'It'll Take Awhile:' A Bitter, Poignant Requiem For Gaza

Author and colleague Judy Lash Balint, in a recent, and bitterly poignant post writes:

"At the Jerusalem think tank where I work, one of the offices has been dark for almost two months. Noam (not his real name), the bright, articulate, British-born researcher in his mid-thirties, was called up for routine reserve duty back in early December. We all missed
his dry wit and pithy insights as he spent almost a month brushing up on his army training. Noam returned to the office full of amusing stories about life in a tent in the desert with his old buddies, and promptly went about picking up the threads of the work
he'd left a few weeks earlier.

"Less than ten days later, the Gaza war broke out and Noam and his platoon were among the first of the more than 6,500 reservists who received emergency call-up orders, known here as Tsav Shmoneh. That made sense, Noam, said, since they were the most up-to-date in their training...

Read the rest and weep for all that was done by Israel to no avail, and for all who suffered in the name of an evanescent "peace."

Israel, Hamas, Don Corleone & Blanche Dubois

In an incendiary op-ed, Jonathan Mark of the New York Jewish Week says Israel not only lost the battle with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it abjectly surrendered, and on someone else's timetable to boot:

"This war was supposed to re-establish Israel's deterrence. That was supposed to be the lesson. Instead, the lesson is that Israel quits before the rockets do.

"Israel has established in Gaza exactly what it established in the Hezbollah war: That Israel can go three weeks and only three weeks, and then Israel looks at its watch (or at the European Union's watch) and goes home, job incomplete."

Read the rest for the Godfather and A Streetcar Named Desire references.

And as they say, "in related news:"

Gaza Doctor: Hamas Exaggerated Gaza Death Toll - 600 Killed, Mostly Fighters, Not 1,300 - Yossi Bar (Maariv-Hebrew)
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra Thursday quoted a doctor at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City saying that, despite Hamas and UN claims, most of those killed in Gaza were young men who were members of terror groups.
"The number of deaths was between 500-600...most were young men between 17 and 23 who were recruited into the ranks of Hamas, which sent them to be slaughtered," he said.
Journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi confirmed that only 600 people were killed, and not 1,300 as was widely reported, based on hospital visits and discussions with families of the victims.
"It was strange that the non-governmental organizations, including Western ones, repeated the number without checking, but the truth will come to light in the end," said the doctor.
"It's like what happened in Jenin in 2002," he said. "At the beginning they spoke of 500 dead; afterwards it was clear there were only 54 dead, at least 45 of them fighters."

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Hamas Shot from Civilian Neighborhoods - Rod Nordland (Newsweek)
Israel blames Hamas for using housing areas, hospitals, schools and mosques to launch attacks into Israel or against its soldiers, provoking defensive counter-fire that it says is responsible for most of the civilian casualties.
Every one of the residents interviewed in eastern Jabaliya insisted that there had been no provocation from the area, no resistance fighters, and no rocket launchings.
"There aren't any tunnels around here, we are not resistance," said Najah Abd Rabo. Yet not more than 20 feet away from Najah, there was just such a tunnel, which Israeli troops had unearthed. Right in the middle of the road, it had a convincingly camouflaged roof that matched the rest of the road.
Talal Safadi, an official in the leftist Palestinian People's Party, said that Hamas fighters were firing from positions all around Al Quds Hospital in the Tal-al Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City.

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Hamas Confirms Executing Fatah Collaborators - Khaled Abu Toameh (Jerusalem Post)
PA Minister of Social Welfare Mahmoud Habbash accused Hamas on Wednesday of confiscating 63 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid while they were on their way to UNRWA in Gaza.
He also said 19 Palestinians were murdered in cold blood by Hamas during and after Israel's Gaza operation, while more than 60 others were shot in the legs.

What Part Of 'Exploiting Hospitals For Cover' Isn't Clear?

Two hard news items that may help in clarifying the question, and providing the answer for the moral cretin audience:

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Hamas Officials Hiding in Gaza Hospital Maternity Ward - Avi Issacharoff (Ha'aretz)
Palestinian sources said senior Hamas officials have been spotted more than once wandering around the maternity ward of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital and even using the hospital to hold press conferences, on the theory that it offers a safe haven from Israeli fire.
For the same reason, Hamas forces have taken refuge near buildings that serve as headquarters for various international organizations, such as the Red Cross and the UN.

