and let the police make sure there is quiet. You can argue, but to get to this point? To the sights we see? I shout to the whole of Israeli society, to the silent majority - let us shout a cry and say in our house, in our city, everyone in the synagogue or in the mosque: Stop it. We live here, this is our future. There is no other way.

I call and plead with all leaders, citizens, parents: do everything you can to stop this terrible thing that is happening.

Noah Rothman: Progressivism’s Moral Atrocity in the Middle East

It isn’t so much the Arab world but an undiscriminating popular-front mentality that seems to animate much of the activist class’s obsessions. “As someone who has been brutalized by police, I continue to stand in strong solidarity with Palestinians rising up against military, police, and state violence,” Rep. Cori Bush insisted. “Congress must stop funding human-rights abuses by the Israeli military.” In all fairness, when it comes to public security, there aren’t many core functions of a modern state Bush doesn’t want to defund. It’s nevertheless noteworthy that the congresswoman seems incapable of distinguishing between non-lethal crowd-control tactics and the riotous crowd operating from within religious sites those forces were seeking to calm.

The high priest of American socialism, Sen. Bernie Sanders, has also resorted to a noxious moral equivalence: “Once again, we are seeing how the irresponsible actions of government-allied right-wing extremists in Jerusalem can escalate quickly into devastating war,” he wrote. The notion that Israel’s government actually wants Israelis to die in a deadly rocket barrage is particularly craven. It’s an ugly presumption that colors coverage of the conflict in even mainstream media outlets.

Astonishingly, the New York Times reported, the bloodletting has “nevertheless bolstered” both Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After all, “the distraction of the war, and the divisions it creates between the disparate opposition parties currently negotiating a coalition to topple him from power, have given him half a chance of remaining in office, just days after it seemed like he might finally be on the way out.” The insinuation that, if he did not engineer the conflict, Netanyahu surely welcomes it, is a repulsive sop to the paper’s parochial progressive readership. But at least Sanders managed to make a note of the “Israeli children” languishing in bomb shelters. His leftwing compatriots couldn’t even muster that perfunctory nod in the general direction of decency.

The world has passed these progressives by. The Arab world is not erupting over the hostile actions engineered by Hamas and its Iranian backers, whom they regard as the real threat to their security. Nor do progressive arguments about oppression and the rule of law resonate—the rule of law was suspended mid-process as an intended consequence of the insurrection in Jerusalem. What progressives are arguing is pure will to power. And if it’s a contest of power they wanted, they’re sure getting it.

With Israel under Attack, Watch for Progressive Anti-Semitism

When George Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, he declared that America should give "bigotry no sanction."

In 2021, that remains a tall order. Not only does history's oldest virus—anti-Semitism—today receive 24/7 assistance from social media, but it metastasizes as quickly as deadly new strains of COVID-19, spawning Jew-hatred and hate crimes here and abroad.

Ever since the infamous Charlottesville march, arson, desecration and deadly attacks on synagogues across the U.S. by white supremacists and neo-Nazis have increased. Lurid anti-Semitic and anti-Asian conspiracy theories about COVID-19 have spread online. It is appropriate that much of our attention has been focused on the extreme Right, here and abroad.

But we ignore, at our own risk, the high-profile anti-Semitism emanating from the self-anointed gatekeepers of the progressive Left, increasingly on display during these bloody days in the Holy Land.

With Hamas already hurling nearly 1000 rockets and missiles at Israeli civilian centers—200 of which landed inside Gaza, killing and maiming Hamas's own constituents—and Israel marshaling its military prowess to stop the onslaught, both sides struggle to promote their narratives across social media platforms and in the halls of power.

Left-leaning Americans have been happy to oblige. Here at home there is plenty of virtue signaling by Hollywood actors. Mark Ruffalo took time out from playing a make-believe hero fighting make-believe enemies to demand that the Jewish state face sanctions for defending its 9-plus million citizens from very real terrorists with very real weapons that cause very real people, including women and children, to bleed and die.

Oh, look, Hamas has an advertising supplement in the @NYTimes today: https://t.co/vitHov9ndM
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) May 13, 2021

Police Assure Lod Jews Pogrom Anti-Zionist, Not Antisemitic (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Lod shul desecrated Lod, May 13 - Law enforcement authorities in Israel sought to assuage the fears of Jewish residents in this mixed town on the country's coastal plain that the riots, synagogue-burning and desecration, looting, attempted lynchings, and other violence aimed at them by the town's Arab residents stems not from animus toward them as people of Hebraic heritage, but from opposition to Jewish sovereignty in the land.

Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai told representatives of Lod's Jewish community today they need not worry that the constant attacks on them by their Arab neighbors in the streets over the last several days are antisemitic in nature, because the pogrom is actually just anti-Zionist.

"To those who are concerned about antisemitic attacks in Lod, I am here to reassure you there is none of that," declared Shabtai at a press conference he convened at the site of a burned-out synagogue. "All the unrest you have experienced this week is merely anti-Zionist, and you may therefore unburden yourselves of the anxiety over antisemitism."

Minister of Public Security Amir Ohana stressed the importance of restraint under the circumstances. "I acknowledge the temptation to form groups to protect yourselves against antisemitic marauders," he stated. "But these are not antisemitic marauders. They only don't want us as Jews to control our own land and not be under the boot of Islam. Do not be confused by Arabic cries of 'Itbah al Yahud,' 'Slaughter the Jews.' Anyone who attempts vigilantism or revenge will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." He declined to confirm whether the Arab perpetrators of the violence will face such a fate.

Border Guards units, a paramilitary division of the police, spread throughout the mostly-Jewish sections of the town yesterday and today to keep the peace, which they implemented by leaving Arab rioters alone to continue attempting to lynch and stone Jews, while arresting Jews who attempted to defend themselves. "It's a complicated situation," said a sergeant. "On one hand it's our duty to protect our citizens, but on the other, this is a tough moral call: do we protect everyone, or just the ones the progressive media support? We've been through several briefings the last couple of says drilling into us the difference between antisemitic attacks and anti-Zionist attacks, and I'm pretty sure the men have got it down."

