"The threat that Hamas' ballistic capabilities pose to
the people of the Negev is less serious than initially presumed and the
residents of the targeted areas are not demonstrating signs of panic,
according to an interim analysis by the Israel Defense Forces of the
situation nearly a week after the launching of Operation Cast Lead in
the Gaza Strip."
Does this mean that Israel is going to call off the attack now that the rationale for its week-long bombardment has been undermined? Nope.
"[Deputy Defense Minister Matan] Vilnai nonetheless added that should the IDF mount a
ground invasion into the Strip, Hamas is expected to pick up the pace
and take more risks in launching rockets."
I know there's no need to remind you who Matan Vilnai is.
There were growing fears in Israel last night that Hamas missiles could threaten its top-secret nuclear facility at Dimona.
Rocket attacks from Gaza have forced Israelis to flee in ever greater numbers and military chiefs have been shaken by the size and sophistication of the militant groupâs arsenal.
In Beersheba, until a few days ago a sleepy desert town in southern Israel, there is little sign of the 186,000 inhabitants. Schools are closed and the streets of shuttered shops echo with the howl of sirens warning of incoming rockets.
Israeli planes, meanwhile, began a new stage yesterday in their offensive on Gaza, killing Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas official. The one-tonne bomb in Jabaliya is also understood to have killed two of his four wives and four of his twelve children. More than 400 Palestinians have been killed in the six days of Israeli attacks.
Despite a diplomatic mission by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, to Paris, the Israeli army continued to muster thousands of troops and scores of tanks along Gazaâs border for a possible ground offensive. Israelâs airstrikes are designed to blunt Hamasâs capacity to fire its new Grad missiles deep into its territory. The weapons are smuggled in through tunnels and by sea, replacing homemade Qassam rockets.
Israeli officials say that Hamas has also acquired dozens of Iranian-made Fajr-3 missiles with an even longer range. Many fear that as the group acquires ever more sophisticated weaponry it is only a matter of time before the nuclear installation at Dimona, 20 miles east of Beersheba, falls within its sights. Dimona houses Israelâs only nuclear reactor and is believed to be where nuclear warheads are stored.
âMaybe Hamas will get a big present from Iran or Hezbollah, a few good long-range missiles and theyâll use it,â said Limor Brina, 40, a jeweller who is learning the lessons of life under rocket threat: she sleeps with her clothes on and heads to a shelter whenever the siren sounds.
Israelâs worst nightmare is that soon all its cities will be within range either of the Hezbollah Katyushas arrayed on the Lebanese border to the north or the increasingly sophisticated missiles stockpiled by Hamas to the south. Both groups have links to Israelâs archenemy Iran.
Israel has said that its aim is to smash Hamasâs rocket-firing capability but also to topple the hardline Islamist regime that seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007 after bloody street battles with its secular rivals Fatah. Until that goal is achieved, many in Beersheba are packing their bags and heading for Tel Aviv or Eilat.
âMaybe 30 or 40 per cent of people have left the city,â said Ron Shukron, 26, running one of the few grocery shops still open. As he spoke a siren echoed through the empty streets. With only 15 seconds to take cover, he stepped under a reinforced support beam in the ceiling. Seconds later came the dull thud of a rocket exploding on the edge of town.
[FILE UNDER: Let's invoke fear and hysteria to justify our war crimes.]
There are more Americans killed by fireworks on the fourth of July every year the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian bottle rockets coming from Gaza since the Israeli pull-out. Palestinian bottle rockets are merely the pretense that the Judeofascist Zionists have invoked in order to justify their wanton murder of dozens of Palestinian women and children.
"Self defense" is always the thin reed that Judeofascists use to justify their atrocities. It was "self-defense" against Christian "anti-semites" that the Judeofascist Bolsheviks used to justify the murder of millions of Christians in the Soviet Union. They are slowly working their way back up to those kinds of numbers with their orchestration of the Iraq invasion, and now Gaza. This is how they operate: slow, steady escalation in order to acclimate the world to ever higher levels of violence and civilian casualties. Ironic, isn't it, that the Holocaust is where Judeofascism's last escalation ended. Jewish civilians ended up caught up in a âmoralityâ of Judeofascismâs own making. I bet the elders of Zion got a big belly laugh out of that one, even as the pleaded ânever againâ for public consumption and repeatedly invoked the phrase to justify Israelâs own atrocious âmorality.â
Judeofascist Zionist morality is the new American morality, from the Bushcons right on through to the establishment left-liberal mainstream, where the Israel lobby has traditionally nested. Little wonder America is now coming apart at the seams. Itâs shrugging at the Gaza bombardment is just the latest bit of evidence of its growing callousness.
