Southern Israel: like bomb shelters with revolving doors

Southern Israel: Like bomb shelters with revolving doors
(I penned this comprehensive feature in early 2012 during a day-long visit to cities and towns adjacent to the border with the Gaza Strip in the wake of yet another series of terrorist-launched rocket salvos on Israeli cities, towns and villages in a 40-kilometer radius of the coastal enclave. 

Due to the significant differences in the version that was eventually published elsewhere, I'm reproducing the original here in light of the near-constant steel rain on southern Israel since then, including two to three rockets on Sunday, Aug. 26th, which slammed into two factories in Sderot.

If you choose to reproduce this, I ask that you use it all, without additions, and with my full name and website: http://www.davidbrianbender.com. Thanks, DB) 

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Southern Israel: Like bomb shelters with revolving doors

Two school boys, residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz near the Gaza Strip, examine pockmarks on a kindergarten's reinforced security wall from a Kassam rocket attack against their small farming community.
(Photo: Dave Bender: All Rights Reserved) 

Southern Israel: life in bomb shelters with revolving doors

by Dave Bender

One of three Grad rockets fired by Gaza militants at Beersheba Wednesday evening evaded the Israeli army's Iron Dome anti-missile system, wounding one resident and sending 20 others into traumatic shock. The other two were downed in open areas outside the city.

Air Force craft later hit a rocket launching pad in northern Gaza, and an arms smuggling tunnel in the south, the army said, confirming direct hits. There were no reports of Palestinian casualties.

Despite attempts by Israelis within a 40 kilometers radius of the Gaza Strip to return to the “new normal,” rocket attacks since Tuesday's informal Egyptian-brokered “cease fire” between Israel and Palestinian militants left many wondering just when the first half of the term “cease fire” would actually begin.

Seven mortars hit coastal Ashkelon and Ashdod that morning, and a Grad-model Katyusha slammed down in Netivot, east of the coastal enclave, the same night.

By Wednesday evening, officials in the three cities rescinded an announcement a day earlier for close to 200,000 students to return to school, closed since Sunday.

An editorial cartoon in the morning's Maariv Hebrew daily may have summed up dizzying violence best: A family is seen exiting a building's revolving door, above which a sign reads: “Protected Space” – a bomb shelter.

Assessing both internal and external damage

One Beersheba resident I spoke with on Monday was so distressed over the 200-plus rockets fired into her city since last Friday, that she broke into tears just enumerating her experiences.

“What I feel right now is just totally, totally drained,” Barbara Carter said after Wednesday's salvo.

“We were eating pizza when the siren sounded, and when we came back upstairs (from taking shelter on a lower floor of her apartment building) I said I felt like I was going to throw up,” said Carter, who is a retired American immigrant.

“I'm very discouraged and disappointed that our government isn't doing something; but at the same time I understand the ramifications of going into Gaza,” she said of a possible ground foray to halt the rocket fire made by army southern Command chief, Maj.-Gen. Tal Russo.

"There is no magic solution to the rocket fire from Gaza,” Russo said, noting that, “There might be situations in which we would need to launch a larger operation,” according to the Ynet news site.

Reporters visiting the region Wednesday saw glaziers replacing blown out shop windows from Grad strikes just days earlier, heard city officials describe near-90 percent drops in business revenues since last Friday, and toured rocket-pockmarked kibbutz kindergartens with shrapnel-holed inch-thick security glass windows.

Distances and time needed to reach safety when a rocket from Gaza is fired into southern Israel (Courtesy).

The current round of violence began on Friday when Israeli Air Force craft struck and killed a senior operative of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, preempting a major terrorist attack along the Israeli-Egyptian border, the army said.

Guns versus butter

In a board room at Ashkelon's city hall complex, Mayor Benny Vaknin sits before a PowerPoint slide showing dotted locations of every rocket hit across his city over the last few years. The map looks like it contracted the measles. He offers a thumbnail overview of the steel rain's economic storm on the city's 120,000 residents.

“For the last four days – I don't have the exact [figures] … almost 20, 25 percent of the people didn't go to their factories. This morning I had meetings with all of the heads of the commercial shopping centers … they told me that all the revenue – their income – decreased maybe 80 – 85, maybe 90 percent,” Vaknin said.

