JERUSALEM NEWS
NEWS AND INFORMATION
Events, happenings, and Opinions Concerning
Israel, Israelites, Judah, and Everyone Else
Jerusalem News-835
Jerusalem News-835
15 Tevet 5769, 11 January 2009
Contents:
1. The Land of Miracles by Lazar Brody
2. The Gaza War Options by Yair
Davidiy
3. Hamas
Rockets: Recent History and Statistics
4. NY Times Article on Gaza War
5. Gaza War News Summaries from Arutz-7
(1. IDF:
MORE THAN 300 HAMAS
TERRORISTS KILLED OVER THE PAST WEEK
(2. OLMERT
SLAMS INT'L CALLS FOR RESTRAINT IN GAZA WAR
(3. FATAH
SILENTLY WATCHES GAZA, WAITING TO TAKE OVER
1. The Land of Miracles by Lazar Brody
http://lazerbrody.typepad.com/lazer_beams/2009/01/the-land-of-miracles.html
Extracts:
Another missile landed near a gas pipeline. The pipeline was undergoing
maintenance and had been emptied of gas a few days previously.
Just now, right after midnight on Saturday night, an emotional father from
Jerusalem called me and said that he had something important to tell me. His son
is an NCO is a special forces unit operating in Gaza. He and his squad were
about to storm a house with suspected Hamas terrorists inside. A woman in long
black local attire came out and pleaded with them not to storm the house. During
the fierce house-to-house fighting, the same woman appeared to the NCO and his
unit in three other houses. It turned out that all four houses were
booby-trapped.
Who was that woman?
2. The Gaza War Options by
Yair
Davidiy
[Due to need of the hour, article especially commissioned by Brit-Am on your
behalf.]
The Gaza War is in fact an Israeli Response to the ongoing non-stop
openly-declared war of the
Arabs under Hamas against Israel.
On Thursday (Jauary 10, 2009) a Katyushia was fired from Lebanon and struck the
residential building of an old-age home in Nehariya in the north of Israel. It
so happened that at very time all the inhabitants were eating in the communal
dining room. It was only a miracle that no-one was hurt. The Katyusha was fired
in "sympathy" with the Hamas in Gaza.
Meanwhile from Gaza they continued to fire rockets and Kasams at the south of
Israel.
Since 2006 Hamas been firing rockets at the south nearly every day and often
several times a day.
In 2008 the number of 3,278 rockets were fired at Israel!
They have struck kindergartens, school buildings, busy shopping centers,
synagogues, and residential areas.
Every time open miracles have happened and relatively few casualties have
occurred.
This however has not been because Hamas has not been trying they have been
trying very hard.
God has been protecting us but how long can we continue to rely on miracles?
The Israeli Nuclear Reactor in Dimona is now reportedly in the range of Hamas
rockets and they will aim for it.
Despite the openly obvious fact that only Divine Providence has so far been
protecting Israel from enormous calamities there have been casualties due to
Kasam rockets.
People have been killed, injured, and whole communities traumatized and
day-to-day activities placed in paralysis.
True it could have been much worse and God has been protecting us but
nevertheless it has been bad.
Israel did not attack Gaza.
Gaza attacked Israel!
Every time a rocket is launched from territory controlled by Hamas with the
approval of Hamas it means that
Hamas is declaring war or so it would mean to anyone else concerning anyone
else.
The problem is that the Jews are expected to lie down and let blood-thirsty
Gentiles torture, degrade, and kill them.
The whole existence of Hamas is predicated on its declared intention to
exterminate all the Jews in Israel.
This is what it has been trying to do.
Hamas was democratically elected.
Hamas from a democratic point of view is the legitimate representative not only
of Gaza but also of the Arabs living
under the Palestinian Authority under Abbas. Fatah under Abbas is in fact a
dictatorship headed by a group of gangsters who are falsely
portrayed in the west as being more "moderate". Since they are considered more
open and less fanatic Fatah control of the PA is propped up by western support
and finance. Both Fatah and Hamas want the extinction of Israel.
Hamas is more honest about it and Hamas represents what most of the Arabs want.
They want to exterminate the Jews of Israel even if it means that they
themselves may suffer greatly in the attempt.
This whole situation of Hamas being able to freely bombard the south of Israel
is a direct result of the "Disengagement" of 2005
in which Israel withdrew from strategic areas in the area of Gaza, destroyed
flourishing Jewish settlements, and uprooted 10,000 Jews.
In the eyes of the Arabs the Disengagement was evidence of Israeli weakness and
lack of will to defend itself.
The bombardment of Israelite settlements in the south began shortly afterwards.
