Colonel Richard Kemp On Israel's Counter-Terrorism Operation In Gaza

Here, speaking in Israel, is the always impressive former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan praising Israel's surgical strikes during Operation Pillar of Cloud, pointing out that about 120 of the Palestinian casualties were involved in terrorist activities, and assessing the impact of the action upon Hamas.  Colonel Kemp, who feels that the international community was more supportive of this operation than Cast Lead, probably because Israel got across its case better, believes that Netanyahu was wise not to undertake a ground offensive, since he needs no distraction from concentrating on the main enemy, Iran ....

Hat tip: reader Shirlee

Mark Regev Interviewed Regarding The Truce (video)

Here's Mark Regev talking to Al Jazeera shortly after the truce came into effect, an interview somewhat  marred by the constant interruptions of a none-too-patient interviewer:

Hamas's reaction to yesterday's bomb blast:

Hat tip to reader Jean Vercors of Ashdod for this photo of an Israeli mother in Ofakim shielding her child as sirens blare the warning of an incoming rocket from Gaza during the recent crisis:

Telling The Conflict Like It Is: British Pundit Talking To The BBC (video)

I saw this interview live on BBC News 24 a few days ago, and was full of admiration for the interviewee, Raheem Kassam, communications director of the London-based Henry Jackson Society, talking from Jerusalem about Operation Pillar of Cloud to newsreader Clive Myrie:

 (Incidentally, graphic footage here of how Hamas treats supposed collaborators with the Zionist Entity)

"We Are David Up Against Islamic Fundamentalist Terror": Leonie's Letter From Israel

"We are not the Goliath in this story, we are David up against Islamic fundamentalist terror supported by Iran."

Yes, indeed.

As reader Jean Vercors remarked to me yesterday, of the Hamas missile which hit his home town of Ashdod at the weekend: 

"Qassams are typically homemade—70 pounds of steel inserted with nails & bolts, as in the bombs used in suicide attacks.

 This rocket weighs 88-110 pounds, has a diameter of 4.5 inches, a length over 8.5 feet, a maximum range of 9 miles or more, and its warhead weighs 22 pounds. The Qassam IV has hit Ashkelon and may travel even farther as technology develops.

Hamas is believed to have stockpiled several hundred Qassam rockets with an average range of 6 miles. The group also possesses Grad rockets, which they imported to the Gaza Strip. These are rockets of Russian design, similar to the Katyusha. The Grad has a range of 12.75 miles, making it the rocket with the longest range currently available to the Palestinians."

I'm both proud and humble to be able present the following moving and insightful glimpse of life for Israelis in range of the threat of Hamas missiles.

I'm grateful to its author, Leonie Lachmish, of Mercaz Shapira, for giving me permission, via reader Shirlee, to post it.  (And, needless to add,  hat tip to Shirlee for bringing it to my attention!)

Leonie, incidentally. is the mother of Shani Lachmish, who's not unfamiliar to many Americans and others through the Ein Prat Fountainheads clips on YouTube.  Shani is at present in New York volunteering in a Jewish community hard hit by hurricane Sandy, as part of the delegation of the Ein Prat Leadership Academy Alumni.

Like Leonie, I hope the following reaches a wide audience.  (Other bloggers, please link to this.)

Writes Leonie Lachmish:

'We live between Ashkelon and Kiryat Malachi in a small kind of "village" for want of a better word ("yishuv" in Hebrew). This means that we get the sirens when rockets are sent in the direction of Kiryat Malachi and also hear Ashkelon and Ashdod sirens and booms from a distance. Over the past few days, there have been between two and seven sirens per day (and night). In the cities, there are tens of sirens (and attacks or successful interceptions) per day and through the night. Families without fortified rooms have to run to a safe area. In Sderot, they have 15 seconds to do that, here we have 40 seconds.

Try and imagine: How are elderly or infirm, handicapped or bedbound people meant to make it to a safe place? Fast? Maybe 20 times a day?

Or: 2am – waking up, grabbing your children and running out of your front door down a few flights of stairs...
Or: stopping your car and trying to release all the children's safety belts (same children may be hysterical from the siren because they know to expect the explosion any second) and run to shelter. In 15 seconds. Or 40 seconds.
How long should a country ask its civilians to put up with that? How long would you put up with that for?

Living under the threat of rocket fire is not a bowl of cherries by any means, it certainly runs havoc with any kind of routine or normal lifestyle.

Like, can I dare go into the shower? Where are our children at any given moment (especially people with young children)? Dare I venture going in to my doctor's appointment in Ashkelon or Ashdod? If there's a siren on my way to the supermarket, will I stop the car and lie on the ground with my hands over my head – these are the instructions if you are nowhere near a building to take refuge in.