Smaller “mom and pop” shops were especially hard hit by the sharp drop in walk-in customers.

“We have here hundreds of small businesses; from what they sell, they eat. A lot of small businesses, small shops, they don't have a reserve,” he says, recalling a similar situation during the month-long Operation Cast Lead in Dec. 2008, “when hundreds of families were in a very poor situation,” and businesses saw, “tens of millions” in losses.

Vaknin says the uncertainty over where the next volley of rockets will hit makes “people prefer to stay home; they are afraid. You know, in October – in the previous cycle of violence – a man in Ashkelon was killed. [Moshe Ami] was very famous culturally.”As well, “Tens of people were wounded; they were outside, so most of the people [now] prefer to stay home.”

But, despite the glum present, Vaknin remains undaunted and recalls agreements reached with Gaza City officials in the 1990s for mutual municipal infrastructure, and distance-learning projects.

On a trip with Gaza's mayor to the United States and Germany to raise matching funds for both cities, “We succeeded to collect one million dollars in donations from former Israeli Jews in the U.S., and started a youth-training project for Gaza and for Ashkelon.”

He says still holds out hope that such goodwill will not remain a tattered memory.

“'I don't despair,'” he told me, 'because I believe that this way, we can prepare the people for peace.'”

Dr. Alan Marcus, Ashkelon's Director of Strategic Planning agrees, despite the complexities of the present “fire-cease-fire” reality between Israel, and Gaza militants.

“The minute the feeling is that it is more important to do better for your own people, instead of killing the other side – whether you have a formal peace or not – we can do great things for both sides,” Marcus told me after Vaknin's presentation.

Remains of detonated Kassam rocket, Sderot police station .

(Photo: Dave Bender: All Rights Reserved)

Israeli hospitals: healing both sides

Not far from Vaknin's office, Naomi Maximov, a religious woman in her late 60s sits in her room at the city's Barzilai Hospital.

She says dozens of missile alerts since last week alone have left her traumatized, and points to a heavily bandaged leg.

Her apartment building doesn't have a bomb shelter, so when there are missile warning sirens she and neighbors take refuge in the stairwell – the innermost and safest place in the structure. But during one alert, she tripped and fell running for cover, causing her injury and hospitalization.

“I am afraid – terrified,” she tells me.

"Even at the hospital?" I ask.

“Absolutely,” she insists, “I'm going to another hospital for rehabilitation, and if they don't provide me with a 'safe' room, otherwise I won't sleep there.”

Maximov, who covers her hair out of religious modesty, says that “Every night – and I mean EVERY night, I prepare a nightgown, a hair covering, slippers, and then get into bed. The moment there's a siren, I run...”

Her broken hip may heal sooner than her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brought on by the around-the-clock sirens and explosions.

“I'm always stressed breathless – 'what will be, what will be, what will be?' – I'm always tense,” she says.

Meanwhile, several floors above, Muhammad Abudana tends to his wife, Kamla, a cancer patient in her forties who was hospitalized at Barzilai 16 days ago. The two are from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

Muhammad requested that Kamla be operated on in Israel rather than at a Gaza hospital. Authorities on both sides agreed, and the two traveled to Barzilai for her treatment.

As a humanitarian gesture, Israel annually accepts thousands of Gazan and West Bank Palestinians for medical treatment at no cost at hospitals throughout the country.

Muhammad says the last few days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians was very difficult for him, especially when he had to run for shelter with everyone else during missile attacks on the city.

Ironically, because of those very missile attacks, the hospital is currently building a massive150 million dollar, 350 bed underground facility. The facility's four surgical floors will hold ten operating rooms and a 50-bed, mass-casualty emergency ward.

Coffee, Kassams, and kindergartens

Carol Simantov is the nurse at 300-member Kibbutz Nir Oz, next to southern Gaza. The community's stuccoed one-story homes and schools sit less than three kilometers (under two miles) from the heavily-guarded border fence, it's verdant fields lay even closer.

Missile have been slamming down by them for a decade, and Carol says one member lost both legs in a rocket attack, and a second died of wounds.