In some cases rockets were launched against Israel
fromt he sites of former Israeli townships that had been destroyed and abandoned
in the "Disengagement"!
In other words compromise has been tried already. The results of compromise have
been disastrous for Israel.
There is nothing Israel can give up on anymore apart from its very existence.
The options at present include:
(a). Letting the situation return to how it was until the Haqmas grows stronger
and causes the disintegration of
the State of Israel. This apparently is what most of the world wants.
They would want to see the end of the State of Israel and the Jews within it
killed or leave.
This is not an exaggeration.
I have visited left-wing forums and debated with "enlightened" intellectuals in
the west.
They openly declare their wish to see the end of the State of Israel.
[If however because of these sentiments one labels them as anti-Semitic they get
all offended.
They do not care that the Jews have no where to go.
As far as they are concerned the situation should return to what it was in the
period 1933-1945 when most of the
world closed its doors to Jewish immigration.
(b) Beating Hamas up well and then leaving in the hope that the ability of
Hamas is permanently impaired.
This is what they are now doing. It is effective and does help but for how long?
It is also liable one day to backfire on us with the present Arab fanaticism,
hatred, desperation, and blood-thirstiness
even more intensified.
(c) Encouraging all or most of the Arab population to emigrate. One-third of
them already wish to leave.
Why not help them? They are suffering at present. Gaza is over-populated,
poverty-stricken, polluted,
terrorized by its own low-lifes in religious garb, without hope or options. Help
the poor Arabs. Give them hope.
Let them move elsewhere.
This should be a joint project of Israel, the USA, Britain, Australia, New
Zealand, and Canada.
They should also involve France and the Scandinavian nations.
Let them find an amenable area in South or Central America and being to fly
several million
Palestinian unfortunates into it. Let them set up an infrastructure and generous
system of compensation
to enable them to establish themselves economically and socially.
This is what the Bible says should be the solution:
http://www.britam.org/isaiah/Isaiah11to15.html#11
Isaiah 11:12 speaks of ingathering THE OUTCASTS OF ISRAEL meaning the Lost Ten
Tribes
and gathering THE DISPERSED OF JUDAH FROM THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH
and this refers to the ingathering of the present-day Jews.
After that Ephraim and judah will; be reconciled with each other:
[Isaiah 11:13] THE JEALOUSY OF EPHRAIM SHALL DEPART, AND THOSE WHO HARASS JUDAH
SHALL BE CUT OFF; EPHRAIM SHALL NOT BE JEALOUS OF JUDAH, AND JUDAH SHALL NOT
HARASS EPHRAIM.
[for more details on these matters see the Brit-Am Commentary to these verses of
Isaiah:]
http://www.britam.org/isaiah/Isaiah11to15.html#11
After this the combined forces of Judah and Ephraim shall fly the Palestinians
(referred to in Scripture as "Philistines") to the west while putting other
heathen nations that oppose Israel in their place.
The KJ renders the first part of Isaiah 11:14 as:
THEY SHALL SWOOP DOWN UPON THE SHOULDER OF THE PHILISTINES IN THE WEST
in the Hebrew original this in fact reads:
"THEY SHALL FLY THE PHILISTINES AWAY
WESTWARD".
It is in fact a commandment upon the Children of Israel to expel all the heathen
nations from the Land of Israel.
[NUMBERS 33:51] SPEAK UNTO THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, AND SAY UNTO THEM, WHEN YE
ARE PASSED OVER JORDAN INTO THE LAND OF CANAAN;
[NUMBERS 33:52] THEN YE SHALL DRIVE OUT ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE LAND FROM
BEFORE YOU, AND DESTROY ALL THEIR PICTURES, AND DESTROY ALL THEIR MOLTEN IMAGES,
AND QUITE PLUCK DOWN ALL THEIR HIGH PLACES:
[NUMBERS 33:53] AND YE SHALL DISPOSSESS THE INHABITANTS OF THE LAND, AND DWELL
THEREIN: FOR I HAVE GIVEN YOU THE LAND TO POSSESS IT.
see also:
THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF
RABBI DR. CHAIM
SIMONS
http://www.geocities.com/ChaimSimons/
The Two Alternatives - Liquidation of
the Jewish State or Transfer of the Arabs
http://www.geocities.com/ChaimSimons/twoalternatives.html
3.
