(+ Video) What has been lost, and why it will be stopped.

LOTL..
14 November '12..

Today and continuing at this hour, we have begun to send a very clear message that the actions of Hamas, its leadership and like-minded colleagues in Gaza will incur escalating consequences. Painful and if necessary, final consequences. Yet there may still be some abroad and even here who have not yet come to fully realize what we have allowed to be done to us. For that, perhaps Paz can still help.

From the Algemeiner:

Paz Azran spoke Monday night in Ashkelon where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted a gathering of 70 foreign ambassadors. The location was intended to give the ambassadors a sense of what it was like for residents of the region to live under constant threat of rocket attacks.

During the speech Azran explains what it’s like to live in southern Israel with the constant threat of rocket attacks looming over her. “I have two little brothers and living like this is terrifying for us,” she says.”When I hear the siren I know that I have 30 seconds to run to a bomb shelter—unless I could get hurt. Everyday things that every child in the world does, it’s nothing that is usual to me. I have to think twice to go to take shower, or driving, because I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to run to a bomb shelter. Living like this, in a situation like this, is very scary for someone (unintelligible) didn’t even finish school.”

Pretty clear, yes?

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Ashkelon unanimously named by Sacramento City Council as sister city

Elder of Ziyon..
15 August '12..





From the Sacramento Bee:

The Sacramento City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to name Ashkelon, Israel, as a sister city.

Most of those in a packed City Council Chambers stood and applauded following the vote. The council vote followed an hour of impassioned - but mostly civil - testimony from supporters and opponents.

It was an unusually tense hearing for a sister city program that, until now, had operated without much controversy.

An overflow crowd of more than 250 people gathered inside the City Council Chambers and in the main foyer of City Hall. Some held Israeli flags; other wore T-shirts reading, "Got human rights? Palestinians don't."

Supporters of the plan expressed disappointment that the proposal had resulted in a political debate over Middle Eastern policy. Opponents of the proposal decried city officials for forming a bond with a city in a country they charge violates human rights.

This wasn't just a loss for the BDS crowd - they were routed.

By the way, I once made a T-shirt response to the one mentioned in the article:

Link: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2012/08/sacramento-city-council-unanimously.html

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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Silverman - A New Player in Gaza's Rocket War Against Israel

Islamic Jihad Steps Up Rocket War Against Israel Civilians

Photo: Anav Silverman
Ashkelon resident, Liz Sheetrit stands

in front of the rocket-damaged home.

Anav Silverman
Sderot Media Center
01 November '11

http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/bin/content.cgi?ID=851&q=3

Sixteen-year-old Liz Sheetrit and her family stand in their homes with shell-shocked expressions as they point to their burnt front yard and shattered kitchen window. "I can't believe this happened to us,"  Liz exclaims. A Grad rocket fired from Gaza struck the family's street this past Saturday night, damaging four homes in their neighborhood, leaving a splattering of shrapnel holes, shattered glass, and pieces of metal stuck in the housing exterior.

Liz says she feels only slightly lucky. She and her family were thankfully not home at the time of the explosion but her dog, which was home at the time of the explosion, harbored some marks from the attack.

The Sheetrit family and the other neighborhood families are lucky for another reason too. They live in relatively new homes, all of which have bomb shelters. "Our neighbors entered their shelter as soon as the alarm went off. If they had been anywhere near the kitchen or living room, someone could have been seriously injured," Liz's father said.

More than fifty percent of Ashkelon's residents live in older buildings that were built without shelters, according to a municipal spokesperson, Yossi Assoulin.

"But thanks to the Iron Dome, residents here, even during Grad rocket attacks from Gaza, haven't lost their sense of security," explains Assoulin.

The Iron Dome is a mobile air defensive system that was developed in Israel to intercept incoming Palestinian rockets through a special radar detecting system. Although the system has been criticized for its steep operating costs, it has become an important tool in defending Israeli civilians by successfully shooting down countless rockets. Israel plans to invest $1 billion in the Iron Dome missile defense system in coming years, of which the US Congress has approved to provide $205 million.

However, the defense system offers no guarantees.