Standing in front of a pockmarked outer walls of one of the village's kindergartens, she points to where shrapnel from a nearby Kassam hit one morning a few days ago. Several steel shards ricocheted straight through an armored glass window, and sliced through the ceiling tiles – shortly before the mothers and children arrived.

Across a footpath a few children play on a swing hung from branches of a tree that faces the kindergarten. Fist-sized shrapnel gouged deep into the trunk and roots, and on the walls of a home a few meters away.

What do you do when a rocket lands?

“What do we do?” she answers with a sigh, “... now that most of us have home shelters, it's not as frightening as if it was a war.” 

But, she continues, “If you're out on the streets, it's very difficult because you have about ten seconds from the siren – it kind of screams at us 'Color Red! Color Red!' – and that's our code warning. If we're close enough, we have spread out through the kibbutz oversize sewer pipes that we can hide in. We have bomb shelters for 'normal life,' – [but] there's no normal here anymore.” 

Simantov, who immigrated from Pennsylvania several decades ago, recounts a pastoral, yet jarring image she shares with friends back in the U.S.

“...I sit on my patio on a summer evening having my coffee, and listen to the sounds of war in the background,” she says, laconically.

But while she admits that life alongside a war zone certainly “isn't easy,” Simantov says she has no plans for pulling up stakes for quieter areas further away from the front.

“...they don't understand why I'm here,” she says of worried family and friends abroad.
“They keep saying, 'when are you coming home?' and I say 'I've been here for 38 years already – so sometime you have to accept that this is home."

An Israeli army tank, a porta-potty, and an unused lookout tower at a position facing the Gaza Strip across the road from a kibbutz, whose fields are seen in the lower part of the image (Photo: Dave Bender, All Rights Reserved)

Israeli army display of military-grade and homemade IED's used against troops and civilians along
roads and patrol paths adjacent to the Gaza Strip (Photo: Dave Bender: All Rights Reserved)

(Video) BBC Porcine Aviation Moment: Gaza & Sderot

From the Beeb: A celebrated (going by the accent and Belfast reference, Irish) UK soldier takes his own professional "boots-on-the-ground" look at Gaza and Sderot - and comes to (for Bush House, as least) surprising conclusions that refute The Goldstone report about last year's battle, and incidentally, much of the BBC's own programming about the conflict:

A year ago the Israeli army was readying itself to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, after a three-week campaign which led to accusations of war crimes.

The Israelis said they launched their assault because they could no longer tolerate the indiscriminate rocket attacks which were being launched on Israel from inside Gaza.

One year on, celebrated Gulf War veteran Colonel Tim Collins travelled to Gaza for a soldier's view of the conflict.

Broadcast on Tuesday 19 January 2010.

The un-embeddable video is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8470100.stm

Anyone with an embed link out there?

(H-T: EoZ)

Noted Israeli Left-Wing Pundit: 'Shock & Awe' Against Gaza (audio)

More and more, Israel's military response to Hamas' in Gaza is making some pretty surprising bedfellows.

Yaron London is one striking example.

He's a thoughtful, veteran tv, radio and print commentator and self-described left-winger from way back. His two shekels worth of punditry on affairs of the day are taken seriously by many, including by many Israeli political rightists.

However, on a recent morning drive radio talk show with fellow left-winger Razi Barkai - on Army Radio, mind you (a bastion of "indie" thought, suprisingly enough - not at all like most national military media which usually function as media lapdogs for senior brass), he comes out with nothing less than a "'War Is Hell,' and the Palestinians brought it upon themselves by voting for Hamas," POV.

I am looking for a print version of this in Hebrew or English - anyone got a link?

London, IMHO, often comes across as a classic case of a fairly unctuous spokesman of the "chattering classes," who, if translated into an American milieu might be in the realm of say, Tom Friedman of the New York Times, or one of the less screechy columnists at The UK's The Guardian newspaper.

But - unlike some other Israeli pundits and opinion-makers - London lives in Israel and has a reputation to uphold, so for him to come out with his unprecedented remarks about Gaza is even more of a shock - not the least of which to his interviewer.