The sergeant indicated he had more to say, but had to dodge several rocks hurled by Arab residents as he went to arrest a Jew brandishing a tire iron at a group of knife-wielding Arab thugs approaching him.

The Original Sin in the Middle East - Jew-Hatred

Peter Beinart wrote a propaganda piece in the New York Times. No mention of Hamas rockets, no mention of terrorist attacks, no mention of anything at all negative about the people who want to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East - he says that the original sin is that Israel doesn't recognize and offer to fix the "Nakba."

Among Palestinians, Nakba is a household word. But for Jews — even many liberal Jews in Israel, America and around the world — the Nakba is hard to discuss because it is inextricably bound up with Israel’s creation. Without the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, Zionist leaders would have had neither the land nor the large Jewish majority necessary to create a viable Jewish state. As I discuss at greater length in an essay for Jewish Currents from which this guest essay is adapted, acknowledging and beginning to remedy that expulsion — by allowing Palestinian refugees to return — requires imagining a different kind of country, where Palestinians are considered equal citizens, not a demographic threat.

The Left wants to pretend that Sheikh Jarrah is the reason for Hamas rockets, or in Beinart's case the Nakba, is the original Jewish sin and the reason for all the terrorism since.

If you want to find the source, it's Palestinian Arab Jew-hatred.

Everything from attacks in the 1880s to Hamas today comes from that.

When the Mufti started his antisemitic campaign in the 1920s, he had an "excuse": The Jews were threatening Al Aqsa! People believed the excuse and excused Arab attacks.

It was a lie.

When the 1929 pogrom killing Jews throughout the land happened, the Arabs claimed it was because of Jewish immigration taking away jobs. Another excuse the British believed and punished the Jews as if it was the real reason.

It was a lie.

And now rocket attacks are using the excuse of Sheikh Jarrah, as if one has something to do with the other. Yet the media believes the excuse as it it is a valid reason.

It is a lie.

Beinart wants to flood Israel with millions of Palestinian Arabs who have been taught to hate Jews for the past hundred years. Because the resulting loss of Jewish safety and Jewish nationhood is no big deal for a person who lives in Westchester, NY. A quick read through the Palestine Post of the 1930s will show anyone how harmonious things were between Jews and Arabs then - before the Nakba, before "occupation," before Sheikh Jarrah.

As long as Jews assert any rights in the Middle East, there will be Jew-hatred disguised as "humanitarian" reasons for taking them away. Beinart pretends that he has a solution for antisemitism itself - Jews relinquishing their rights. Which is the same plan that the antisemites have always espoused.

The haters always have an excuse - but for Palestinian Arabs, the actual reason is always the same: they hate Jews and they are taught this hate from birth.

Jews have the right to live on their land.

Jews have the right to a state for their people.

Jews have the right to defend themselves.

The people who believe the Arab excuses for attacking Jews don't believe those self-evident truths. And that includes Peter Beinart.

05/13 Links Pt1: Phillips: Hamas commits war crimes. Israel is blamed. Of course; Glick: What Stands Behind the New Palestinian War Against Israel?; Biden Has Emboldened Israel’s Enemies

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Hamas commits war crimes. Israel is blamed. Of course.

Over the past few hours, fresh barrages of Hamas rockets from Gaza have been raining down over Israel. Most have been intercepted by the country’s Iron Dome defence system. But at least 20 Israelis have been wounded in Ashkelon, and a five-year-old boy was killed by a direct rocket hit on a house in Sderot. The boy’s mother was seriously wounded, a five-year-old is moderately wounded and four others are lightly hurt. Rockets have also been fired at the town of Dimona, site of Israel’s nuclear reactor.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired more than 1200 rockets at Israel since Monday evening. Dozens of Israelis have been injured. A five year-old girl was critically injured when a rocket fell next to a bus in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon.

At present, there are seven Israeli dead from the rocket attacks, including an Israeli Arab man and his 16 year-old daughter in a house near Lod.

There have been Arab riots and countless attacks on Jews in numerous cities. Israeli women out for a jog have been attacked, Israeli cars have been stoned and there have been attempts to lynch some of the drivers.

As the Times of Israel has reported, in the town of Lod on Tuesday night three synagogues and many cars were firebombed and shop windows smashed by Arab mobs. One Israeli was seriously injured when a slab was thrown at his car. People were too frightened to go to the bomb shelters for fear of being set upon. The violence was described by the town’s mayor as “civil war,” and he compared it to the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom in Nazi Germany.

A Jewish man in his 30s was in critical condition yesterday evening after he was attacked by a mob of Arab demonstrators in the city of Acre. Police said he was attacked in his car by Arab Israeli protesters armed with sticks and stones.

Now some Jewish extremists have reacted by attacking Arabs in Bat Yam and Tiberias. In Bat Yam, a Jewish mob pulled an Arab driver out of his car and beat him up. Police have been making arrests, but clearly this is a further appalling and potentially devastating development. The Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, has put out out a statement imploring Jews not to turn violent against Arab citizens, and the ultra-nationalist member of Knesset Bezalel Smotrich has also emotionally urged Jews never to commit such acts.

This Jewish violence is shocking, tragic and indefensible. But compare these urgent Jewish appeals for it to stop with statements by Fatah, the party headed by Mahmoud Abbas and which runs the Palestinian Authority. Like Hamas in Gaza, Fatah has been inciting violence against Jews non-stop for weeks, calling for holy war and inflaming murderous hysteria with utterly false claims that Israel intends to invade the al Aqsa mosque.

Bari Weiss: The Bad Optics of Fighting for Your Life

For the past few years, leaders within the American Jewish community have been deeply worried about whether the Democratic Party, with the wind now in the sails of the Squad, would go the way of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. That question now seems tragically parochial.

The world has gone Corbyn. Look online. When Andrew Yang, the frontrunner in the New York mayoral race, tweeted on Monday “I’m standing with the people of Israel,” AOC rallied the online hordes. The anodyne statement was, she said, “utterly shameful,” and the pile-on ensued. By Wednesday, Yang had all but apologized. The ratio is the new veto. How pathetic.