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Hamas Steals Aid Supplies for Its Own Hospital for Gunmen - Yaakov Katz (Jerusalem Post)
Hamas has set up an independent hospital in Gaza to treat its wounded and is pilfering a significant portion of the medicine allowed into the Strip, senior defense officials said Monday.
Nevertheless, the Defense Ministry said it would continue facilitating the transfer of food and medical supplies into Gaza since the humanitarian convoys play a key role in garnering international legitimacy for the IDF's operations.

More here.

Hamas Body Armor

(Courtesy: Cox & Forkum)

More here.

How To 'Reach Out And Touch Somebody' In Gaza

How the Israeli Army manages how to know who, where and how to warn non-combatant Palestinians in Gaza when to get the hell off the phone and out of the building before the Hellfires drop, is eerily similar to the movie, "Eagle Eye:"

"[Apparently] the Israeli Army has "figured out how to separate the civilians from the weapons: call the neighbors and give them ten minutes warning.

"Apparently, by Friday Israel had made at least 9,000 (nine thousand) such phone calls.

"The numbers prove how efficient this has been: prior to the ground invasion, more than 600 targets had been destroyed, fewer than 500 Palestinians killed, and fewer than 100 of those were civilians even by Palestinian and UN reckoning."

Also as apparently, this blogger is an IT ubergeek - NOT that there's anything wrong with that. Jus' sayin'.

For the rest'a'us, let's take a deeeep breath, and read the next paragraph together aloud:

"Israel clearly has created a sophisticated GIS (geographic information system). A system that records tens of thousands of buildings, their location, and their distance from each other. Then there's a database with the names of the tens of thousands of families who live in the buildings, and the phone number of each family. The system has the ability to identify all the families and phone numbers that could be affected by an attack on any given building. Finally, given the numbers involved, there must be a system that automatically makes concurrent phone calls to dozens of families, since everybody has to have the same ten-minute warning.

"Ah, and someone put tens of thousands of piece of information into that database.

"Such a system costs real money, takes time to set up, and since it is obviously operating close to flawlessly, it was tested, fiddled with, tested, fiddled with, and tested again. The purpose, I remind you, is to save the lives of thousands of Palestinians who happen to have murderous neighbors.

Ahh, right, that last sentence.

Turns out there's a pretty cool and constructive use for that paranoid, slacker fever-dream of a plot that that pretty much made up Eagle Eye, after all.

Who knew? Clearly not the PatriotActophobics who made the film.

Read the rest.

Latest Twitters On The Fighting & 'Hamasochism'

Latest Twitters on the Fighting in Gaza & 'Hamasochism'

• http://twitter.com/israelconsulate
• http://search.twitter.com/search?q=israel
• http://twitter.com/qassamcount
• http://twitter.com/Muqata
• http://twitter.com/ASoldiersMother

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Contrast & Compare:

Exhibit A)
Israeli doctors mobilize to save a Palestinian baby's life: http://tinyurl.com/9ahb2v

More about this here.

Exhibit B)
From Richard Landes:

"Would Hamas secretly blow up its own people in order to blame Israel? Certainly, their ideology would justify such a move. As Hamas representative Fathi Hamad said last February, “Palestinians have created a human shield against the Zionist bombing machine.”

For the Palestinian people, death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters against the Zionist bombing machine, as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire life. [Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas) Feb. 29, 2008]

"As if to illustrate both the international reach of this Islamic ideology of death and martyrdom and it’s repugnant quality (at least to a Western liberal), a Saudi cameraman filmed live the “making of a martyr” when the doctors pulled the plug on a girl in a Gaza hospital. Could she have lived, had Hamas allowed her to go to Egypt in one of the many unused ambulances waiting at their southern border? We will never know."

'We didn't mean to, but we lied to our kids'

From Daniel Gordis:

"Why should children living in uncontested Israeli territory grow up being taught that in the playground, when the siren goes off, you run into the caterpillar, and hope that the rocket doesn't kill any of your friends who don't make it in time?

