The Day In Israel: Thursday Jan 7th, 2010
In a number of tests overseen by the Defense Ministry, the IAF and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel’s Iron Dome this week successfully intercepted a number of missile barrages mimicking Qassam and longer-range Grad-model Katyusha rockets known to be in Hamas’s and Hizbullah’s arsenal.
The Iron Dome is supposed to be capable of intercepting all of the short-range rockets in fired by Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hizbullah in Southern Lebanon, by using an advanced radar that locates and tracks the rocket that is then intercepted by a kinetic missile interceptor.
During the test, the radar succeeded in detecting which rockets were headed towards coordinates that were designated as open fields and therefore did not launch an interceptor to destroy them.
The IDF has already established a new battalion that will be part of the IAF’s Air Defense Division and will operate the Iron Dome. Prototypes of the Iron Dome have already been supplied to the new battalion which has commenced training with the systems.
The IDF has also located positions along the Gaza border that will be used as bases for the system, which includes a launcher and radar system. After it completes the deployment of the system along the Gaza border, the IDF will begin deploying the system along the northern border with Lebanon.
MOD Dir.-Gen. Pinhas Buchris said that the system would eventually “transform” security for residents of southern and northern Israel.
“The defense establishment continues to be committed to do everything it can to provide all residents of Israel a multi-layered defense against missiles and rockets,” he said.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
11:36PM: How I wish for a Hizbullah vs Hamas clash.
Hizbullah communicated “deep disappointment” to Hamas leadership over the discovery that the party was conducting military drills in a residential building in Lebanon without the party’s knowledge, the country’s An-Nahar newspaper reported Wednesday.
Information around the training was uncovered during the course of an investigation into an explosion in Haret Treik that killed two Hamas members last week, the paper said. Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Al-Murr said the blast targeted Hamas Representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan.
According to the London-based Arabic daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, the attack was carried out as Hamas members received live ammunition training in the basement of the building under Hamas control.
The daily said Hezbollah told Hamas it would not intervene, and that Hamas “would have to resolve the problem on its own.”
Ash-Sharq al-Awsat also reported that Hamas decided to close its office in Haret Hreik until the situation was resolved.
Note Hamas were conducting their drills in a residential building, and Hizbullah was not disappointed about that, but rather that Hamas did so without their knowledge.
And please remember these details next time Israel responds to terrorist fire, and civilians are hurt or killed (especially you, Mr Goldstone).
10:28PM: The Jerusalem Post has reported it was a Katushya rocket that landed near Ashkelon, and not a Qassam as reported by the likes of Ha’aretz and Ynet.
Why can’t we get some reliable reporting?
8:50PM: And for their next trick – a Qassam.
And Ynet, get your facts right. It has been 10 mortar shells today, not 7.
8:02PM: Someone please tell me this is a joke.
Israel will pay US $10m in compensation for damage caused to United Nations buildings in Gaza during the assault a year ago, officials have said.
This will be the first compensation paid by Israel for damage caused during the Gaza offensive.
UN storehouses, school buildings, offices and vehicles were damaged or destroyed during the conflict.
Israel insists UN sites were not targeted during the offensive and says the payout is for collateral damage.
Israel also says that Hamas fighters operated in or near UN-protected buildings during the offensive.
The payout is a result of several months negotiation. A UN inquiry in May last year found that Israeli forces had, on seven occasions, “breached the inviolability of United Nations premises” and were responsible for deaths and injuries.
At the time UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he would seek more than $11m compensation from Israel for damage to UN property.
Israeli officials say that the settlement should be viewed as a good-will gesture and says it has a good working relationship with the UN.
The UN is beyond being openly hostile towards Israel; it also employs terrorists (admitting doing so) including one of the schools hit during Operation Cast Lead and for which Israel is now paying compensation. Not only that, but the terrorists were actually using UN buildings to launch their terrorist attacks.
So as far as I’m concerned, the UN should be paying us.
6:14PM: Meet the anti-Semitic..err anti-Zionist palestinian sheikh who states the Jews are a cancer. And like AIDS.
And that’s some of his more mild claims.
Notice how he says Islam will one day rule the world again. And that belief, my friends, is the root cause of Islamic terrorism.
6:08PM: Not content with firing 10 mortar shells at Israel, Gaza-based terrorists fired an anti-tank missile at IDF troops earlier this afternoon.
5:50PM: Zionist Muslim Sheikh Abdul Palazzi on his recent visit to Jerusalem.
4:32PM: Honest Reporting looks at 10 significant articles, blog posts, cartoons and videos from the past decade.