It turns out America didn’t need a Corbyn. We just needed a Twitter and a few reckless demagogues in Congress. And now supporters of Israel, including many Jews, are so scared of getting bullied online that they’ve just decided to sit in silence, hoping the lies will dissipate on their own.

They won’t.

The truth needs people who are willing to stand up for it. It needs people willing to publicly resist moral perversion and nihilism. People willing to fight for a sane future.

That’s why I’m writing this. And it’s why we’re trying to start a family.

Caroline Glick: What Stands Behind the New Palestinian War Against Israel?

Since its first days in office, the Biden administration has taken actions and issued statements to signal that it is replacing Trump's support for Israel with support for the Palestinians. President Joe Biden restored U.S. funding to the PA despite its unceasing support for, and funding of, terrorism. Biden also reinstated U.S. funding of United Nations agencies, such as UNRWA, that work with Hamas and disseminate Nazi-like anti-Semitism. Biden announced the U.S. intends to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council, an organization whose primary function is to demonize and condemn Israel.

During the weeks leading up to the outbreak of Arab violence against Jews in Jerusalem, the Biden administration said nothing about the Palestinian incitement. On the contrary, in a series of statements by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and State Department spokesmen, the administration adopted the anti-Semitic Palestinian narrative that the Jewish property owners in Sheikh Jarrah should be denied possession of their properties simply because they are Jews.

In a stunning statement Tuesday, as Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli civilian targets and the Israeli military responded with surgical air strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, State Department Spokesman Ned Price drew a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians. Price said: "Israel has the right to defend itself and respond to rocket attacks. The Palestinian people also have the right to safety and security, just as Israelis do."

The message Price sent to Hamas, Fatah and the Israeli Arabs assaulting Israeli Jews is that the U.S. is on their side. They can attack Jews and blame Israel and the Jews for their aggression, and the Biden administration will fund them, defend them and even adopt their anti-Semitic narratives. Palestinians are now certain they will be rewarded, not punished, for their aggression.

So long as this remains the Biden administration's position, we can expect the latest Palestinian war against Israel to continue. Indeed, so long as this remains the administration's policy, the danger that the Palestinian war will escalate into a regional onslaught against Israel by Iran's proxies across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen will only increase.

2. This many sound anondyne, but it is nothing of the sort. When taken in the context of the statements by Blinken, Ned Price and Jake Sullivan in recent days in which they embrace the Palestinian narrative on Jerusalem, Biden's message was unmistakable. True, the American...3
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) May 13, 2021

The Caroline Glick Show: Episode 5 - The New Palestinian Terror War on Israel has Begun

Monday night, the Palestinian and Israeli Arab attacks against Israel Jews that had been escalating in recent days reached the level of all-out war. Arab Israeli attacked Israeli Jews throughout the country. Hamas shot 200 rockets and missiles at southern Israel in 12 hours and then another 137 rockets in a five minute period on Tuesday. Caroline and her co-host discussed the causes of the rising violence and identified two - incitement by Fatah and Hamas and the Biden administration's embrace of the Palestinians' anti-Semitic narrative that blames the Jews for the violence that is perpetrated against them. They discuss the historic and regional contexts of the events now unfolding and what needs to happen for peace to be restored. Caroline even quoted from her book The Israeli Solution. Tune in, subscribe to our channel and share our broadcast with your friends to help us get out the truth that the media is distoring.

Not so long ago, peace and cooperation were in the air.

And not just between Israel and Arab states.

There was a potential for the Abraham Accords to have an effect not only outside Israel but also inside Israel as well. I quoted from Yousef Makladeh of the consulting company StatNet who reported that "over 60 percent of the [Israeli] Arab population supports MK Mansour Abbas’ approach, that they can work with the [Jewish] right.” And that support extended to the Accords as well:

“The public wants peace, it does not matter with whom, because it will bring them economic advantages,” [Makladeh] said. More trade with the UAE, more UAE investors coming to Israel, and Israeli companies going to the UAE, will mean more opportunities for Arab-Israelis, who will be seen as the logical middlemen. [emphasis added]

I posted that in late December.
Things have changed, not just in terms of the latest terrorist attacks by Hamas -- but in terms of the reaction within the Arab-Israeli community itself.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin tweeted:

This was already spelled out on Twitter the previous day.

Zilber is a journalist and a fellow at the Washington Institute. Zilber added:

Israel Police Commissioner says govt has declared 'special civilian emergency' in Lod. Additional Border Police units to deploy as soon as tonight. Moving his HQ to Lod. Added that such Arab-Jewish communal violence in mixed cities hasn't been seen before, not even in Oct 2000 [emphasis added]

Lahav Harkov, of the Jerusalem Post, tweeted:

Regarding this apparent progress, Harkov adds:

Of course, if it's so easy to reverse, was there really any progress at all? Something to think about, I guess.

What is happening in Lod seems to be indicative of the larger problem happening in the Arab-Israeli communities, which affect Jewish communities and Israel as a whole.

In a 2018 blog post appearing on The Times of Israel, Sarah Gordon -- of The Abraham Initiatives -- wrote in response to a shooting attack, Lod Shootings Point to Larger Issue of Violence in Israel’s Arab Communities:

Unfortunately, these shootings reflect a broader trend of rampant crime and violence in Arab communities across Israel. According to a report by the Knesset Research and Information Center covering the period from 2014 through 2017, Arab citizens comprised 64% of murder victims and 57% of murder suspects. Moreover, between 64% and 84% of cases related to possession of illegal firearms were of Arab citizens. Relatedly, Arabs in Israel feel a significantly low sense of personal security. The Abraham Initiatives (TAI), a non-profit organization committed to advancing a shared and equal Israeli society for Arab and Jewish citizens, conducted a national survey last year and found that 54% of Arabs believe there is a problem of violence in their town compared to 14% of Jews; 49% of Arabs agree that weapons and shootings are widespread in their town compared to 7% of Jews; and 32% of Arabs consider their town “unsafe” compared to 13% of Jews. [emphasis added]

Gordon suggests that the complex problem can be traced to a number of issues:

o The same Arab communities that rely on an effective Israeli police force to protect them, find themselves as perceived as a threat to that security
o  There is both a lack of sufficient policing due to lack of funding/attention while at the same time too much policing in the form of excessive violence against Arab citizens.
o  The high poverty rates in Arab-Israel communities -- resulting from widespread unemployment, low-paying jobs, weak education systems, and limited access to government services -- correlate with increased violence.
o  Inside the Arab communities, there is a transition from a society rooted in religion, rurality, and collectivism to a modern, urbanized society that values individualism as opposed to group cohesion. This has led to violence against those Arabs who challenge the traditional norms.