These are times of stress, tension and confusion.  Many homes have taken direct hits, the families in them saved only because they ran out in time or had a fortified, safe room and made sure they reached it on time.

Our situation is nowhere near as traumatic as that of our friends in kibbutzim on the border with Gaza or the cities Sderot, Netivot (where my husband, Haim, works), Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beer Sheva, Kiryat Malachi (where three people were killed by a direct hit on their way to a safe area on Thursday: Aharon Smajda, 49, who was helping his neighbours down the stairs with their young children, Itzik Amsalem, 24, and Mirah Sharf, 27, who had returned to Israel from New Delhi where she and her husband were Chabad (Lubavitch) emissaries, in order to give birth in Israel. Her husband and other children are wounded). This news is heartbreaking for Israelis and a reason for celebration for our enemies. They rejoice in death and violence, we rejoice in life and saving life.

Who needs Jews as best friends? We're the best enemy you could hope for! A new line they can use instead of "Some of my best friends are Jews, how about "Some of my best enemies are Jews" or "With enemies like Jews, who needs friends?" The terrorists can go to mosque and funerals of terrorist chiefs knowing they won't be harmed even though we know exactly who they are and where they are.

Did you know that the IDF made thousands of phone calls to Gaza households and dispatched thousands of fliers in Gaza warning people to stay away from where the terrorists are because we are targeting them?

Do people in the west realize that the Jewish enemy cares more about the welfare of the population of Gaza than the cynical, cruel terrorist entity who is supposedly meant to be taking care of them?

Do people understand that if and when civilians are hurt in Gaza it is because all our attempts to protect them have been thwarted mainly by the insistence of their 'protectors' to act from densely populated areas and specifically mosques, kindergartens, schools, you get the picture?

Do they understand that misrepresenting Israel in the world means strengthening the oppression of women in Gazan society and the abuse of children, being brought up with hatred 24/7 on TV, in schools, trained to be shahidim (martyrs - i.e, mass murderers of the Israeli or western enemy) as an ideal

I see a demonstration of "Jewish Homosexuals and Lesbians for Gaza" and rub my eyes. Where is the only place in the Middle East where Jews / homosexuals / lesbians can live freely or live at all (let alone if you're both!) ? Gaza perhaps?

Even after 12 years of living under fire, my friend, Esther, in Kibbutz Alumim on the border, says "Can't we brainwash them with 'All we are saying is give peace a chance'?" But the problem is that their aim is not for peace and quiet and a good education and future for their population but to keep their population ignorant , needy and resolute to anihilate us and cause us pain. havoc and despair. We are not talking about neighbours like Canada here, or New Zealand. We are talking about a fundamentalist Muslim terrorist entity.

Our aim is to stop the attacks on our civilians. In the west, people seem to preoccupy themselves with the numbers killed on each side. So I am stating the obvious, and please do the same, state the obvious, when speaking with people who don't understand: Israel is a sovereign state under attack by terrorists.

The enlightened western world should be unshiftingly on Israel's side and in awe at the wondrous brilliant way Israel is surgically attacking the root of evil there. Please make it clear to people that if not for the amazing Iron Dome missile interceptor and the safe rooms and safety zones, there would be hundreds of Israelis killed and thousands maimed from the hundreds of rockets over the past few days. That Hamas is committing crimes against humanity and war crimes. Israel's retaliation is surgical, brilliantly avoiding civilian injuries, taking out the terrorist chief of staff and sending him to his 72 virgins.

Anyone who thinks the IDF is trying to kill civilians needs to wake up and smell the humus. The IDF must be an incredibly shabby army if in 6 days of air attacks, it only manages to kill under one hundred people, at least half of them terrorists! If our aim were to kill Palestinians, surely it would be more likely for there to be under 100 left, rather than 100 killed!  Israel's only 'crime against humanity' if any was the restraint she has shown time and time again so as not to 'escalate violence in the region', her only "crime" was against her own civilians. Which country in the world would (or should) tolerate 12000 rockets on their civilians and 12 years of trauma and fear for children in Sderot, in the kibbutzim and moshavim in the south and more recently, over a million Israelis hostages to the whims of the terrorist entity controlling Gaza? 13% of Israel's population - that would be the equivalent of London being bombed for 12 years.

As of Thursday, the rockets are reaching Tel Aviv and if not for the wonderful Iron Dome, this would mean hundreds of people killed and wounded and tens of homes destroyed.