1:12PM:When it comes to palestinian/pro-palestinian protesters, there seems to be no shortage of potential future Darwin Award winners.
This tool protesting against Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer during a New Zealand tennis tournament (because Peer shows disproportionate force against her opponents?) is the latest in this long line of those who might just improve humanity’s gene pool by removing themselves from it.
1:00PM: Palestinian terrorists have already fired 7 at least 10 mortar shells from the Gaza Strip today. There have been no reports of injuries or damage, so once again I expect the world to collectively yawn.
It should be noted that the terrorists are also causing their people to suffer.
In the wake of the mortar fire, the Defense Ministry closed the Kerem Shalom crossing until further notice. Dozens of aid trucks that were prepared to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza were waiting at the crossing Thursday morning, Israel Radio reported.
Now compare the terrorists utter disregard for the lives of civilians with Israel’s.
Palestinians said the Israel Air Force dropped thousands of fliers in Gaza morning, warning residents there to stay away from the border with Israel and to avoid involvement in smuggling, Ma’an reported.
One of the fliers featured a map, and warns Gazans that anyone within 300 meters of the security fence is endangering himself.
Another flier urges Gazans not to sit idly by as smugglers put them and their communities in harm’s way. It includes a phone number and E-mail address for anyone willing to provide information about the smuggling tunnels.
When it comes to genocide, we are huge failures.
12:54PM: The White House has denied Rahm Emanuel said he is fed up with Israel and the palestinians.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel denied reports that said he is fed up with Israel and the Palestinians, a White House aide told Haaretz on Wednesday.
The White House aide emphasized that Emanuel’s statements were distorted. “He expressed frustration with the lack of progress with the peace process, but he certainly didn’t threaten to walk away from it. The allegations are completely ridiculous,” the aide said.
The White House doth protest too much, methinks.
10:25AM: Interesting article on the plight of palestinian Christians.
6:12AM: Still on the subject of Hizbullah,it is the Lebanese government’s refusal to reach any understanding with Israel over security arrangements in the north, apparently under pressure from Hizbullah, which is holding up an Israeli withdrawal from the northern part of Ghajar.
The Lebanese government, apparently under pressure from Hizbullah, is not willing to provide any kind of commitments that would allow this plan to be put into practice, The Post has learned, “fearful” that this would be seen as giving Israel legitimacy.
Needless to say, I’m not optimistic about the Lebanese government ever arriving at a peace agreement with Israel.
6:06AM: It has been reported that UNIFIL forces last week discovered a large number of buried explosive devices in southern Lebanon about a kilometer from the border with Israel, apparently planted by Hizbullah.
The well-made bombs, approximately 10 in number, believed to be made either in Iran or Syria, contained a total of about 300 kilograms of explosives. According to sources in Israel, it is believed the devices were placed at the site by Hezbollah to strike at an Israel Defense Forces patrol that might try to enter Lebanon at the site, near the northern Israel town of Metula.
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The UNIFIL statement said placing the explosives was a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which prohibits possession or use of weapons south of the Litani River by unauthorized persons, meaning other than the Lebanese army or UNIFIL forces.
Senior government officials in Jerusalem said that following the incident Israel approached UNIFIL officials as well as UN Headquarters in New York to make clear that it believes that Hezbollah is behind the incident, rather than World Jihad, which had fired rockets into Israel in recent months.
In other news, there is a group who fired rockets into Israel called World Jihad. I suppose the root cause of their terrorism is Israeli “occupation”?
12:10AM: Hamas is blaming Israel for yesterday’s Galloway “aid convoy” inspired riot.
Clashes on Egypt’s border that left at least one Egyptian soldier dead and dozens of Palestinians hurt are related to the construction of an Egyptian underground barrier, Hamas admitted Wednesday.
Ehab Ghussein, the spokesman for Gaza’s Interior Minister, linked the day’s events to Egypt’s construction of the underground barrier along its border with Gaza. He called the protest “a natural reaction to the iron wall and against the policy of cutting the veins of life that is taking place there.”
Ghussein said 35 Palestinians were injured, including five who are brain dead. His tally could not be reconciled with that of local doctors.
Cry of the hungry
Meanwhile, Hamas parliamentarian Mushir al Masri said that the “iron fence would not be able to defeat the Palestinian people, just like Operation Cast Lead did not defeat us.” He also stressed that Hamas will continue to view Israel as its main enemy, noting that “the occupation is dangerous for Egyptian security just like for Palestinian and Arab security.
Another Hamas member, Fauzi Barhoum, said that Wednesday’s protests marked “the cry of the hungry.”
Cry of the hungry, eh?
You mean, like this?
“Hey waiter, pleasssssse bring some more desert to our table?”