Hamas
Rockets: Recent History and Statistics
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hamas-qassam.htm
Extracts:
The year 2008 saw a dramatic increase in the extent of HAMAS
rocket fire and mortar attacks on Israel, with a total of 3,278 rockets and
mortar shells landingin Israeli territory (1,750 rockets and 1,528 mortar
shells). These numbers are double those of 2007 and 2006, years which marked a
five-fold increase over prior years. There was also a significant increase in
the number of Israeli residents exposed to rocket fire. Prior to 2008, the city
of Sderot (about 20,000 residents) as well as villages around the Gaza Strip
were the main targets of rocket fire and mortar shelling. In 2008, the cities of
Ashkelon and Netivot came under attack by Grad artillery rockets with a range of
about 20 kilometers. Later, during Operation Cast Lead, Ashdod, Beersheba, and
other cities were attacked by a previously un-identified rocket with a range of
40 kilometers from the Gaza Strip. This rocket created a new reality in which
nearly one million Israeli residents [about 15 percent of the entire population]
were at risk.
|
Israel launched an air assault on Gaza on Saturday 27 December 2008, following a
series of rocket attacks on its territory and the collapse of a shaky truce that
had been in effect for the past six months. Israel's military intelligence chief
said Hamas' ability to fire rockets had been reduced by 50%. Hamas rocket fire
dropped off sharply, from more than 130 on Saturday 27 December 2008 to just
over 20 on Sunday 28 December 2008. Hamas launched a total of 40 rockets and
mortars at Israel Sunday 28 December 2008, bringing to around 300 the number
fired since the six- month truce ended.
|
Hamas launched an upsurge in rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza once it
declared an end to a truce with Israel on 19 December 2008. By 18 December 2008
Palestinian militants had fired at least 40 missiles into Israel since Tuesday
16 December 2008. On Wednesday 17 December 2008 no less than 24 rockets landed
in the Western Negev desert area. On Thursday 18 December 2008 a further seven
rockets landed in Israel. On December 24, five days after the lull arrangement
ended, the cities of Ashqelon , Netivot and Sderot, the towns and villages near
the Gaza Strip, the crossings and IDF bases were subjected to a massive rocket
and mortar shell attack. At least 60 rockets and mortar shells were fired, most
of them by Hamas. Palestinian militants fired over 40 rockets and 20 mortar
shells at southern Israeli border towns in the largest daily attack since the
end of a six-month ceasefire. Hamas responded by firing more rockets and mortars
into southern Israel.
See also:
Palestinians Use Extended Range 122mm
Rockets form China for Long-Range Attacks
http://www.defense-update.com/newscast/1208/analysis/311208_
palestinians_use_chineese_ws2e_extendedrange_rockets.html
4. NY Times Article on Gaza War
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/middleeast/11hamas.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th
A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: January 10, 2009
JERUSALEM: The grinding urban battle unfolding in the densely populated Gaza
Strip is a war of new tactics, quick adaptation and lethal tricks.
Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to
turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside
bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the
leadership's war room is a bunker beneath Gaza's largest hospital, Israeli
intelligence officials say.
Unwilling to take Israel's bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are
fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off
their uniforms. The militants emerge from tunnels to shoot automatic weapons or
antitank missiles, then disappear back inside, hoping to lure the Israeli
soldiers with their fire.
In one apartment building in Zeitoun, in northern Gaza, Hamas set an inventive,
deadly trap. According to an Israeli journalist embedded with Israeli troops,
the militants placed a mannequin in a hallway off the building's main entrance.
They hoped to draw fire from Israeli soldiers who might, through the blur of
night vision goggles and split-second decisions, mistake the figure for a
fighter. The mannequin was rigged to explode and bring down the building.
In an interview, the reporter, Ron Ben-Yishai, a senior military correspondent
for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, said soldiers also found a pile of weapons
with a grenade launcher on top. When they moved the launcher, "they saw a
detonator light up, but somehow it didn't go off."
The Israeli Army has also come prepared for a battle both sides knew was
inevitable. Every soldier, Israeli officials say, is outfitted with a ceramic
vest and a helmet. Every unit has dogs trained to sniff out explosives and
people hidden in tunnels, as well as combat engineers trained to defuse hidden
bombs.
To avoid booby traps, the Israelis say, they enter buildings by breaking through
side walls, rather than going in the front. Once inside, they move from room to
room, battering holes in interior walls to avoid exposure to snipers and suicide
bombers dressed as civilians, with explosive belts hidden beneath winter coats.
The Israelis say they are also using new weapons, like a small-diameter smart
bomb, the GBU-39, which Israel bought last fall from Washington. The bomb, which
is very accurate, has a small explosive, as little as 60 to 80 pounds, to
minimize collateral damage in an urban area. But it can also penetrate the earth
to hit bunkers or tunnels.
And the Israelis, too, are resorting to tricks.