As noted above, this article was in December 2018 -- 3 years after the passing of a bill known formally as Resolution No. 922: a five-year Economic Development Plan for the Arab Sector, allocating 10 billion shekels, almost $3 billion.

An article in Haaretz from 2019 describing the bill, noted apparent improvements over the previous years:

o According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, over the past 7 years, the number of Arab students enrolled in universities and colleges in Israel has risen by 80%.
o Over 5 years, the number of Arabs studying computer sciences, and the number pursuing master’s degrees (in all fields) have both jumped 50%
o The number of Arab students studying for a Ph.D. has soared 60%.
o During the last decade, the number of Arabs working in high-tech has increased 18-fold -- and 25% of them are women.
o By 2020, it is estimated that Arabs will make up 10 percent of the country’s high-tech work force
o The proportion of Arab doctors in Israel has climbed from 10% in 2008 to 15% in 2018
21% of all male doctors are Arab, according to the Health Ministry.There is a natural carryover into the ability to get a job. In the private sector, for example, the proportion of Arab civil servants rose from 5.7% in 2007 to 11.3% in 2017.”

Resolution 922 expired in December 2020.
And then it was extended:

The plan, initiated in 2015, allocated NIS 10 billion ($2.96 billion) to reduce widespread inequalities between Arab and Jewish communities in Israel. The extension will add another NIS 1.7 billion ($500 million) to the plan through the end of 2021.

This begins to address the problem of joblessness and self-esteem in the Arab communities, but the issue of crime remains. It is an issue that Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab List (Ra’am) approached Netanyahu about.

And what about Lod?

In a 2018 blog post for Times of Israel, Alexander Shapiro -- formerly a researcher and activist in Lod and now a member of the Israeli NGO Shaharit -- writes about Lod and describes its demographics as being 70% Jewish and 30% Arab.

The Jews are Sephardi and Ashkenazi, some nationalist and others progressive, from a range of ethnic backgrounds, that include Ethiopians, Russians (nearly half), Indians, Georgians, and Moroccans, among others.

The Arabs community consists of Christians, Muslims and Bedouins. Some of the Arabs are descendants of families that have lived there since before 1948.

Lod has a long history and when newer cities were built nearby, the wealthier families left, resulting in a negative effect on the society. Jews and Arabs share in the resultant social and economic problems of lack of funding, crime and corruption. After various attempts at dealing with the problems, there was enough improvement that companies such as Bank Leumi, Mizrahi Bank, and Migdal Insurance built offices there.

Then, ironically, came the gentrification with wealthier families moving in, which led to further socioeconomic problems. There are claims of favoritism for Jewish families and reports that authorities “issued plans for new industrial zones or roads that are built on areas occupied by long-established but illegally-built Arab homes, forcing the demolition of those houses.”

Sounds familiar?

Shapiro writes that Lod is

one of the few remaining places in Israel that could provide a model for effective Arab-Jewish shared society. It represents a microcosm of Israel as a whole, containing mirror images of the country’s diverse populations, history, struggles, and opportunities.

and concludes

It can provide a model for the Israeli society it mirrors to move forward. But if shared society fails in Lod, there may be few others places it can be born.

Which brings us to today and Harkov's point that if the apparent progress is so easy to reverse, was there really any progress at all?

Polls that indicate that Arab-Israelis increasingly identify as Israeli as opposed to Palestinian are encouraging, and increased and apparently effective funding for Arab education and training are a good sign as well.

It is not news that a major issue in Arab communities is crime.
Will addressing that on a scale similar to addressing education and training help?

Israel needs to find out.
And soon.

The Western media never learns from previous Gaza wars.

A large percentage of Gaza rockets fall in Gaza, and many Gazans are killed because of them. I've documented this for years. I've shown how Hamas' own videos show rockets falling short.

When a family is killed in Gaza, it is very rare that it is an IDF mistake. Most of the time it is because a terrorist operative is in the house - either because he is a member of the family, sometimes it seems because he is using them as human shields. Other times it is because of Hamas rockets falling short. Sometimes it is because the IDF targeted a legitimate target that had a larger cache of explosives than was thought and it caused far more collateral damage than expected.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad is hiding the names of most of those killed. While Hamas admitted that one of its senior leaders, Bassem Issa, was killed in an Israeli attack, they don't mention the names of the other people with him at the time who were also killed. They do this to make it look like a larger percentage of the dead are civilians - and they did it in previous wars, too.

Speaking of, the Gaza Health Ministry and the "human rights" NGOs in Gaza (PCHR and Al Mezan) downplay any mention of terrorist casualties and often call terrorists "civilians" when they report the circumstances of those who have died. (Amnesty's obscenely dishonest "Gaza Platform" with statistics from the 2014 war relied on PCHR's initial reports, and as a result it lists more "civilians" than even the UN does. They know they are lying, I've let them know enough times, and they refuse to correct it.)

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch is back to what he has done so many times in the past - tweeting against Israel incessantly, often with lies, and only reluctantly saying anything bad about Hamas once in a while. So far this time he is doing exactly he same thing - a huge number of anti-Israel tweets and a token tweet or two mentioning that Hamas rockets are a war crime, too.