On the same day that the Sheetrit family's home was struck by rocket shrapnel, an Ashkelon man, Moshe Ami, a father of four, was killed in a rocket attack on his way home. The air raid siren, which gives Ashkelon residents about 25 seconds to find cover, went off as Ami was driving home in the heart of the city along Rabin Road. Unable to make it to the shelter in time, a piece of shrapnel from the rocket explosion mortally struck Ami and he later died of his wounds in Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center.

Look, up in the sky -- no, don't bother

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War
07 December '10

You would have to search hard to find any news channel covering the fact that a Qassam rocket fired by the jihadists of Gaza exploded in the fields just south of Ashkelon yesterday (Monday). Ynet mentions it but it's buried deep inside the site. Fortunately, no injuries or damage were reported but this, of course, was not the intention of the rocket-firing thugs.

Since we're speaking of the intentions of the terrorists, it's timely to mention that the terrorist forces of Hezbollah, arrayed right across Israel's tense border with Lebanon as we write this, are now reliably thought to be equipped with 40,000 to 50,000 rockets and missiles. This report says they can now easily hit Tel-Aviv. In effect this means they can choose to hit any target within Israel.

A WikiLeaks piece from yesterday says Bashir al-Assad, the Syrian president, was "reprimanded" by US officials for supplying deadly weaponry to the Shiite terror group Hezbollah a week after assuring them he would not. (Oh the shock/horror!) In February 2010, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, wrote to the Syrian:

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Running for cover in Ashkelon

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
14 November '10

For some reason, I was the only one in the apartment who didn’t hear the first wail of the siren – the civil defense mechanism which gives Israelis living within bomb radius of Gaza up to a full 20 seconds to take cover or move to a safer area. In the case of the flat in Ashkelon where we were staying – the home of my wife’s aunt and uncle – which is near the top floor, they are instructed to descend two levels and take cover in the section opposite where a direct hit would land. The likely trajectory of a potential missile would make their home especially vulnerable.

It took me a couple of seconds to understand why everyone – Chana, her aunt, uncle, cousins, and friends – was running towards the door, but the second siren, which I heard simultaneously with the words “bomb”, “we must” “take cover”, uttered by someone, or everyone, finally confirmed the meaning of their worried expressions and the rapid urgency of their gate.

We descended down two flights where the other neighbors had gathered – the safe spot. We learned later that it wasn’t a false alarm, as is sometimes the case. Thankfully, the rocket landed harmlessly in an open field a mile or so from our location.

Since Israel’s unilateral withdraw from in 2005, there has been over 7,000 such missile attacks (rockets and mortars) from Gaza into Southern Israel – with a stark increase in such attacks after Hamas gained power in 2006. While such attacks slowed dramatically after Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, there have still been over 300 in the lat year. Indeed, a few hours before our incident in Ashkelon, a Qassam rocket hit Netiv Ha’asara in the western Negev, its shrapnel taking the life of a Thai worker employed in a moshav greenhouse.

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The moral dilemmas of protecting Ashkelon

Noam Bedein
Sderot Media Center
19 May '10

Recent protests by Ashkelon residents and the local PTA in demanding full rocket protection for school buildings across the city put us at the Sderot Media Center, in a moral dilemma. Should we join in their struggle?

On one hand, we fully understand and identify with Ashkelon's population of 120,000 residents who battle for school protection which could save lives from expected Gaza missile attacks. On the other hand, we cannot help but ask, should this struggle be for protection of the city or for the cessation of the threat of aerial attacks from Gaza? Only last week, a rocket exploded in south Ashkelon, bringing to 349 the number of rockets and missiles fired into Israel since the cease fire stopped Israel's three week incursion into Gaza in January 2009. Will protecting the city stop the rockets? It is clear to everyone that it will not.

Building shelters in Sderot

At the Sderot Media Center, our agency has consistently reported on the struggle to get to the Israeli government to provide appropriate shelter for Israeli communities along the Gaza border. Back in April 2007, the SMC staff, in collaboration with researchers at Sapir College, conducted an investigation into the shelter protection in Sderot and the western Negev. The investigation was accompanied by the local PTA of Sderot, who demanded that decision makers and the Israel High Court fortify the 24 schools in Sderot and the surrounding area.

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