A gut-check tells me that this may be a bellweather of what Hamas and the Arab world may self-inflict via the IDF and with a shuddering, teeth-grinding approval by major Israeli left-wingers if the current conflict continues: "Their civilians or ours? So be it. Theirs."

While the translation below is from right-wing Israel National Radio, who likely fist-pumped the air and went, "Yeeeeah!!!," over this, I listened to the segment, and can vouch for the accuracy and contextuality of the translation:

London first outlined his views in an article in Yediot Acharonot, and then elaborated upon them for clearly-shocked interviewer Razi Barkai on Army Radio.

“It appears that we have exhausted the options of moderating Hamas fanaticism with measured responses,” London wrote, “and the time has come to shock the Gaza population with actions that until now have nauseated us - [such as] killing the political leadership, causing hunger and thirst in Gaza, blocking off energy sources, causing widespread destruction, and being less discriminating in the killing of civilians. There is no other choice.”

Asked by Barkai, a veteran left-wing broadcaster in his own right, why there is no choice, London responded, “The strategy of modular and gradual pressure has not brought the desired results. We cannot absorb any more Kassams, we cannot fortify the entire south, we cannot take over Gaza because the price will be too heavy, and gradual pressure has only made Hamas and the Gaza population even tougher and more fanatic. I therefore concluded that there are only two remaining options: being extra nice to them, or being extra tough –"

Barkai interrupts and says, “There is a third option: negotiations with Hamas.”

London: “Which will bring what?”

Barkai: “I have no idea, but it is a possibility, at least in theory.”

London: “Negotiations will lead only to a ceasefire, whose duration will be determined solely in accordance with Hamas interests; we will not come out of that period with a greater advantage in terms of arms and weapons…”

Asked how he can guarantee that a tougher Israeli offensive will yield the desired results, London said: “Experience in past wars shows me that if we are tough enough, then at a certain stage, their standing-power will break… I am referring to both the population and their leadership; they are the same, because the population voted for Hamas. I can’t separate between one who voted for Hamas and a Hamas leader.”

Barkai: "We will have to deal with very difficult pictures of hungry children –"

London: "Yes."

Barkai: "and destroyed houses –"

London: "Yes."

Barkai: "and dead unarmed civilians, etc. How will we be able to deal with this?"

London: "Everyone in Gaza is armed… There is a consensus in Israel that the time has come to take action. We cannot fortify Ashdod, and Netivot, and Sderot, and bear this disgrace."

Barkai: "There might be thousands of dead?"

London: "I hope not – I hope that one real blow will put an end to this before we get to that."

Barkai: "Give me an example of such a blow."

London: "I don’t want to give an example, but you can go back to history and see."

Barkai: [short pause] "The only thing I can think of, and that you apparently don’t want to say, is the bombing of cities such as in World War II."

London: "Right. You don’t need to bomb a whole city; a quarter of a borough should be enough…"

Barkai finally asked, “Tell me, have you undergone an – I don’t want to say ‘ideological crisis’ because that sounds too high-brow, but perhaps a little crisis—"

London: "My brothers in Sderot are what brought me to this."

Barkai uses his trademark phrase: “Ki ma?” [Because what?]

London: "Because I can’t take the idea of little frightened girls running around in the streets of Sderot. That’s the whole thing. You can tolerate it for a certain amount of time, like the kibbutzim of the Jordan Valley did, or if it’s only a small amount of terror organizations, or whatever. But when an entire population of 1.5 million [Gaza Arabs] voted for this Hamas government, then this population has to bear the responsibility. That’s the whole story."

To hear the interview in its entirety (in Hebrew), click here.

The Apology That Will Never Come

"We Have Love And It Will Win/Gush Katif and Samaria." (Photo: Dave Bender)

The sticker in the photo above was put out by opponents of Israel's Disengagement from the Gaza Strip and parts of Samaria in the summer of 2005. Jewish residents of the aforementioned areas tried to "market" their opposition to the traumatic national step not with anger and rancor, but via a message of faith, trust, hope and love. So much for that in a world ruled by money, guns and realpolitic.

By the way, go on and guess where and when I shot that photo. Go on, I'll wait...

It's the door of an shrapnel-riddled civilian apartment building in a poverty-stricken area of Israel's northern coastal city of Nahariya, just south of Lebanon.