As I write, 2.30 pm Tuesday 20th November, Jerusalem is again under attack. The mind boggles as to why they would be trying to blow up the city they claim is their holy capital. Perhaps they just don't like built-up areas. That would also explain storing explosives and shooting from densely-populated areas so even our pin-pointed surgical operations can't help but harm civilians no matter how hard we try not to

Please pray for Israel, support Israel and stand up for Israel. Hamas commits war crimes daily. Attacking a neighbouring country, aiming to kill men, women and children, is a crime against humanity.

We are not the Goliath in this story, we are David up against Islamic fundamentalist terror supported by Iran. Support Israel and you support the democratic and humanist values of the free world.

Support our enemies and you undermine those very values and play into the hands of those who despise freedom and love.'

"Blood On Your Hands!": Protesting Batsheva & Gaza in Old London Town

Here are scenes from outside Sadler's Wells last evening, when a seething raucous mob of usual suspects screamed intimidatory invective at people arriving to watch the Batsheva Dance Company.  "Shame on you!" yells the mob.  "Blood on your hands!"

And here are hardline far leftists and their predictable if incongruous bedfellows demonstrating outside the Embassy a few days ago against Israel's right to defend itself from Hamas terror strikes.

(A few as-a-Jews here, folks.)

Towards the end of the video a strident female voice condemns the  –  wait for it!  –  pro-Israel bias of the BBC (as satirical magazine Private Eye is fond of saying of statements that seem to lack factual basis: "Shome mishtake surely?").

Update: Richard Millett's video shows what the audience thought of Batsheva last evening!

Stop The Hamas Rockets: Australian Jews rally for Israel (videos)

Here's Australian Jewish News footage of a characteristically robust pro-Israel rally that took place in the heart of "the shtetl on the Yarra" yesterday.  Am Israel Chai!!!

As well as in Melbourne, pro-Israel rallies occurred in other Australian cities, and non-Jews were among those attending.

Here's the view from Sydney (uploaded by RickShaff1979):

These graphics should make Israel's predicament clear to everyone:

Hat tip for the Aussie maps: reader Shirlee

It's Been A Weekend Of Disproportionate Bias On The BBC

Israel has "failed to get on with its neighbours"?

As detailed here, the BBC radio programme "Any Questions" (chaired, incidentally, by Jonathan Dimbleby, whose overt sympathy with the Palestinian cause surfaced during the 1970s) included a jaw-dropping question by one Stephen Bedford:

"Despite all the foreign aid and support, Israel has spectacularly failed to get on with its neighbours. Does Israel deserve a future?"

Comments the Scottish blogger Calton Hill:

Israel's neighbours have failed to get on with Israel!

"To suggest that any nation does not deserve a future is tantamount to advocating genocide and Calton is wondering if, in fact, the question constitutes a hate crime under our new legislation on such matters. Perhaps someone should phone the police and find out. What is encouraging is that all four of the panel stated quite clearly that Israel has a right to exist and two at least were just as shocked as Calton was at the way in which the question was framed. In these days of heightened tension in the Middle East it is quite reasonable to question whether the actions of Israel or any other nation are legitimate or proportionate, however, questioning a nation's right to continued existence is not reasonable. Nor is it helpful."

From what I have seen of BBC News 24 this weekend, I'm left with the impression of a feeding frenzy of Israel-demonisation, at least as far as today is concerned.  Hamas spokesmen  and pro-Palestinian interviwees seemed to have outnumbered Israeli ones in a ratio of 3:1.  Among those warmly welcomed into the studio was Ahmed Bari Atwan (pictured), the London-based editor who once proclaimed on TV that he'd dance in Trafalgar Square if Iranian missiles hit Israel.  Despite that statement, he continues to be a favourite with the BBC, and, as other Al Beeb newsreaders have done, Maxine Mawhinney greeted him like an old, fond friend.

I had thought that Ben Brown, reporting from Ashkelon, was a model of objectivity, but today his reportage seemed marred by what I suspect to be a mandated editorial line focusing on "disproportion" and "assymetrical warfare".  These were the allegations that Brown put to IDF spokeswoman Lt-Col Avital Leibovich today. and he seemed to agree with them.

A rocket fell in Ashdod this afternoon (photo: Jean Vercors)

Emotive partisan reportage and commentary has marred the tweets of the BBC's Middle East Bureau chief Paul Danahar, and has characterised the tweets and on-air remarks not only of the frequently errant (as far as Charter-stipulated objectivity is concerned) Jon Donnison but also Wyre Davies, of whom I had expected better.