About the Author
An Australian immigrant to Israel, Aussie Dave has been blogging since early 2003.Filed Under: General
[quote]Ghussein said 35 Palestinians were injured, including five who are brain dead. [/quote] … but not necessarily as the result of their injuries…
"During the test, the radar succeeded in detecting which rockets were headed towards coordinates that were designated as open fields and therefore did not launch an interceptor to destroy them."
If this really works on calculating homemade rockets unpredictable trajectories, it is great news, but I would hate to be a field worker during an attack. Seems to me there would need to be a to-stage public warning system. One for a terrorist launch, an a second for the IDF NOT launching a counter rocket, to give anyone in open fields time to jump into foxholes.
Or maybe they could just make a smart phone app for this? The phone knows where you are. It can pull the calculated impact area information from some military server in real-time, and then warn if you are in the proximity?
It would seem wise in any case not to depend on the interceptors.
Well, I'll give them this, they don't count "brain death" as death. (Even the most evil people have some good points.)
One of the problems for the Orthodox community in the States is that we seem to be the only ones who consider brain death to be at least controversial, not to mention the question of which definition of brain death one is using. There was a very good symposium on this a number of years back in the RJJ journal.
(Needless to say, "terminating" someone in a PVS is outright murder, I would think according to all Rabbinic opinions. Technically, you would have to stop that by any means necessary, and I mean that literally. What you do in practice, I have no idea, but I am glad that some doctor did not get my mother in a room alone and get her to sign a directive, or things could have become very ugly.)
If only they really did give up on us…..
I see that the comments on the left are back – and the spelling checker!
Everywhere there are muslims there is trouble based upon their faith and the fact they want everyone to convert or die. At one time just a few years ago there were about 60 conflictrs globally in North and South America, In the Carribean, in Europe, Asia, Africa, obviously the middle east and south Asia. All conflicts were about radical Islamist wanting to take control of govt and society by force to impose their values on everyone. Frankly I am fed up with these militants and their BS. We should get it o n with them and get it over and end this false faith that dups people and especially all their nutzo followers.
I really don't see this as something inherent in Islam, just in the way it is being applied today in many parts of the world, often with the help of local secular authorities and the international Left.
While, historically, living under Islam was no picnic, it pales in comparision to what Christianity did. Furthermore, all of the atrocities of the Theistic religions pale in comparsion to those of Atheism, which murdered 100 to 200 million people in the last century alone.
Unfortunately, none of this helps us at the moment. But I do not think it is inherent, in spite of all of the quotes. You can get quotes from any belief, including Judaism (ask Brendon O'Connell). The question is how the practioners understand them – which of course is our problem today with much of Islam.
Atheism has not killed a single person.
Atheism is the state religion of of the (late, unlamented) Soviet Union and Communist China. If you do not think so, ask anyone who's been through their school system. (If you like, I will ask people at work to double-check.)
Yes, I know they had a recognized, official Church. So did Hitler.
The Soviet Union (100 million or so murdered) was mostly run by people who believed wholeheartedly that there was no God (Heaven forbid) and taught this as fact to the children. It was illegal to teach religion to a minor. People were sent to Siberia for teaching Judaism. The Jewish Section of the Communist party worked tirelessly to destroy all religious Jewish life in the country. (Frankly, killing them was the only decent thing that Stalin did.)
North Viet Nam, the PRC, Cambodia, Cuba, the USSR, Atheism is part-and-parcel of the Communist "philosophy" and cannot be separated from it; in spite of the fact that there are religious Communists. Plus we can trace specific killings of people for being too "religious".
However, atheism has never been an excuse to kill someone.
And there you go citing that famous statistic that has no basis in fact at all. The 100 million deaths of the Soviet Union. When you actually go and do the research behind the numbers, you see that those deaths include murders, war deaths, crimes prosecuted with death (murder, rape, etc). Deaths in prisons for crimes. Then there is the massive rounding up, fudging of numbers. When you have virulently anti-communist researchers doing all this, their goal is to demonize it as much as possible. The real number when you get down to it is under 5 million.
Perhaps I should say that "Communism, an Atheistic religion, murdered more people than all of the theistic religions together". I certainly don't want to paint all atheists with a broad brush. I just get tired of all of that "look at how evil religion is" garbage (c.f. Hitchens), something that the history of the 20th century should have put to rest. (A totalitarian dictatorship is basically a religious dictatorship. The U.S.S.R. and the PRC had all of the trappings.)