The holes in the wall are from an exploded Katyusha rocket that Hizbullah fired at the town. A dozen feet away from the building is a synagogue that also sustained damage in the barrage - one of some 4,000 that hit the city in the summer of 2006.

I'm reminded of that photo by what Nadav Shragai, writing in Haaretz. He gives vent to what I, and I am certain many others, are feeling more and more deeply these last few weeks: 
Now, after the war and just before the election whirlwind sucks in our politicians once again, it would be appropriate for many of them to go out of their way and visit the mobile-home sites where those uprooted from Gush Katif live. This way they can tell them one small thing: I'm sorry.  

Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert, Shaul Mofaz and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel Defense Forces and the police should do this - they, their agents and everyone else who initiated, implemented and aided in using force to uproot 10,000 people from their homes in Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, maliciously and without any real purpose.

Everyone who saw some good in the evil of the disengagement and evil in the good of Gush Katif has turned light into darkness and darkness into light. At the very least, they are obligated to make this small apology. 
Read the rest.

And I add my own mea culpa for placing my trust in all the military, academic and media "experts" I've interviewed over the years, leading up to and following the expulsion in the summer of '05 that confused black with white. Truth with lies, and honor, love, valor and elemental human decency, with squalid greed, fear and baseless hatred.

And you, dear reader?

The Gaza Riviera and What Might Have Been

Sderot billboard: "Who's next in the lottery?" sits above "Eli's steakiya," and across the street from the beleaguered town's City Hall - also the target of hundreds of Kassam rocket strikes. The red words between the Coke caps: "Lucky corner." Eh... maybe not so much. (Photo: Dave Bender)

David Suissa is an LA PR maven, who also happens to be pretty credible teacher and commentator on the Jewish mysticism front.

Here's a sad "parallel history" musing, about what might have been the future of the Gaza Strip, had the Palestinians taken the high road after Israel's pullout in 2005:

"...the other day, as my mind was numb from yet another report from the Gaza war zone, I saw something that made me go off on a wild dream. It started with the sight of two Israeli soldiers as they drove into Gaza in an armored personnel carrier, and as I watched the soldiers, I recalled how much Israelis love to go to the beach.

"As if I was hallucinating, I then imagined the same two soldiers in their beach clothes, in a convertible roadster, with a surf board sticking out and the music blasting, and instead of going to war, they were going to meet their buddies for a day of partying on the beach.

"They were going to the jetsetters' newest fun spot: the Gaza Riviera.

"By now, my mind was losing control. Images started flooding in. I saw this fabulous strip of hotels and casinos right by a sparkling ocean. I imagined thousands of proud Palestinians working with smiles on their faces to serve the thousands of tourists from around the world who were coming to their little strip of ocean paradise.

"Behind this paradise, I saw a bustling economy, where the highest quality produce was grown and exported; where entrepreneurs built software companies, banks and advertising agencies; where a university attracted students from around the world; where local culture and the arts thrived; and where you could take the Orient Express train to Beirut, Cairo and, yes, even Tel Aviv."

But that would have assumed they ever stop missing a chance to miss a chance.

This, by the way, is no idle wishful thinking. The average Israeli is "game" in more ways than one (sorry) to work and fork over millions of dollars into Palestinian coffers, both for goodwill, and for a "normative" life.

Not that I personally supported the venture - financially or ideologically - but the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government did. So the PA opened and ran the Oasis Casino in Jericho (yes, THAT Jericho, where the dice were to have been tumblin' down, instead of walls) - until, of course, the bloodlust for dead Jews got the better of them:

"The Oasis Casino, which sometimes had a daily turnover of close to a million dollars, was built in Jericho after the signing of the Oslo Accords, over ten years ago. In 1999, it made a profit of $54 million from the close to 2,900 people who visited the casino daily - 99% of them Israelis.

"The casino shut down in late 2000, a month after the PA started the Oslo War, after its roof was used for terrorist gunfire attacks at Israeli targets. The building was heavily damaged by Israeli retaliatory fire, and though it was later refurbished, it has never re-opened.

Here's a WaPo travel article on the place.