The media still has no idea what "proportionality" means in the context of international law. They make scorecards of how many have been killed on both sides as if the results are supposed to be "fair," implying that if only more Jews would be killed, then they can all be happy.

Then again, the media is also part of the problem. Hamas has almost complete control over the media in Gaza. Citizens who speak freely to media know that they will be punished. Everyone sticks to the Hamas-approved script. International reporters know that they will be kicked out if they say anything not to Hamas' liking. Yet the media hardly ever mentions this, giving a false impression that their reporting is objective.

The media will also ignore most of Hamas' war crimes. Using ambulances or "press" credentials to transport weapons, using Gazans as human shields, using mosques as weapons depots, shooting from schools- - I once counted 19 different war crimes that Hamas has done in the Gaza wars, but "human rights groups" somehow only notice and denounce one.

People don't learn.

Then again, most people don't want to learn.

Defense for Children International-Palestine, an extraordinarily anti-Israel NGO which has made bald-faced lies in the past, has unwittingly proven that most of the children killed in Gaza so far have been killed by Hamas - and others are killed because they are human shields.

In their report about Tuesday's events, they say:

An Israeli drone-fired missile killed 15-year-old Mohammad Saber Ibrahim Suleiman shortly after 6 p.m. while he and his father Saber Ibrahim Mahmoud Suleiman were on their agricultural land outside the city of Jabalia, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International - Palestine. Father and son were both killed instantly. Mohammad’s body was subsequently transferred to the Indonesian hospital in Jabalia where doctors reported there were shrapnel wounds throughout his body.

Mohammad’s father was reportedly a commander in Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, a Palestinian armed group and the armed wing of Hamas, according to information collected by DCIP.

Mohammad was a human shield for his father. But what DCI-P admits next is amazing:

In a second incident around 6:05 p.m., initial investigations suggest a homemade rocket fired by a Palestinian armed group fell short and killed eight Palestinians, including two children. The rocket landed in Saleh Dardouna Street near Al-Omari Mosque in Jabalia, North Gaza, according to evidence collected by DCIP. Mustafa Mohammad Mahmoud Obaid, 16, was killed in the blast, and five-year-old Baraa Wisam Ahmad al-Gharabli succumbed to his injuries around 11 p.m. on May 10.

Palestinian security sources and explosives experts indicated the cause of this explosion was a Palestinian armed group rocket that fell short. Another 34 Palestinian civilians were injured in the blast, including 10 children, according to DCIP’s documentation.

Eight killed and 34 injured from one Hamas rocket.

And then:

Six Palestinian children and two adults were killed in a third blast that occurred around 6 p.m. in Beit Hanoun about 800 meters (2,600 feet) west of the Gaza Strip perimeter fence. Those killed included Rahaf Mohammad Attalla al-Masri, 10, and her cousin Yazan Sultan Mohammad al-Masri, 2; brothers Marwan Yousef Attalla al-Masri, 6, and Ibrahim Yousef Attalla al-Masri, 11; as well as Hussein Muneer Hussein Hamad, 11, and 16-year-old Ibrahim Abdullah Mohammad Hassanain, according to information collected by DCIP. When the blast occurred, members of the al-Masri family were reportedly harvesting wheat in the field outside their home, and their children were playing nearby, according to information collected by DCIP.

DCIP has not yet confirmed the cause of these deaths. At the time of the incident, Israeli drones and warplanes were reportedly overhead and Palestinian armed groups were firing homemade rockets towards Israel. DCIP continues to investigate these incidents to determine and identify the responsible parties.

The deaths of the al-Masri family was already confirmed by Israel on Tuesday as being from Hamas rockets. There was clearly no military target and Israel doesn't randomly target a family - Israel diverts rockets when it sees children in the area, and they were outside.

I do not expect DCI-P's honesty to last. While it identified Mohammad Suleiman as being the son of a terrorist father who was the target, in yesterday's update it did not mention that 15-year-old Lina Iyad Fathi Sharir's father, who was also killed, was the commander of the Hamas anti-tank missile unit.

But from the very first day, we see that most (if not all!) of the children killed in Gaza were either killed by Haas rockets or as human shields for terrorists.

And the media repeats the lies that they were killed in Israeli airstrikes without question.

(h/t kweansmom, also IsraellyCool noticed this.)

05/12 Links Pt2: Matti Friedman: Jerusalem of Glue; Biden failed the Israel-Palestinian rocket and riot test; Kristallnacht in Lod; Gal Gadot, international celebrities speak out over Gaza crisis

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: Jerusalem of Glue

The idea of a complex place is anathema to the current mood in America and the West, where many people seem to be regressing to a world of childhood, of heroes and monsters. As I sit here typing by a window in Jerusalem, many seem to believe that Israel is attacking Muslim worshippers at prayer and ethnically cleansing the Arab population of this city, which is more than a third of our population and growing. For years, Arabic papers have described routine visits by Jews to the Temple Mount, or Israeli policing efforts there, as Israelis “storming” the Al-Aqsa compound; this wording has now spread to the Western press.

In the spirit of 2021, exciting video clips are ripped from their context here and injected into ideological circulatory systems to prove whatever needs to be proved. Explosions in the Al-Aqsa Mosque could mean that Israeli police are firing tear gas inside, desecrating the holy site, or that Muslim rioters are shooting off the stores of fireworks they hoarded inside to use against the police, desecrating the holy site. An Israeli driver hitting a Palestinian man near Lions’ Gate on Monday might be attempted murder, or a driver losing control of his car while escaping Palestinians who were trying to kill him. A video of Israelis dancing at the Western Wall as a fire burns on the Temple Mount is evidence of satanic intent, or of the coincidence that the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations at the wall were going on at the same time that one of the firecrackers set off by Palestinian rioters ignited a tree in the mosque compound above.