Israeli intelligence officers are telephoning Gazans and, in good Arabic,
pretending to be sympathetic Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians or Libyans, Gazans
say and Israel has confirmed. After expressing horror at the Israeli war and
asking about the family, the callers ask about local conditions, whether the
family supports Hamas and if there are fighters in the building or the
neighborhood.
Karim Abu Shaban, 21, of Gaza City said he and his neighbors all had gotten such
calls. His first caller had an Egyptian accent. "Oh, God help you, God be with
you," the caller began.
"It started very supportive," Mr. Shaban said, then the questions started. The
next call came in five minutes later. That caller had an Algerian accent and
asked if he had reached Gaza. Mr. Shaban said he answered, "No, Tel Aviv," and
hung up.
Interviews last week with senior Israeli intelligence and military officers,
both active and retired, as well as with military experts and residents of Gaza
itself, made it clear that the battle, waged among civilians and between enemies
who had long prepared for this fight, is now a slow, nasty business of
asymmetrical urban warfare. Gaza's civilians, who cannot flee because the
borders are closed, are "the meat in the sandwich," as one United Nations worker
said, requesting anonymity.
It is also clear that both sides are evolving tactics to the new battlefield,
then adjusting them quickly.
To that end, Israeli intelligence is detaining large numbers of young Gazan men
to interrogate them for local knowledge and Hamas tactics. Last week, Israel
captured a hand-drawn Hamas map in a house in Al Atatra, near Beit Lahiya, which
showed planned defensive positions for the neighborhood, mine and booby trap
placements, including a rigged gasoline station, and directions for snipers to
shoot next to a mosque. Numerous tunnels were marked.
A new Israeli weapon, meanwhile, is tailored to the Hamas tactic of asking
civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings so Israeli pilots will not bomb.
The Israelis are countering with a missile designed, paradoxically, not to
explode. They aim the missiles at empty areas of the roofs to frighten residents
into leaving the buildings, a tactic called "a knock on the roof."
But the most important strategic decision the Israelis have made so far,
according to senior military officers and analysts, is to approach their
incursion as a war, not a police operation.
Civilians are warned by leaflets, loudspeakers and telephone calls to evacuate
battle areas. But troops are instructed to protect themselves first and
civilians second.
Officers say that means Israeli infantry units are going in "heavy." If they
draw fire, they return it with heavy firepower. If they are told to reach an
objective, they first call in artillery or airpower and use tank fire. Then they
move, but only behind tanks and armored bulldozers, riding in armored personnel
carriers, spending as little time in the open as possible.
As the commander of the army's elite combat engineering unit, Yahalom, told the
Israeli press on Wednesday: "We are very violent. We do not balk at any means to
protect the lives of our soldiers." His name cannot be published under
censorship rules.
"Urban warfare is the most difficult battlefield, where Hamas and Islamic Jihad
have a relative advantage, with local knowledge and prepared positions," said
Jonathan Fighel of Israel's International Institute for Counterterrorism. "Hamas
has a doctrine; this is not a gang of Rambos," he said. "The Israeli military
has to find the stitches to unpick, how to counterbalance and surprise."
Israeli troops are moving slowly and, they hope, unpredictably, trying not to
stay in one place for long to entice Hamas fighters "to come out and confront
them," Mr. Fighel said.
Today, he said, "the mind-set from top to bottom is fight and fight cruel; this
is a war, not another pinpoint operation."
Israeli officials say that they are obeying the rules of war and trying hard not
to hurt noncombatants but that Hamas is using civilians as human shields in the
expectation that Israel will try to avoid killing them.
Israeli press officers call the tactics of Hamas cynical, illegal and inhumane;
even Israel's critics agree that Hamas's regular use of rockets to fire at
civilians in Israel, and its use of civilians as shields in Gaza, are also
violations of the rules of war. Israeli military men and analysts say that its
urban guerrilla tactics, including the widespread use of civilian structures and
tunnels, are deliberate and come from the Iranian Army's tactical training and
the lessons of the 2006 war between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah in
Lebanon.
Hamas rocket and weapons caches, including rocket launchers, have been
discovered in and under mosques, schools and civilian homes, the army says. The
Israeli intelligence chief, Yuval Diskin, in a report to the Israeli cabinet,
said that the Gaza-based leadership of Hamas was in underground housing beneath
the No. 2 building of Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza. That allegation
cannot be confirmed.
While The New York Times and some other news organizations have local or
Gaza-based Palestinian correspondents, any Israeli citizen or Israeli with dual
citizenship has been banned for more than two years from entering Gaza, and any
foreign correspondent who did not enter the territory before a six-month
cease-fire with Hamas ended last month has not been allowed in.