That half of Gaza's residents are children is something that Donnison and Davies have been keenly emphasising this weekend, apparently to drive home to viewers just how ruthless the nation across the border that has the temerity to protect its citizens from Hamas rockets is being.  Yes, I know that there have been harrowing incidents, but unlike the Israelis Hamas fails to provide bomb shelters and uses its civilians, old and young, as human shields.  I do not blame Donnison and Davies for being upset at what they have witnessed, but it should not ostensibly affect their coverage or lead to snide condemnation of or value judgements against Israel.

Davies, for example, reported acidly today that Israel targeted the home of a Hamas official "regardless of who might be inside" resulting in the deaths of all nine occupants.

Ashdod this afternoon (photo: Jean Vercors)

BBC reporters and newsreaders are allowing Hamas spokesmen and their supporters to assert the mischievous, nay, malevolent, canard that Gaza is “under occupation”.   Newsreader Clive Myrie failed to challenge this assertion last night, for instance, and Ben Brown has failed to do so today.  Have they forgotten Israel's total withdrawal in 2005?

"This is one of the poorest regions on the face of the planet," emphatically declared an uncharacteristically partisan and propagandistic Myrie in talking to Osama Damo, a Save the Children official in Gaza.

Myrie then interviewed Gil Hoffman of the Jerusalem Post, who began to give the Israeli viewpoint, stressing that Israel is targeting terrorists who are indiscriminately attacking the Israeli population.  But Myrie had little patience with such realities.  He was more concerned with reminding Hoffman of the fate of that Hamas household of nine that was killed today by an Israeli airstrike.

Hoffman effectively found himself on the receiving end of a hectoring lecture, managing to get in the fact that 24 truckloads of aid has entered Gaza from Israel (and adding, justifiably, that this is a rare gesture from one combatant to another) before an impatient Myrie was off again, telling him aggressively that Israel's response: "doesn't look fair" (there again was that "disproportionate" response and "assymetrical warfare" argument that the BBC have been pushing today.) 

Ashdod residents, shaken but unbowed (photo: Jean Vercors)

Some effort was made, as indeed it should have been, to show the effect of rocket attacks on the people of Israel.

However, compared to previous days, this appeared cursory.

 More might, as well,  have been made of the fact that Hamas is sending missiles into areas where there are numbers of Arabs as well as Jews, thus again displaying their callousness towards their own people.

And so we await the half-truths and distortions that the BBC on the new week will bring ...

(Interesting post here)

It's All About Well-Justified Defence From Rocket Attacks, Al Beeb, Not Pre-Election Posturing

By British Israel Coalition

For the BBC, the timing of Operation Pillar of Cloud is a macho-posturing an election ploy on the part of Binyamin Netanyahu (the subject – hat tip reader Jean – of an antisemitic cartoon in Friday's Guardian) who seeks re-election in January.

Ever since the current action against Hamas started, BBC newsreaders and anchors of current affairs programmes have sought confirmation of this suggestion of theirs with mantra-like questioning of interviewees and panellists.

Mostly, it has to be said, to little avail.  They must have thought that Gideon Levy, whom they interviewed yesterday on their main news channel, would oblige them with a confirmatory reply, but instead he roundly dismissed the idea as nonsense.

Occasionally, through assiduous handpicking of respondees, they have struck lucky, as Gavin Esler did on "Dateline London" today when to his query  to the effect "Why now?" a robustly anti-Israel Sudanese writer called Nesrine Malik waded straight in with the adamant (and unprobed by Esler) claim that the January election is driving Israel's strike.

Indeed, so-called "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen (he of the utterly banal, mediocre waffle that passes for "analysis" on Al Beeb, he who egregiously erred in claiming last week that rocket attacks from Gaza have been diminishing, he whose infamous anti-Israel bias has been displayed afresh, as analyst Robin Shepherd notes in this must-read piece) has stated it as a given fact.

To quote from an incisive short article by London blogger and author Jeremy Havardi that appeared on Thursday:

'So already the  madness has started. No, not Israel's self defence operation against the terrorism from Gaza but the onslaught from Israel's detractors. Already the Israeli action is being presented as a reckless 'escalation' of hostilities, a means of sparking a regional conflagration that will drag in other countries.

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen suggested yesterday that the Israeli operations were part of a ploy by Benjamin Netanyahu to get re- elected. "In the past", he declared "military strikes have been used to send messages about the toughness of Israeli leaders.” In other words, Netanyahu's action was designed to feed the Israeli public's insatiable appetite for conflict.

As we know, what the BBC says really matters because it remains the most influential shaper of public opinion in the UK. Much of the public will swallow the BBC's line, not because they are automatically pro-Palestinian or bigoted, but simply because the real context for Israeli actions has been vastly underreported.

