For the first time since Operation Pillar of Defense in November, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck Israel on Tuesday. There were no injuries.It seems to me that we have absolutely got to stop putting up with this kind of thing.
The rocket fired at Ashkelon was of the advanced Grad type, which can reach up to 80 kilometers (50 miles). The rocket was fired from the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip.
It is the first time a rocket has been fired at Israel since the end of Operation Pillar of Defense three months ago. The alarm sirens in Ashkelon did not go off as the rocket was fired. Alon Shuster of the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council told Israel Radio that he demanded that an investigation be launched into why the alert did not sound.
The Fatah military wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, claimed responsibility, saying the attack was a response to the "assassination" in prison of Arafat Jaradat. A top official in the Palestinian Authority security apparatus told Israel Hayom that a rocket launch from the Gaza Strip could only have taken place with a "green light" from Hamas.
Would any other sovereign nation allow rocket fire at its citizenry?
Do you think that the United States or China or Russia would put up with this kind of thing for even one moment?
How many children in southern Israel need to get Post Traumatic Stress Disorder before the government of Israel stands up for its people? All throughout last year southern Israel was bombarded by Arab rocketeers and virtually no one outside of Israel gave a damn. Certainly the president of the United States did not care, otherwise he might not have been so quick to save Hamas from Israeli retaliation last November when literally hundreds of rockets were fired into the country.
I am sick to death of the fact that Jews perpetually take it on the chin and the very moment that we stand up for ourselves we are called "fascists" by progressive-left morons.
The Palestinian-Arabs have got stop trying to kill Jews and if they refuse then we need to make them stop.
If they cannot find it within themselves to cease fourteen centuries of violence toward us then we need to compel them to stop while we still have the ability to do so, because, I tell ya, if we refuse to honestly defend ourselves we may, at some point in the not too distant future, lose the ability to do so.
Serious (though possibly low-priority, of course) question - who pays for the infrastructure repair after these attacks?
ReplyDeleteI think some back-billing to a certain 'observer state' is in order for all of these, if that has not been calculated and sent already...
DeleteThat's a very good point, Jay.
DeleteY'know, the whole notion of "lawfare" sort-of pisses me off as just dirty pool... but it goes both ways, does it not?
Why should the victims pay for the damage?
Absolutely. Israel should definitely send them a bill and expect recompense.
And you know, then there's all the other things beyond immediate infrastructure damage and repair - like how far back from its economic, cultural, social, etc etc, potential is Ashkelon and the entire rest of the region (and all of Israel, for that matter), due to the situation generally ranging from always having to be on edge, to day-to-day life occasionally simply becoming impossible as happened at the end of last year? And all those kids growing up with PTSD, leading to the completely unnecessary strain on the public health system due to an absurd situation which no other sovereign nation on earth would accept.
DeleteIn a word, it's fucking ridiculous. And in another, it's sick.
It is fucking ridiculous and it is sick and you sound pissed off about it and you should be mightily pissed off about it.
DeleteY'know what, tho? In some measure it's our own fault because if we had stood up earlier... that is we, the Jewish people and friends of Jewish people... we could have countered the lie that says that Jews are the oppressors of Arabs in the Middle East.
The exact opposite is the case, but we let it go in the hopes that the Palestinian-Arabs actually did want a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.
They don't and they will throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the Jews knowing that almost any outrageous lie will stick among gullible westerners who view the Palestinian-Arabs as "David" and the Jews as "Goliath."
The best that we can hope for from our former friends on the international left is agnosticism on the question of the long Arab war against the Jews of the Middle East, but what we are increasingly getting is outright hostility.
And that's why Hamas thrives and can shoot rockets at Israel at will.
If the western world honestly opposed Hamas, and political Islam more generally, it would be a shriveled movement, but it's not. It's a growing movement and part of the reason that the western world supports political Islam is because we have failed to make them understand that the Arabs of the Middle East are not the victims in this conflict, but the victimizers.
Iron Dome uses a $90,000 rocket flung out of $300 million radar system to knock down fairly inexpensive if potentially harmful mortars and artillery rockets. While more or less unguided, an 81mm mortar - on the middle range of these things that Gazans use, from 65mm up to 122mm - has a 50% lethality radius out to 50 meters. This means that half of the people on open unobstructed ground out to 50m stands a good chance of being killed or severely injured. It seems that Israel should consider a different tack than Iron Dome and Hellfire missiles (about $80,000 each). While useful in protecting people they are in former case purely defensive on the latter case very expensive for a one shot one kill one terrorist approach. And they don't address the core of the problem, which is terror. Ordindary Gazans don't live in fear. But they should. They should leave their homes every day and wonder of their families will be killed, their homes destroyed, their kindergartens blown up.
ReplyDeleteI suggest the IDF surround Gaza with a few dozen towed 155mm howitzers to randomly lob one or two unguided and barely aimed HE rounds into Gaza for each mortar or rocket that flies out. Don't even worry about looking for the Gaza rocket shooters. Just fling 1 or 2 $1,000 plain artillery shells into the most densely packed areas in Gaza. In practice the odds of any one person or family being killed or injured are astonishingly low. But that's not the point. The point is FEAR. And fear is what the need to live with. They need to worry. They need to be afraid. They need to ask Hamas why there are plenty of Mercedes Benz cars and no bomb shelters.
To me it's a perfect response to Israel's critics; "disproportionate force". One rocket or mortar which as I noted can kill or injure half the people 150 feet away, for one artillery round which can knock down part of a building or shred a farmers' market. And, at 1/80th the cost of a Hellfire missile, Israel can wire the White House and tell them about this new cost efficiency in the face of budget cuts.