Israel has also managed to block cellphone bandwidth, so very few amateur
cellphone photographs are getting out of Gaza.
But Israeli tactics have caused civilian casualties that have created an
international uproar, both in the Arab world and the West. In one widely
reported episode, 43 people died when the Israelis shelled a street next to a
United Nations school in northern Jabaliya where refugees were taking shelter.
The United Nations says no militants were in the school.
The Israelis said they returned fire in response to mortar shells fired at
Israeli troops. Such an action is legal, but there are questions about whether
the force used was proportional under the laws of war, given the danger to
noncombatants.
The backlash from the school attack is another potent example of the risks in an
urban-war strategy: Israel may in fact be able to dismantle Hamas's military
structure even while losing the battle for world opinion and leaving Hamas
politically still in charge of Gaza.
5. Gaza War News Summaries from Arutz-7
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:38:34 +0200
From: Arutz Sheva <news@israelnationalnews.com>
Arutz Sheva Daily Israel Report
http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com
Extracts:
(1.
IDF:
MORE THAN 300 HAMAS
TERRORISTS KILLED OVER THE PAST WEEK
by Gil Ronen
A senior IDF officer estimated Saturday evening that more than 300 Hamas gunmen
have been killed over the week that has passed since the ground phase of
Operation Cast Lead began.
Golani Brigade forces shot a terrorist dead in northern Gaza and upon checking
the body discovered that he had been wearing a suicide bomber's explosive vest.
The forces also called in close air support against a terrorist cell which they
had spotted in the act of planting explosive charges. In another incident, IAF
attack helicopters shot terrorists who had been firing anti-tank missiles at
Golani troops.
Paratrooper Brigade forces identified several rocket launches against Israel.
They called in close air support against the launchers and directed it to the
target.
Seven IDF soldiers were lightly hurt during the fighting Saturday. All but one
have been released from the hospital.
(2.
OLMERT
SLAMS INT'L CALLS FOR RESTRAINT IN GAZA WAR
by Hana Levi Julian
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert slammed international calls for restraint by IDF
forces in Gaza, as the Cabinet met Sunday to decide on Israel's next moves in
Operation Cast Lead.
"For many years we've demonstrated restraint. We reined our reactions. We bit
our lips and took barrage after barrage," said Olmert in remarks at the opening
of the weekly meeting of government ministers. "No country in the world, not
even those who preach morality to us, would have shown similar patience and
self-control."
Olmert repeated a refrain reiterated in almost every statement by Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni since the operation began: "We have never agreed that
someone should decide for us if we are allowed to strike at those who bomb
kindergartens and schools and we will never agree to this in the future. No
decision, present or future, will deny us our basic right to defend the
residents of Israel."
The prime minister also praised the defense establishment, and particularly "IDF
fighters and commanders," IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as
"the anonymous fighters of the ISA (Israel Security Agency)" and ISA (Shin Bet)
Director Yuval Diskin.
He added that the war, "an unprecedented national effort that restored the
spirit of unity to the nation" was nearing its goals; however, Olmert said,
further action was necessary in order to ensure that the security situation in
the south would be changed for the long-term.
(3.
FATAH
SILENTLY WATCHES GAZA, WAITING TO TAKE OVER
by Hillel Fendel
Reports emanating from Shechem (Nablus) and other areas in Palestinian
Authority-controlled Samaria indicate that the Arabs there are not showing great
solidarity with their war-torn brethren in Gaza. Some attribute it to apathy,
and others to the PA government, which may be "waiting in the wings" for its
return to power in Gaza.
PA's Fatah Gov't on Preventative Alert
Fatah security forces belonging to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas have been deployed
very intensively throughout Judea and Samaria over the past two weeks, since
Israel?s war in Gaza began. Correspondent Ali Waqed of Ynet reports that the
forces are stationed in all intersections, near mosques, at potential clash
points along the Green Line separating the areas from pre-1967 Israel, and at
every place from where a spark can ignite widespread disturbances. Youths who
try to approach Jewish-populated areas have been forcibly rebuffed by PA forces,
Waqed reports.
Hamas, for its part, has not done very much to arouse sympathy among Fatah
members. Over the past two weeks, 35 Fatah members have been summarily executed
in Gaza, according to some reports; Cabinet Secretary Oved Yechezkel said on
Sunday that there have been testimonies that "tens of Fatah supporters" have
been killed in cold blood by Hamas. In addition, more than 70 Fatah members
have been shot in the legs or had their hands broken at the hands of Hamas
terrorists.
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