In the few days before Israel targeted Ahmed al-Jabari, the head of Hamas' military wing, there had been an unprovoked attack on an Israeli jeep that injured four soldiers, one seriously. What followed was a sustained barrage of rocket attacks (well over 100) across the south of Israel, with some 120 rockets fired since Jabari was killed. Three Israeli civilians have now been killed by a direct hit. Hamas has also been busy importing scores of Fajr missiles from Iran with a range of up to 75 kilometres, making them capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

Yet these latest outrageous attacks are but the tip of the iceberg. Since the start of 2012, 797 rockets have been fired from Gaza, forcing approximately one million Israelis in towns across the south to flee to their nearest bomb shelter, with as little as 15 seconds to react. The number of rockets fired increases to over 5,000 since 2006.

Yet apparently, the low number of casualties (thanks to Israel's advanced technology and interception systems) is a total non-story. It is only when Israel ends its restraint and finally takes decisive action that suddenly the BBC screams of a dangerous escalation. They then have the temerity to suggest that the real reason for the Gaza operation lies hidden beneath a clever Israeli smokescreen. Rockets? What rockets? ...."

Well, these rockets, shown on a typically excellent BBCWatch post

Rockets targeting civilians that no nation should or would tolerate 

Rockets that were very much on the mind of the pro-Israel demonstrators in London yesterday, whose rally has been ignored by the mainstream media.  (See my previous post, and read more here)

Photographer: Adrian Korsner; h/t: Lyn Julius

And (hat tip: reader Shirlee) watch Hamas's latest lies here.


(btw, read about the bias of Paul Danahar, who heads the BBC's Middle East Bureau, here, and cast an eye occasionally over his, and Donnison's, tweets.   BBC objectivity? Pah!)

Pro-Israel Rally Outside The Israeli Embassy In London Last Evening (video)

The previous post shows on video what amounts to a blood libel against Israel by an Aussie former state parliamentarian shrieking vomitous invective.

Here's something much more edifying (uploaded by loveofpeace):

 Meanwhile, not far away:

The Parramatta 200: Sylvia Hale & others protesting Israel's right to defend itself against terror (videos)

Here's the first footage of the "Israel, USA, how many kids have you killed today?" mob of far leftists and friends in the New South Wales city (or outer suburb of Sydney, as some people describe it.)

The organisers have claimed 200.  I'm told that if they'd claimed 100 they'd most likely be exaggerating.

And another, showing Greens politician and flotilla/flytilla alumna Sylvia Hale yelling hysterically in blood libelling manner:

Hat tip: reader Shirlee

Mark Regev and Others On Operation Pillar Of Cloud (videos; updated)

Or, as it's also known, Operation Pillar of Defence.

As Israeli spokespeople including Mark Regev (shown below on Al Jazeera, in a video uploaded by yoniyonii, as well as [update] on CNN), and ambassador in London Daniel Taub have observed in press interviews in recent days, Hamas is guilty of a "double war crime": firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and doing so from bases amid civilians in Gaza, which in effect uses innocent people as human shields and makes Israel's response an exceedingly difficult one since Israel has both a duty and an obligation to protect its citizens yet (unlike its barbaric enemy) baulks at taking civilian lives.

Here's IDF spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibovich:

Of course, as Israel's deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon said during a television interview last evening, the deaths of the innocent in both Gaza and Israel is to be mourned and regretted.

Let's hope that Israel's latest well-justified action against Hamas terror doesn't escalate into a destructive debilitating ground war.

Here's the urbane Jonathan Sacerdoti from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy making some excellent points during an interview with BBC newsreader Chris Rogers last evening:

And here's Daniel in the vipers' den: Daniel Pipes talking from Florida on Press TV, with the rabid anti-Israel activist Ken O'Keefe ranting from London about the creation and actions of "a criminal psychopathic racist entity" and insulting "this man in Florida and the dupes who follow his logic" as he does so  ...

There's also a British-accented activist talking from Gaza, and invoking the now discredited Goldstone Report...

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen Wrongly Claims That Rocket Attacks From Gaza Have Diminished

Regarding Operation Pillar of Cloud that has successfully targeted for killing the head of Hamas's military wing Ahmed Jabari, the BBC's "Middle East editor" Jeremy Bowen has today claimed on the Corporation's Radio 4 that the number of rocket attacks on Israel out of Gaza has been dwindling.

Not so.

The following graph shows the true picture.  It will be seen that the number of such attacks, which did indeed  diminish in the immediate wake of Operation Cast Lead, are now approaching the levels that pertained on the eve of that action.