The subtleties seem beside the point when the villains and the heroes are so clear. The condemnations of Israel are pouring in from the strange coalition that gathers with increasing frequency for this purpose: the Turkish authoritarian Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, both of whom used the word “abhorrent” in their tweets, the dictator of Chechnya, the Saudis, the Iranians, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s hard to follow whether Israel is supposedly attacking Islam or attacking liberalism; in Israel’s case, the two seem to be oddly interchangeable. When some Westerners see dozens of green Hamas flags in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they seem to perceive a civil rights protest, and when a Hamas leader calls on his people to buy “five-shekel knives” to cut off Jewish heads, demonstrating with his finger exactly how this should be done, some hear a call for social justice that Israelis should try to accommodate.

It helps that plenty of Western activists, including many who identify as journalists, have spent the past decade or so rebranding this conflict to suit the ideological fantasy world in which they operate. That fantasy world has only expanded in detail and reach with the triumph of social media, which marries elite prejudices with activist fervor and the passion of the mob. Hamas rockets are no longer being fired at Israeli civilians, as they were 20 years ago. Now they’re being fired at “Israeli apartheid.”

Being an observer in Jerusalem always means gauging two opposing forces: the one pulling the city apart, and the glue keeping it together. The former gets plenty of attention from observers, and the latter almost none, but both are always in play in this city of nearly a million people. The glue is on display in malls and taxis and hospitals, the places of no interest to journalists or politicians, where Jews and Arabs of different ideological stripes interact carefully in their daily lives to a greater extent than ever before, moving things forward to a future that’s unknowable but could be better. That has been the trend here in the past few years. But it’s the other force, the destructive one, that we’re seeing now.

JPost Editorial: It's time to stand with Israel against Hamas rockets

Israel must now engage in a public relations campaign to present its case effectively to the world. It has done nothing wrong, except for allowing a terrorist organization to gain the upper hand. It must now prevent Hamas from gaining international sympathy in its hollow attempts to portray itself as the guardian of Palestinian rights in Jerusalem.

In addition, the Palestinian Authority, regional neighbor Jordan, and Arab citizens of Israel – as exemplified by the mob of protesters in Lod on Monday night – shouldn’t be spreading lies that Israel, without provocation, threatened Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount.

Israel’s government is not blameless. Tensions had been mounting during Ramadan, which ends on Wednesday, with ongoing clashes between police and Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem’s Old City and elsewhere.

While Hamas does not need an excuse to attack Israel, the government should have done more to contain the situation and try to defuse it before the violence spiraled out of control. The perfect storm – Ramadan, Jerusalem Day, Sheikh Jarrah, and political instability in Israel – all contributed to the reality that the people of southern Israel now find themselves.

To help Israel find a way to end this and restore peace and security, world leaders need to convey clearly to Hamas that terrorism is not acceptable under any circumstances. If those leaders want to see peace in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the region, they must side with Israel against these blatant unwarranted acts of terror. This is important so Hamas and the Palestinians learn that terrorism does not pay and does not work. Firing rockets into civilian areas cannot be rewarded. Instead, it needs to be punished.

Israel is not responsible for the current escalation, but it should try to end it as soon as possible. This can’t happen without the international community supporting Israel, rather than siding with the real culprits.

Until we assert ourselves, projecting actual power and deterrence, we will be picked apart

As Winston Churchill famously encountered in the 1930’s, there is an inherent reluctance of peace and freedom loving peoples to respond pro-actively to aggression. There are issues of disbelief, often predicated upon the inability of the peace lover to understand the mind set and intentions of the aggressor.

This leads to rationalizations of how the other side might feel and could be dealt with. From this point, it is just a hop, skip and a jump to wishful thinking about how to deal, or not deal, with an aggressor.

Finally, there is the reluctance that is born out of not wanting to disrupt one’s serenity, individually and collectively, in order to take the necessary and potentially costly steps to deal with aggression. Costly steps of course focus on risking the lives of soldiers, but also include risks to civilians, their lives, businesses, assets and lifestyle.

We look at other people as if they were extensions of ourselves. It is both unrealistic, and completely untrue. If all of this sounds uncomfortably familiar, that might be because it pretty well describes the state of affairs in Israel, now and in the past, when confronted with Palestinian Arab aggression.

We live with a functional absurdity. We have invested men, materiel, treasure and brainpower in creating the most advanced - in training, technique and equipment - armed forces in the Middle East, and one of the strongest in the entire world.

Yet, for reasons cited above, as well as the ever present fear of international opprobrium, we hamstring ourselves constantly.

This hamstringing takes at least two major forms: the unwillingness to react, not in equal measure, and not to mention more intensively, in the hope that the aggression can be managed; and second, allowing ourselves to be dictated to by legal advisers and arbiters who are not focused on deterrence, let alone victory, but rather, the sensibilities of our enemies, and most certainly the judgments of the international community.

The “just keep a lid on things” strategy defines much of what passes for geo-political policy vis-à-vis Judea and the Shomron, the Temple Mount, and all things related to Palestinian Arab and Israeli Bedouins. The thought is that, left to their own natural devices, conflicts will subside, as the aggressor will understand that its not in his interest to continue down this destructive, but also self-destructive path.

But this is solipsism, meaning that we look at other people as if they were extensions of ourselves. It is both unrealistic, and completely untrue.

2 Elder Comix: As-a-Jews and Holy Ramadan

Here are a couple of public domain comics that I changed the dialogue for in the past day.

And:

Cobra Kai and the Jewish State (Vic Rosenthal)

Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal

My granddaughter, Shai, told my wife that she should make her a “Cobra Kai” shirt. We were mystified, so she told us to watch the video series and we would understand. It turns out to be a continuation of the plot of the movie “The Karate Kid,” in which (as I see it) the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov are personified by the competing dojos of Cobra Kai and Miyagi Do respectively. Keep that thought – I’ll come back to it.

In the real world, the struggle between Israel and her enemies is far more bitter and bloody. For several months now tensions have risen, with demonstrations and riots in several cities by Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel over various issues. Violent attacks on Jews by Arabs were followed by violence against Arabs by militant Jewish groups. The conflict reached a peak on Monday, Jerusalem Day, when hundreds of police and Arabs fought each other on and around the Temple Mount, the Arabs throwing rocks and shooting fireworks, while the police responded with teargas and stun grenades. At the same time, Hamas issued an ultimatum that if the police did not leave the Mount by 6:00 PM, they would fire rockets at Jerusalem. The police stayed, and Hamas carried out its threat, launching seven rockets.