Gaza: The Downside of Firing Mortars at Israel (Shocking 'Darwin's Surprise' Video)

The downside of firing mortars at Israel? That'd be when they stop going up:

Cast Lead 'Leathernecks'

Shahar Golan has an edge, interesting blog, and great post about a cadre of Israeli tv hard news reporters, who apparently all went to the same leather good shop on their last visit to Turkey ("GREAT prices... ask for Hakim and tell him I sent you"):

http://frgdr.com/blog/2008/12/29/tonight-evening-news-cast-lead-leather/

H-T: Harry, who also does Jerusalemite.

Pro-Israel Rallies Worldwide (Photos)

Pro-Israel Rallies Photos:
http://www.jr.co.il/rally/world/index.html

(H-T: Jacob Richman)

Hamas School, Petting Zoo Snuff Porn (Graphic Videos - updated)

Ok. Now alla'you'se sick, twisted freaks that got off on that title can shove off back under the rock.

All the rest: watch the two following videos and let's have a show of hands if you -- by this point -- are still unable to wrap your heads around the idea, that yes, Hamas has, does, and will inculcate and murder Palestinian children and even cute furry animals, just to win a PR victory over the Jews:


IDF unit discovers school and petting zoo wrapped with primacord fuzing, ready to blow. (update: the wires were connected to - sit down for this one - 200 kilograms of explosives)


Film clip from Palestine Media Watch showing -- as far back as 2002, long before the current fighting -- official Palestinian Authority TV was spoon feeding toxic martyrdom messages to children and toddlers. (Personal note: I worked with PMW at the time this video was produced, and can personally attest to the scruplous measures taken by the translators to ensure the accuracy and correct nuance of the Palestinian-dialect Arabic)


Official PATV clip. (Personal note II: Now, just for comparison and for the record, my kids, who have been taught in the standard officials Israel religious state school system have never been taught anything remotely like this. When I go to PTA meetings, the feltboards and display cases are filled with the usual stuff we all grew up with, worshiping life, joy, learning and peace).

Makes you want to go wash your eyes out, and knock back a stiff drink just to lose this memory, huh?

'One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other'

I don't often write about the Holocaust, but David Harris, director of the AJC has a really good post at his blog about remembrance, and forgetting, and about Israel and the exploitation of the murder of European Jewry by the detractors of both:

"...As Israel pursues its military operation against Hamas, reparations are under way around the world for Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.

The two are not disconnected.

A Catholic cardinal - and leading Vatican official - refers to Gaza as a "concentration camp."

A Greek newspaper entices readers with the banner headline "Holocaust," referring to Israel's alleged actions in Gaza.

A Brazilian newspaper publishes two cartoons - one of Hitler wearing an armband emblazoned with the Star of David and swastika, saluting, "Heil Israel!"; the other of a Star of David casting a shadow in the form of a swastika over the Gaza Strip.

On his website, white supremacist David Duke reacts to the Gaza crisis by lamenting that Hollywood portrays Jews as Holocaust victims rather than perpetrators.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calls on Venezuela's Jewish community to denounce the "Holocaust" being committed in Gaza.

Posters equating the Star of David with the Nazi swastika are ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies around the world.

A demonstrator in Holland confidently asserts that "Anne Frank would be turning over in her grave" if she saw what was happening in Gaza."

Read the rest.

Kassams & Kids: Closer Than You Really Want To Know

Imagine this was a sign on your street:


"Slow - Children Crossing." Rocket-shrapnel riddled street sign in Israel.

Gaza rocket ranges into Israel (so far...):

Click on the image, or here for this, and similar full-sized interactive maps.

(H-T: DoubleTapper)

Noted US Christian Broadcaster Hurt In Kassam Strike (VIDEO ADDED)

Kassam Blast Knocks American Broadcaster to Ground from Israel Always on Vimeo.

Earl Cox is a highly-regarded broadcaster, who has worked tirelessly for Israel's sake for decades. He has worked for two decades in four U.S. Administrations. He is also a friend and colleague, and I have assisted his efforts in Israel in the past, as a recording technician.