The Soviet Union intentionally and deliberately, destroyed the Jewish religion is Eastern Europe. Those Jews (and there were many) whose bodies they did not destroy, they went for their souls. (In a much smaller and milder way, the latter also happened in Israel, although the extent is not clear.) We live with the results of this here in Israel. I will never view a Marxist (today) as any different from a Nazi.
Communism is not a religion. Atheism is not a religion. I know in your vicious irrational hate, you like to classify it as such, so you can berate it, but Atheism is as much a religion as the "palestinians" are a people.
The Soviet Union did not intentionally and deliberately destroy Judaism in Eastern Europe. It is still there and always was there. The only thing the USSR did was teach the Jews Russian and give them an education and end the shtetls. The USSR attempted and largely succeeded in making everyone who lived there equal and made their lives better.
Your vicious hatred of Communism (which, by the way, is a complete misunderstaning of Communism) is no better than the Arab Muslim hatred of Jews.
One day you will learn what actually happened.
What are you basing this claim on? Certainly not the Quran, nor Islamic doctrine, nor history.
The history of all Jews under all Islamic countries at all times?
Regarding the Koran, you can't prove anything from quotes in source material. Take a look at Brendon O'Connell's video, posted here. The stuff he quotes is there; just that no-one interprets it that way. (The parts that are not out-of-context.) Or look at how many Christians re-interpret the anti-semitism of John. Regarding scholarship, I will not try to argue, only that this can change.
What is your problem with that?
A half truth at best and apples and oranges for certain. There's plenty to learn from the source material. It helps you to know that the Quran's Suras are not canonized in historical order.
Back in Mohamed's time and thereafter, they didn't have videos. They had disciples and schools of jurisprudence. All of them agreed that Jihad and the Sha'aria are the means and the goal to hoist the flag of Islam over the entire world, using the most cruel and diabolical methods to achieve their subjugation over everyone else.
You are denying that at certain times and certain places Jews has it rather good under Islam, especially compared to Christendom? (Yes, I know it was often the reverse.) Not perfect, but pretty good.
Undoubtedly Islam was spread by the sword. That doesn't mean they need to believe that this should be done right now, any more than we (you and I) believe that Judaism should be fully enforced here (Israel) in the absence of the consent of a significant percentage of the population (as it would be counter-productive). Most Moslem countries are, in fact, not trying to convert the world by the sword (just us).
I think the book of John is a good example. There is no reason that some day Islamic thought could come to resemble to that of the Italian cleric, or at least accept that the Jihad should be put off for a few centuries.
BTW, thank you for the link. The book, as well as several others related, looks quite interesting.
I also appreciated your reference to the forced preaching in Rome. My reading until now had given me the impression that anti-Jewish activity was almost exclusively confined to regional and local clerics, not the Vatican. If you have anything else regarding this, I would appreciate it.
Yep. I had to reactivate some plugins.
Kimo, I agree. Is there a site that compiles statistics like this and keeps track of these things that you could provide the link? Thanks
Where is that picture from at the bottom?
Also, is this Iron Dome system worth what it costs?
Well, if you think of what we did in 1983 in Lebanon to stop this sort of thing (entirely necessary and successful, political cost notwithstanding), I would say that whatever it costs is small in comparison.
Main point: If you kill somebody for teaching or practicing Judaism, and you are a fire-breathing atheist, exactly what have you used to kill him? You are splitting hairs. Atheism is the most intolerant, murderous religion that ever existed. I do not mean, of course, that this applies to all atheists, or that is inherent; I am only looking at the death toll. (Judaism also killed lots of people, but less than the others.)
I will not try to defend the precise figure, but it is WAY over 5 million. (Jung Chang's figure for China is 70 million.) The six million figure for the Holocaust also includes a lot of indirect deaths; of course I am including them. Speak to someone who remembers the early days; how the government intentionally destroyed simple commerce and family life. When you make an omelet, you are responsible for the eggs you break.
I presume, by the way, that the people who researched the holocaust were fanatical anti-Nazis. I still trust their figures. Hating evil does not make you a bad researcher.
Atheism is not the most intolerant religion. First, it is not a religion. Second, it is not intolerant. Atheism is the lack of belief in a supreme being. An empty glass is not a glass of water.
Those deaths in China had nothing to do with Communism or Mao Zedong. Millions of people die in China on a regular basis due to famines.
Finally, Hitler and the Nazis were not even remotely atheist. That is a popular misconception.
I never said they were. They were more pagan than anything.
Atheism is the belief that there is no creator, Heaven forbid. This is as opposed to Agnosticism. People in the USSR were taught this as fact, and forced to state this. You are making a distinction without a difference.
As for the rest, I can't do anything about the nonsense you've swallowed. One day you will learn the facts.