According to the latest Israeli assessments, since Operation Cast Lead ended almost a year ago, Hamas has increased its weapons smuggling and today operates hundreds of tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor, which it has used to smuggle in dozens of long-range Iranian-made rockets that can reach Tel Aviv (as mentioned yesterday), not to mention a significant number of shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles and 9M113 Konkurs, which are capable of penetrating heavy armor.
Meanwhile, here’s the Jerusalem Post headline for this story:
With all due respect, it is not just the tunnels I find to be offensive.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
5:55PM: Introducing our latest weapon: Zionist Death Triplets.TM
Full story here (hat tip: Dave Bender).
3:55PM: Turkey-jerkey:
If Israel were to violate Turkish airspace in order to conduct reconnaissance operations on Iran, Ankara’s reaction would resemble an “earthquake,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with Egyptian journalist Fahmi Huwaidi published Thursday morning.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, welcomes Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for a meeting in Teheran.
Responding to a question concerning rumors that Israel had entered Turkey’s airspace for espionage purposes, Erdogan said that such a thing had never happened, but that the consequences would be dire if it did.
“[Israel] will receive a response equal to that of an earthquake,” he cautioned, urging Israel’s leaders to refrain from “using the relationship they have with [Turkey] as a card to wage aggression on a third party.”
12:00PM: Media bias of the day:
Photo of a palestinian in a wheelchair looking frustrated at border control to evoke sympathy? Check!
Photo taken by a palestinian stringer known for anti-Israel bias? Check!
Photo republished a few days after first published for extra effect? Check!
Ridiculously verbose and biased caption? Check!
FILE – In this Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009 file photo, a Palestinian in a wheel chair waits inside a newly built passageway on the Palestinian side of the Erez crossing, northern Gaza Strip. A healthy man in blockaded Gaza faked cancer, hoping the deadly disease would be his ticket out of the territory that has become an open-air prison for its 1.4 million residents. His ploy failed, but several thousand others succeeded in fleeing this shabby sliver of land this year using bribes and fake medical reports, a sign of Gazans’ desperation over growing poverty and misery under the strict border closure enforced by Egypt and Israel since Hamas militants overran Gaza in June 2007. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa, File)
10:35AM: The Jerusalem Post reports:
Israeli Nobel Prize laureate Prof. Ada Yonath has been chosen to sit next to Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremonial dinner after the ceremony in Stockholm on Thursday.
The King better make sure Yonath does not slip anything in to his drink, or he’s liable to end up in an ice-filled bathtub.
6:12AM: Sweden’s Consul General in Jerusalem Nils Eliasson has downplayed reports that the language of the EU statement on the Middle East peace process had changed significantly from its original form which his country authored.
“There are very little substantive differences between the two,” Eliasson said during an interview at Ma’an’s Bethlehem television studio.
“I feel that it has been used as an excuse to avoid some of the main items of the conclusion yesterday to argue that it was weak compared to the original draft,” he added.
Meanwhile, how is this for blatant bias?
“The European Union cannot negotiate on behalf of Palestinians,” he said. “What we can do is strengthen the capacity of the Palestinian side to have the knowledge and skills to make them able to serve their interest in negotiations with Israel.”