This afternoon in Sderot, he was blown off his feet into a concrete bus stop when a Kassam rocket fired from Gaza slammed down close to where he was standing. He and an assistant were "sore and shaken up," in the wake of the attack, according to a colleague, who communicated the details to me.

Earl Cox (on the bench inside bus stop) and aide at the moment of the Kassam impact near them.

This is the release his organization sent out a short time ago:

"SDEROT, ISRAEL --- International Christian broadcaster and columnist, Earl Cox, today lived through what Jews in southern Israel live through each day. Cox, who is known as "the voice of Israel to America," was in Sderot, an Israeli city on the Gaza border, identifying some of the many humanitarian needs of the people living in this area where warning sirens and rocket blasts are a part of everyday life. Cox and his crew experienced a first hand taste of this terror today; not once but twice. As he and his crew were preparing to film a video report when the siren sounded alerting everyone of incoming Kassam rockets. All scrambled for cover. The rocket landed so close to Cox and his crew that the shock waves from the blast threw him and one of his aids against the wall inside one of the 50 portable bomb shelters placed in and around Sderot by Israel Always and Operation LifeShield. Thanks to this shelter, Cox and his crew escaped serious injury.

"Shortly after this first blast, Cox and others on his Israel Always team experienced a second rocket attack and had to scurry for shelter this time finding only an unprotected building. Fortunately they again escaped injury.

"The Israel Always team will remain in southern Israel until the end of Israel's war with radical Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Since beginning his campaign in support of Israel more than ten years ago, Cox and his organization have raised huge sums of money to help meet humanitarian needs in Israel."

Earl and Kathleen are directly responsible for raising money for such reinforced bus stops that saved Earl's and the others in the film's lives. I am certain that this event will only spur them on to greater goals for Israel's sake. Find out more about LifeShield here: http://www.israelalways.com/lifeshield.html

My thoughts and prayers are with Earl, Kathleen and all in Israel for their steadfastness and valor in the face of personal danger.

Click here for more reports about Sderot and Gaza.

What it's Like Prepping for a Gaza Op (exclusive story & audio)

For all the new readers (especially Doubletapper) who are visiting my blog: This is a personal - maybe even too personal - journal of what it's like "getting the call" after 01:00 to prepare for an incursion into the Gaza Strip.

I wrote it over the course of several weeks after a terror bombing at a gambling parlor/bar in the town of Rishon Letzion, near Tel Aviv in 2002.

I recorded the introduction to the linked audio soon after an IDF foray to try to rescue IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

I hope you'll agree that I did my best to be fair and objective interviewing one of the soldiers, a Canadian immigrant, despite the circumstances. My deepest thanks to him for his honest, personal responses. Comments and questions are welcome.

(The audio and written accounts reveal no sensitive IDF material, and were cleared at the time by senior officers)

Audio: Preparing for the Gaza War

The call came...

...My concern rises to the surface like a half-forgotten bad dream tailing me out of my slumber.

"This is a 'tzav-8' call-up. You need to arrive at the base by 9:00 am," she says, asking if I understand the instructions and other pertinent details. I mumble my assent, hanging up the phone as I fall back into a chair.

Stunned, I told my now-awake wife that no, this wasn't a drill and that no, they weren't kidding. Suddenly taken aback in a rush of confusion and inchoate fear, I drag down the dusty, readied backpack from the crawlspace over the bathroom, mentally going over the list of needed last minute supplies.

Later, deep in the heart of the night, we finish packing the bag, both finally comprehending that I was Gaza bound, and though uncertain, likely en route to harms way.

I arrived at the sprawling Negev-area base later that morning. Hundreds of friends and acquaintances - all brothers in arms - were already there, milling in and out of ragged lines, signing in and signing out on rifles, gear and webbing. Guys in the unit I hadn't seen appear for duty in years, aged and way past enlistment age were there, trying on wrinkled fatigues and lacing up stiff boots. Reports said we were at well over a 100 percent show rate. Fairly amazed, proud, and somewhat abashed at the plain show of patriotism, I went from group to group, catching up on news since our last term of service together.

The knowing looks between us as we backslapped and traded stories of times gone by wordlessly said it all. Our unit, together with many others, was preparing to go into operation against the Palestinian terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip...(more here)

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?"