1-Jun-10: Heating up down there... again

Frimet/Arnold Roth
This Ongoing War: A Blog
01 June '10

Islamic Jihad, which operates under Hamas sponsorship from the Gaza Strip, fired off two more Qassam rockets today. Other than being pointed in the general direction of Israel where there is some chance they will kill, maim or destory something Jewish, the rockets had no strategic target. Being terrorists, their operators care not one bit for the outcome, as we repeatedly point out in this blog.

Fortunately the outcome today was that the Qassam rockets landed in open areas, according to the Jerusalem Post quoting the IDF. And an immediate and substantial response by Israeli forces - an airstrike on a certain spot in the northern part of the Gaza Strip - brought an immediate and permanent end to three jihadist careers.

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30-May-10: Non-violent Qassams... again

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War:A Blog
30 May '10

A polite reminder to those head-in-clouds pollyannas who preach to us Israelis from a safe distance away about the right ways to think about terrorists and their actions. Case in point: an article posted in the past hour on a popular current affairs blogsite: Gaza Freedom Flotilla Shows Awesome Power of Nonviolent Resistance

Last night (Saturday), another two Qassam rockets were fired into Israel by jihadists in the northern Gaza Strip, adding to a talley that exceeds 60 for 2010 alone.

One exploded within the jurisdiction of the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council (Israeli reports generally avoid mentioning specific loations to minimize the intelligence value to the terrorists). The other landed short, crashing into an unknown location within the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

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Hamas considers Israeli missile defense to be "terror"

Elder of Ziyon
23 May '10

Hamas' English website has learned the lessons of propaganda very well. They just have to repeat over and over again: good is evil, up is down, and defending civilians is terror:

In a dangerous and condemned step, the United States Congress voted Thursday to approve $205 million in aid to Israel for the Iron Dome missile defense system. The funding passed by a vote of 410 to 4, with eight abstentions.

By this unjust and prejudiced decision of supporting Israeli terror, US declares full hostility against the unarmed Palestinian people.

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Coming of Age Under Qassam Rockets

Anav Silverman
frontpagemag.com
18 May '10
Posted before Shabbat

JERUSALEM 11.5.10: With two months until the end of the school year, several students at the religious AMIT high school of Sderot found themselves fulfilling a lifelong dream. Rotem Timsit and nine other Sderot girls, high school-aged actresses, who are part of Sderot Media Center’s Community Treatment Theater, got to perform in the Knesset this past Tuesday.

In front of a full house which included Knesset speaker and MK Reuven Rivlin, former Defense Minister Amir Peretz and other MKs, as well as students from Boyar High School of Jerusalem, the girls performed Children of Qassam Avenue. A theatrical production that tells the story of teenage girls growing under rocket fire, the play is based on the true life experiences of the Sderot girls, who spent a year undergoing drama therapy to overcome PTSD symptoms resulting from rocket terror. “This is more than just a play,” said Noam Bedein, director of Sderot Media Center. “The idea of this production is to inspire a change in perception of the Sderot-Gaza conflict. The past decade of rocket attacks, and the tremendous psychological damage done to a population of young children and teenagers, is often completely ignored or overlooked by mainstream media both in Israel and internationally.”

“The first place to begin this change of perception is in the Knesset,” said Bedein. “We hope that our political leaders recognize the powerful advocacy tool we have established in this community theater concept. This is the only platform out there presenting Israel’s side of the Sderot-Gaza conflict through the voices of Israeli youth who have suffered from Gaza rocket attacks. ”

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Seattle Times Columnist Entitled to Own Facts?

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
05 April '10

Bruce Ramsey is entitled to his opinions. In fact, as a columnist for the Seattle Times, opinions are precisely what he gets paid for. It seems, though, that his employers feel he’s also entitled to his own facts. This despite journalistic codes of ethics maintaining that opinion pieces, like news stories, must be accurate.