Since then the violence has escalated. Israeli Arabs have rioted in various cities and towns in Israel, attacking Jewish citizens and police. In Lod, local Arabs rampaged in Jewish neighborhoods, burning cars and even synagogues, evoking visions of anti-Jewish pogroms. Riots also occurred in Acco, Yafo, and the Arab towns of the “Triangle,” east of Netanya and Haifa. Hamas has been broadcasting incitement for weeks via its imams and social media, including the perennial “Al Aqsa is in danger” line that has been inflaming Palestinian Muslims against Jews for at least 100 years.

Meanwhile, rocket fire from Gaza has reached unprecedented levels. As of Wednesday morning (as I write) more than 1,000 rockets have been launched at Israel from Gaza, reaching as far north as Hadera. At least 850 of them have reached Israel, with 200 falling short into Gaza (keep this in mind when Hamas blames its civilian casualties on Israeli retaliation). Massive barrages hit Ashkelon, setting a strategic gas facility afire, and keeping inhabitants in shelters all night. Naturally the towns and kibbutzim in the south, the usual targets of Hamas rockets, got their portion too. According to Hamas, 130 rockets were launched toward Tel Aviv. Even here in Rehovot, which is usually spared, we were awakened by sirens several times overnight. As of this moment, five Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets, including two Israeli Arabs whose car took a direct hit in Lod. There have been dozens of injuries and much property damage. The Iron Dome systems have intercepted many of the rockets, but due to their sheer volume it has been impossible to stop all of them.

The IDF – air force, artillery, and navy – has been hitting launchers, weapons factories, underground facilities, and some senior Hamas officials since the rocket fire started. A multi-story building that contained Hamas intelligence services was taken down. Hamas claims several dozen civilian casualties, but the IDF says that most of them are either Hamas operatives who were hit while launching rockets, or victims of their own rockets which fell short.

I think that the events of the past weeks have had a significant effect on the attitudes of many ordinary Israeli Jews. The riots in Lod, and the attacks on Jews in Jerusalem have given rise to a feeling that lines have been crossed. How can it be, they think, when they see a 65-year-old rabbi brutally kicked to the ground by Arab assailants, or Torah scrolls burned, that this can happen in the Jewish state? Although there was large-scale rioting by Israeli Arabs in 2000 at the start of the Second Intifada, the way individual Jews and Jewish shops and institutions were targeted this time was new, and evoked comparisons to the antisemitic violence of the 1930s. Although Arab members of the Knesset talked in ways that verged on subversion, it seemed that most of the Arabs in the street were motivated by economics, not nationalism. Either that has changed, or it was not the case in the first place.

The dimensions of the Hamas rocket attack were worrisome. It is clear that we cannot have enough Iron Dome systems to stop all the rockets that our enemies can launch. In the back of everyone’s mind is the knowledge that Hezbollah has far more rockets and better, more accurate and powerful, ones.

It seems that we always act the same: retaliate in a measured way, being very careful to keep civilian damage to a minimum, after which we are pilloried by the UN, the EU, and the “human rights” NGOs, regardless of that fact. We don’t destroy Hamas, we simply “mow the grass” every few years. We keep supplying Gaza with water and electricity.
There will be other escalations like this one. Each time, Hamas seems to have more and better capabilities. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to try to take over the Palestinian Authority, and to incite subversion among the Arab citizens of Israel. Soon Mahmoud Abbas will retire or die; it could happen today. Hamas will then move to take over the PA, which would make the present situation seem like a picnic in the park.

Is this the best our government can do, we ask?

The problem is that we have no real strategy. But it’s not hard to see what it should be. The Palestinians of the territories and even our own Arab citizens have shown us: they act in a Middle Eastern way.

We want to live in the Middle East because that’s where we came from. But we don’t want to act Middle Eastern. We want to live in an imaginary world, where nations actually adhere to the UN charter. We want to be “a villa in the jungle” as somebody said. That doesn’t work. In the Middle East, you defend your honor or you lose all of your property and then your life. In the Middle East, when someone challenges you, you destroy them or they destroy you. You don’t give them a break because they are weaker than you and you feel sorry for them. Tomorrow they may be strong enough to kill you – or they may sneak up on you and kill you, even though they are weaker.

The Palestinian Arabs have challenged us for the ownership of this land. For more than a hundred years they have made it clear to us that they will do anything and everything necessary to get it. We, on the other hand, keep trying to compromise with them. And they respond with bemusement, take anything we give them, and then continue trying to get the rest.
If they win, they will kick us out. Ask them. They’ll tell you. And that is what our strategy has to be: to remove the Palestinian Arabs from the Land of Israel. We need to do whatever is necessary to achieve that aim.

If that is offensive to you, then you can live somewhere else where at least they pretend to operate according to a “better” morality. It’s up to you.

Now that we’ve settled the strategy, it’s time to decide on the tactics. And in that connection, I come back to “Cobra Kai.” One of the recurring memes in the show is the motto of the Cobra Kai dojo. I am sure that the writers disapproved of it, but it fits our needs perfectly. Here it is:

STRIKE FIRST
STRIKE HARD
NO MERCY

05/12 Links Pt1: It's Time to End the Small Palestinian Victories; Israel rules out ceasefire after Hamas seeks international mediation

From Ian:

It's Time to End the Small Palestinian Victories

On Friday, Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem chanted on the Temple Mount: "We are all Hamas, waiting for your orders, commander Mohammed Deif. Hamas, shoot a rocket at Tel Aviv tonight."

Palestinians think that Israel does not have the perseverance to be victorious. Possibly, there are even Israelis who are beginning to think this way. This is dangerous because it emboldens the violent rejectionists.

Palestinians think that Israel does not have the perseverance to be victorious.

Victory is obviously not won overnight but by a series of smaller victories that wear out one's opponents. With each small victory, many rejectionist Palestinians see the greater victory at hand.

