Here’s a really scary video of a Qassam missile just missing a gasoline tanker at a gas station in Sderot, caught by a security camera on a nearby building (thanks to HonestReporting):
Only four were fired today; Israeli sources have suggested that the reason is that Hamas is worried by Israel’s threatened targeting of their leadership.
Israeli strikes against Qassam missile teams must be working:
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh met in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in an effort to restore a cease-fire with Israel…
Abu Hamza, of Islamic Jihad’s military wing, said a truce should be conditioned on Israel’s ending its attacks on militant groups, extending the cease-fire to the West Bank, and retracting threats to go after militant leaders…
A tahdiyeh [‘lull’] had been in place in the Gaza Strip, but while Hamas largely adhered to it for about six months, other, smaller organizations did not, and Hamas made no move to enforce it. Israel therefore refused to extend it to the West Bank, arguing that only the IDF would or could curtail extremist Palestinian groups operating there. — Ha’aretz
The previous ‘truce’ was less than worthless, since there was always a faction available to attack Israel with rockets or suicide bombers while other factions (and Israel) observed it.
The Palestinian pattern seems to be to create as much chaos as possible, and then call for a truce when countermeasures start to become effective.
A truce isn’t needed. The Palestinian militias started a war, and Israel should end the war by finishing off the militias. Peace will come only when the Palestinians have a leadership that understands that Israel can’t be defeated militarily.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians
The good news from the recent Pew Research poll report about American Muslim attitudes is that they are economically better off, socially more integrated, and politically less radical than European Muslims.
The bad news is that 8% of the 1.4 million American Muslims believe that “suicide bombing against civilian targets to defend Islam from its enemies” is sometimes or often justified. [poll report, p. 53] That’s 112,000 Americans.
Actually, the news is even worse, since the Pew report indicates that fully 15% of American Muslims under 30 years of age hold this view.
According to the 2000 census, there were 4,668 Muslims in the Fresno area; assuming that the growth in Muslim population since then matched the national average of about 6%, (a very conservative assumption), today there are 4,948.
Therefore, about 396 of my neighbors believe that suicide bombings against civilians “to defend their religion” are sometimes or often justified.
In the hopes that Fresnans were more moderate than the national average, I looked at the website of the local Islamic Cultural Center, and was pleased to find a fatwa which unequivocally denounces terrorism, which begins as follows:
The Fiqh Council of North America wishes to reaffirm Islam’s absolute condemnation of terrorism and religious extremism. Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives. There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism. Targeting civilians’ life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is haram – or forbidden – and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not “martyrs.â€
At the end of this declaration is a list of mosques and Islamic centers that support it. As of today, 23 May 2007, neither the Islamic Cultural Center, the Masjid Fresno, or any other local Islamic institution appeared on this list.
Either this is an oversight or my neighbors are not as moderate as I’d hoped.
Technorati Tags: Muslims, Fresno, Pew survey
By Vic Rosenthal
Israel is presently being engaged in a full scale war by Hamas and the other factions’ militias, even if Israeli officials don’t admit it. As always, Hamas is happy to state their intentions clearly:
“We call on our fighters to launch rockets attacks on the settlement of Ashkelon [within the 1967 borders, of course — ed.], which was built on Palestinian-owned land,” said a Hamas official in the Jabalya refugee camp. “We will force the settlers to run away from Ashkelon as they have already done in the settlement of Sderot. We will continue to fight until the Jews leave all of Palestine.”
According to the official, Hamas has developed new rockets capable of reaching Ashkelon and other Israeli cities. “We will turn Ashkelon into a ghost city,” he warned. “We will use all methods against the Zionist enemy.”
Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders expressed satisfaction with the recent attacks on Sderot, noting that many residents had fled their homes. They also called for the resumption of suicide attacks…
The armed wings of Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad said in separate statements that the rocket attacks would continue “until the Zionists flee from Palestine”…
“We will make the Jews drip tears of blood,” said Muhammad Abdel Al, a commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, an alliance of several terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip. “We will never find comfort until we shed the blood of the sons of monkeys and pigs.” — Jerusalem Post
The fact is that Israelis are presently fleeing from Sderot under a rocket bombardment to which “there is no immediate solution” in the words of the Prime Minister.