"These weeks, with the question of whether or not Jewish sovereignty means anything at all, there is really only one question. As Joshua said to the angel (Joshua 5:13), "are you for us, or for our adversaries?" Do you believe that Jews in Sederot have a right to live without bomb-shelter caterpillars in their playgrounds?

"Do you understand that the only point of having a Jewish state is that Jews should no longer live - and die - at the whim of those who hate us just because we exist?"

And this from Victor David Hanson at NRO:

"There is something especially nauseating about the latest Middle East war — scenes of worldwide Islamic protests with photos of Jews as apes, protesters (in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida of all places!) screaming about nuking Israel and putting Jews in ovens, parades of children dressed up with suicide vests and fake rockets, near constant anti-Semitic vicious sloganeering, Gaza mosques stuffed with rockets to be used against civilians — all to be collated with creepy Hamas rhetoric about the annihilation of Israel. This is the world in which we now live."

Latest Gaza Map & Updates

White words in upper caption: [IDF] control of Kassam firing areas. Israel has returned to take control of [former Israeli] communities in northern Gaza.

Ynet News map (cleared by IDF censors) of Israeli Army incursion into the northern and southern ends of the Gaza Strip. Latest reports say the IDF has also succeeded in deploying forces across Gaza, effectively cutting the territory in two (blue arrows above the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps). IDF officials say that is in order to thwart movement of armed Palestinian forces from one area of fighting to another.

'Aid2Gaza:' Succinct. Comprehensive. Guess who's the owner?

Aid2Gaza. Succint. Comprehensive. Veddy Brrrritsh. Oh, and you'll never guess who puts it out:

"This is a website, maintained at the Israeli Embassy in London, which aims to give as much information as possible on all the international aid being sent into Gaza.

"We’ll post updates from Israel’s COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories) office, OCHA, UNRWA, USAID, ICRC (International Red Cross Red Crescent) and WHO information, as well as individual and group actions from the grassroots ,like the Free Gaza Movement."

And daring. Did I mention daring - aka "Hutzpadik?"

This week in Israel: Margot Dudkevitch on Gaza (Exclusive Podcast Interview)

Thanks and a shoutout to the whole freakin' world that's been clicking on the following link. Umm, here's a heads-up, folks: It's from 2006 - same place, similar situation - and, unfortunately, is a dead audio link. Sorry 'bout that - I'll try to get her on the line soon for an update:

Friday, June 30

This week in Israel: Margot Dudkevitch on Gaza (Exclusive Podcast Interview)

Israeli tank crew viewing an explosion in the Gaza town of of Beit Hanun (archive)

Hear Margot Dudkevitch, an Ozsraeli defense affairs and territories commentator, and former Jerusalem Post territories reporter as she takes look at this difficult week in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli Army YouTube, Blog pages

Go check 'em out:

• http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk
• http://idfspokesperson.com/

Gaza: Shiite Happens

Click on the link for the full-sized image

GAZA, March 27 (AP) — An earthen embankment around a sewage reservoir that was filled to capacity collapsed Tuesday, and officials said it spewed a “tsunami” of waste and mud that killed five people and forced residents to flee Umm Naser, a village in the northern Gaza Strip.

Read the rest here.

Israel sent sump pumps, and offered other aid but - well, you already know about the reply, right?

Seven Qassam rockets landed Wednesday across the western Negev. No injuries were reported in the attacks.

The rockets landed in open fields near Ashkelon and Sderot. One of the Qassams fell near a strategic facility in the Ashkelon industrial area south of the city.

That "strategic facility" would be where the nation's Reading power-station, oil depots and Israel's own waste-treatment facilities are located. Guess Hamas wanted to share the joy. Read the rest here.

Oh - and the metal the rockets were made from? Sewer pipes Israel sent to Gaza to build their sewage system.

Annnnd - this just in:

Army attacks target in northern Strip from air, hits Qassam launching cell. Palestinian report civilians hurt in strike, one of them sustaining critical wounds.

Read the rest here.