This is the perception, however wild it might seem, which is being perpetuated. Nonetheless, it can be turned back if Israel decides that it will no longer act as if it is in retreat.

Israel needs to start winning some small victories of its own. It needs to push back against the rejectionist Palestinians. It needs to first assert control, then provide deterrence against those who would seek harm to its citizens and act in favor of security.

In the latest conflict with Hamas in Gaza, "Operation Guarding of the Walls," Israel should massively bombard Gaza and even enter and occupy it until the rocket infrastructure has been completely destroyed. While doing this, it should hermetically seal Gaza, cutting off the supply chain to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. It must do what all nations have and are doing to achieve victory, by beating its enemy into submission.

Israel must convince the average Palestinian that it is here to stay and should be accepted in full.

This would be a significant victory and would change perceptions and switch the momentum against violent Palestinian rejectionism. It would convince the average Palestinian that Israel is here to stay and should be accepted in full. This would have the important goal of bringing peace closer because the more Palestinians accept the legitimacy and permanency of the State of Israel, the more pressure would be put on their leaders to give up on their goals of ending the Jewish state.

This is a victory towards which Israel should be persevering.

These Attacks on Jerusalem are Different

The results of these inversions of the expert-driven conventional wisdom were remarkable.

Our key regional allies—Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE—not only grew stronger, but deepened their collaboration.

The Abraham Accords ushered in the first true, warm peace agreement since the dawn of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

ISIS was crushed and al-Qaeda neutered—with a consequent reduction in Islamist terror in the U.S. and across the West.

Iran was kept off-balance and at bay. For the first time in recent memory, the Middle East seemed to be pointed in a positive direction.

Over the past 100 days, the Biden administration has retreated—hard—towards the now-discredited "experts," their now-disproven assumptions and their long-failing approaches to the region. Unsurprisingly, we have already seen increased Iranian aggression towards U.S. interests, growing brutality in the Yemeni civil war and Islamist terror attacks here at home (perhaps most prominently the King Soopers massacre in Boulder, Colorado).

The current wave of pretextual attacks against Israel are merely par for the course. When the Biden administration announced it would resume unconditional funding to the anti-Israel, terror-supporting Palestinian Authority—almost certainly in violation of U.S. law—it had to have known what to expect. Biden has returned to Obama-era policies; the terrorists have returned to Obama-era behavior.

It's not too late for the Biden team to undo its catastrophic error. Nor is it too late to appreciate the human suffering that walking away from a successful Middle East policy has unleashed throughout the region—and throughout the world.

The current attacks in Jerusalem have put the young Biden administration to the test. We must hope that these are missteps, not malevolence.

Elliott Abrams: Israel Erupts: Cutting through the Misinformation Surrounding Part of This Conflict

Note again this line in the Kohelet analysis: “The litigation has taken several years, and the owners have won at every step.” Israel’s courts, sometimes viewed as too sympathetic to — or indeed part of — the Israeli “Left,” have consistently applied standard property law, as would courts in any Western country, and consistently found that the rights of ownership have not been obliterated just because people moved into these homes when the Jews who lived in them were driven out.

Now let’s return to the paintings forcibly seized from Jews by the Nazis. There is widespread sympathy for the owners of those paintings, and it is visible in newspaper accounts and in court decisions and international conventions. Why is there so little sympathy for those who own the properties in contention in Jerusalem? Why the bias in most accounts of these eviction proceedings? Even media generally sympathetic to Israel have produced tendentious reporting (see this analysis of Fox News’ reporting).

Good questions. Is the criticism of Israel here explained by the bitter old conclusion that the world likes dead Jews (and their paintings) more than living Jews who are fighting for their rights? Is it the context of Arab complaints about the “Judaization of Jerusalem,” as if that city were somehow naturally an Arab capital where all Jewish presence is alien? Is it the Palestinian propaganda, which makes cases like this part of the battle to protect the Al-Aqsa mosque from imagined Israeli depredations?

Here’s a theory: Israel’s critics here don’t care about law and rights. Yesterday, before his meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Jordanian foreign minister spoke of “provocative measures against . . . the peoples of Sheikh Jarrah” to describe court cases in which ownership rights are being asserted. The theory seems to be that the Jews were downtrodden by the Nazis, so the Jews can recover their stolen paintings — but the Palestinians are downtrodden by the Israelis, so the stolen properties cannot be recovered. In other words: forget rights, forget courts.

Blinken, by the way, commended Israel for postponing those court decisions. But they will come, soon enough, and that will be an interesting test for the Biden administration and many other governments. Will they uphold the rule of law and say Israel has every right to enforce a ruling for the owners (if that is the court’s decision)? Or does the rule of law apply only in Europe, when it comes to old Nazi cases where there’s no political risk in siding with the Jews?

Hamas' own videos show rockets falling in Gaza (updates)

Hamas has been publishing lots of videos showing them shoot volleys of rocket to Israel.

But some of them also show rockets falling short - in Gaza.

Here's one from last night:

And this one from yesterday shows a smoke trail that reveals a corkscrewing rocket:

And here's one more with at least 3 rockets falling short (smoke trail of one or two and two rocket lights going down)

These aren't the small rockets of years past. These are very large missiles that can reach Tel Aviv.

When they fall in Gaza, they will cause damage, injuries and death.

And they have. Plenty of Gazans have been killed over the years from errant Hamas rockets, even much smaller ones.

The IDF estimates as many as 30% of rockets are falling short in Gaza.

When the media parrots the Gaza Health Ministry - Hamas- claims of civilian victims of Israeli rockets, keep in mind that they are very possibly from Hamas rockets.

But they will never admit that.

UPDATE: From the IDF:

WATCH as a Hamas rocket aimed at Israel misfires and falls back into Gaza.

But this isn't the 1st time—Hamas misfired 350 rockets in the last 3 days.

These rockets result in the deaths of innocent Gazan civilians.

It's time for the world to hold Hamas accountable. pic.twitter.com/vmhmXTZrl6
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 13, 2021