There is no question that an invasion of Gaza would be costly for Israel and for Palestinian civilians; certainly Hamas and its sponsors have been investing heavily in fortifications. I don’t know if this is the solution that the PM can’t seem to find, or if maybe there’s another one — perhaps something along the lines of the Lebanese army’s action against the Fatah al Islam terrorists.
When one nation declares a war of annihilation on another, and then attacks it murderously, the response should be commensurate. Think Britain, the Blitz, and Nazi Germany.
If the nation that is attacked does not strike back or does so weakly, the aggressor assumes that either it is for some reason incapable of fighting, or afraid of the consequences. In this case, the attack has been successful, and it will be followed by additional attacks until the enemy has been destroyed or surrenders.
Since the aggressor in this case has the backing of several major powers in the region, as well as the whole constellation of terrorist militias, the Israeli leadership is quite right in seeing the war that has been forced on it as a dangerous and costly struggle. But that doesn’t mean that the correct response is to avoid it.
I don’t know if war could have been avoided, but the situation today is past avoiding. Today it’s necessary to crush the enemy before it’s too late to act.
Think Britain, the Blitz, and Nazi Germany.
BEIRUT: Fighting between the Lebanese Army and Islamic extremists intensified in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp outside Tripoli on Monday, with the death toll in two days of clashes rising to at least 79. Heavy black smoke hung in the air as the army reinforced positions around the camp and rolled in heavier equipment. Soldiers stepped up shelling of buildings where members of the Fatah al-Islam group were believed to have taken refuge…
Security sources said that 25 militants had been killed and that 40 were in custody. The army said 30 soldiers had been killed so far in the battle, and released photographs of 19 of them (see Page 2). Reports put the civilian death toll at 24.
The fighting is Lebanon’s worst internal violence since the 1975-1990 Civil War.
According to a 1969 agreement, the Lebanese army is not permitted to enter the Palestinian refugee camps, which contain numerous terrorist gangs. Apparently the agreement doesn’t forbid the Lebanese from firing mortars and artillery shells into the camps, because this is the approach they are taking. Water and electricity have been cut off since the fighting started. The refugee camp is actually a small city, with a population of about 30-40,000. Many of the terrorists are not Palestinians, and include Syrians, Saudis, Afghans, Yemenis, etc. (but I bet UNRWA is feeding them all). Druze and Christian Lebanese sources claim that Syria is sponsoring Fatah al Islam.
Violence is spreading, with several explosions reported in Beirut (this one is in the capital’s Verdun district), as well as firing in other refugee camps. As far as I can tell, nobody is blaming the Mossad for being behind these events, but possibly I just haven’t looked in the right places. There are about 350,000 ‘Palestinian refugees’ in various camps in Lebanon.
The “International Community” deplores the violence, of course. Interestingly, they are not calling the Lebanese Army’s use of heavy weapons in a civilian area ‘disproportionate’:
“We had long and full discussion on Lebanon, with reasons for grave concern related to the violent incidents of yesterday and this morning,” UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said after a meeting with Arab League chief Amr Moussa in Cairo.
“On behalf of the [UN] Secretary General, I will urge everybody to act in the most responsible manner, or else I feel that the whole situation might … fall off the cliff,” he said.
The US State Department defended on Monday the actions of the Lebanese security forces, saying they were working in a “legitimate manner” against “provocations by violent extremists”…
UN chief Ban Ki-moon saw the fighting as a threat to all of Lebanon, his spokeswoman said Monday. “The actions of Fatah al-Islam are an attack on Lebanon’s stability and sovereignty,” Michele Montas said, adding that Ban “welcomes the united stand taken by Palestinian factions in Lebanon denouncing these attacks on the Lebanese Army”…
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner spoke with Premier Fouad Siniora on Sunday to assure him of France’s support. He also “expressed France’s solidarity and trust in the Lebanese authorities to restore order and calm”…
Technorati Tags: Lebanon