Again, Mr Nadel, you seem to assume that we are unaware of the views of mainstream journalistic whores.
From the linked Guardian article –
"The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, told army radio.
Gotta love these irony-proof Hebrew names — 'Matan' in Spanish means 'they kill.'
Howdy, Matan, I'm the Midnight Strangler. Pleased to meetcha. Hope ya guessed mah name …
Speaking of exaggerations/willful dissimulation: earlier this week, Netanyahu was on BBC World Service and repeatedly compared the Gaza rockets to the Blitz on London delivered by Nazi Germany.
This is the man who may very well be Israel's prime minister in two months. He is utterly fixated on WWII as the filter through which to understand every current event. (Think he missed A. Burg's The Holocaust is Over book.)
Netanyahu has perfect English. That's enough for most U.S. congressmen (and Americans in general). Phil, I don't have any of your optimism right now. Please help.
Ed – It would be a great help if you could show those Israelis what big wimps they are by going to live in Sderot right now. Hold your nose and just do it!
Tee-hee, Haygood. "Matan" also means "Giving" as in the Hebrew word for negotiations, "Masa-u-Matan", "Sending and Giving". How's your Arabic? What does "Saif-a-dean"="Sword of Religion" Ammous mean, Phil?
Why would I ever want to go to Sderot? As a gentile, I would be considered a second class citizen and allowed few civil rights, relative to "the Chosen." I wouldnât have wanted to visit Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia, either. (The difference, of course, is that my tax dollars are being used to underwrite Zionist Israel, whereas US tax dollars used to be employed to defeat tyranny. But that was before Zionists put a stranglehold on the American establishment, or rather lured it into bed.)
Where is the courageous Sword Of Gideon when we need him to reveal the naked truth?
SOG is likely otherwise engaged in auto-gratification over the pictures of dead Palestinian women and children coming out of Gaza. "SOG's Complaint" has finally been satisfied.
'There are more Americans killed by fireworks on the fourth of July every year the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian bottle rockets coming from Gaza since the Israeli pull-out.'
That's true Ed. But so is this:
'Israelâs worst nightmare is that soon all its cities will be within range either of the Hezbollah Katyushas arrayed on the Lebanese border to the north or the increasingly sophisticated missiles stockpiled by Hamas to the south.'
The headless chicken reaction to the Qassams is only partly to do with the trivial damage they do; it's the sense that they are merely an innocuous overture to a more genuine threat to Israel's survival.
'The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,"'
This implicitly admits the unspoken fear that drives much of the disproportionality in Israel's 'response'. The rocket tech is being refined and improved constantly and one of these days they really will be able to reach anywhere in Israel with far greater intensity. What officials fear is that most citizens don't possess Mr Vilnai's crazy-bravery – look how many have pissed off already – and that a few decent blows from ordnance more like their own more efficient civilian killers will send a critical mass of the citizenry packing to various parts of the diaspora.
You would think if the threat is that real, that negotiation with it's owners would be high on the list of priorities, but Zionism has this habit of banishing common sense from the mind of anyone it infects. They could start by trying genuinely to answer the question 'what's good for the Jews', not just now but for the next fifty years.
How do other diaspora populations manage to survive throughout history without bringing the wrath of the majority down upon their heads? How do small countries all over the world with hostile neighbors manage to survive? Zionismâs problem is that it is a manifestation of a modern interpretation of organized Judaism, which harbors megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur and epochal ambitions. And when they inevitably go awry, organized Jewry then demands it be regarded as the victim.
Just look at the pattern: Jewish Bolshevism, Jewish Zionism, Jewish Neoconservatism, Jewish-dominated media controlling the dialogue and narrative in the West. Talented people, right? âThe gifts of the Jews,â and all that. Perhaps. But especially collectively gifted at using their ethnic fundamentalist cohesiveness to corner political and economic markets and monopolize dialogue, until their collective greed and hyper ambition gets them into deep trouble, at which point in time they plead victimization — temporarily. And of course, soft liberals fall for their alligator tears every time, and make up excuses for their atrocious behavior.
Enough with their constant drama, already. The only way to make progress with a passive-aggressive people like that is to hold them to the standards that everyone else is held to, and not give them a pass no matter how many tantrums they throw or how often they demand to be treated as âthe chosen.â
The problem, you see, is that various other groups (Christian Zionists, Leftists, Corporatist and Mercantilists) seek to co-opt them for their own selfish pursuits instead of disciplining them. And so it goes.
A perfect example. Would I be so ignorant as to not know what the name Matan means? Much less to degrade the Rolling Stones with that sort of attempt to render speech?
BAN HIM PHIL!
Ed's right on the money shot!