In a March 31, 2010 column commenting on Israel’s justification for the 2008-2009 Gaza war, Ramsey claimed that rockets fired by Gaza Palestinians into Israeli towns "hadn’t killed any Israelis":

Israel said it was defending itself, against rockets — homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets. These had been fired by Gazan hotheads against the Israeli town of Sderot to protest Israel's quarantine. The rockets hadn't killed any Israelis, but they might have. ("Congressman Brian Baird stands up for the people of Gaza")Not only is this claim about lack of fatalities demonstrably false, but so is just about everything else in that passage.

• Prior to the Gaza war, over 20 people were killed by Palestinian rockets.

• Israel was acting to stop not only the local "homemade" Qassam rockets, but also the sophisticated Grad or Katyusha type rockets launched from Gaza into Israel immediately prior to the war, and as early as 2006.

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How many Gaza civilians were killed by Hamas rockets?

Elder of Ziyon
18 January '10

Palestine Press Agency reports that the house of Ibrahim Naji Sumairi was damaged by a Qassam rocket that fell short in the southern Gaza town of Qarara, and that his family was saved from a "certain death" by sheer luck. The rocket sprayed shrapnel all around the home.

Which brings up a question that the PCHR and B'Tselem and Goldstone did not try to answer: How many of the civilians killed in Gaza were actually killed by fire from Palestinian Arab armed groups? In the days before Cast Lead, two girls were killed in Gaza, and others were injured in separate rocket attacks.

These were not isolated incidents. In fact, in the month before Cast Lead began about 6% of the rockets fired landed in Gaza itself. During Cast Lead, some 800 Qassams were fired towards Israel, and the percentage that landed in Gaza itself is unknown, but we can safely assume that the number would have been even greater than 6% as the people launching the rockets were in a greater hurry than usual.

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After the war....

Liat Collin
My Word/JPost
26 December 09

It has been exactly a year since Israel launched what is officially known as Operation Cast Lead, but often referred to as "the war in Gaza."

At some point during the campaign, my Sabra next-door neighbor found me in the kitchen helping my son pack a care package for soldiers - part of his elementary school's war effort. "Oh, it's so sad," she sighed. "I don't think there has ever been a generation that hasn't sent packages to soldiers. I remember doing it in the Six Day War."

Until Cast Lead was launched on December 27, schoolchildren all over the country had been sending care packages to children in Sderot and other communities close to Gaza which were suffering from constant missile attacks.

A friend in Sderot, fed up with the government's policy of restraint, once quipped that she had considered lobbing the stale cakes, cookies, chocolate bars and doughnuts over the border into Gaza as ammunition. When the war finally broke out - after even Ehud Olmert's government couldn't ignore some 80 missiles a day - she felt more relief than fear.

Having spent eight years raising her children under fire, she realized war would not be worse than what had been considered peace until then. Her family was already used to living with missiles: At home, not locking the bathroom door and sleeping in the safest part of the house; when out, automatically judging the location of the closest shelter. In Sderot, they have just 15 seconds from the Color Red warning until the missile lands. It's probably the only place in the world where wearing seat belts was banned as dangerous.

IN ASHKELON, the situation was different. Although under threat, residents hadn't had to live with Kassams before.

"It was really tough," says Dr. Stephen Malnick, a longtime resident. "There are so many things we had taken for granted that we suddenly couldn't do: like going shopping and walking along the promenade on the beach. My daughter, a student at Sapir College, didn't leave the apartment for two weeks - except once: She went to a salon and had her nails manicured. She told me, 'There are some things a woman just doesn't give up on,'" he recalls.

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Celebrating Hanukkah in the Rocket Zone of Israel

Photos by Noam Bedein

Anav Silverman
Sderot Media Center
24 December 09

This year, Jewish residents in the Israeli city of Sderot celebrated the holiday of Hanukkah by lighting a menorah built out of steel Qassam rockets. The rockets, which were stored away at the Sderot Police Station, are some of the thousands of Palestinian rockets that have exploded on the Israeli city in the past nine years. It was a symbolic act; one that reflected the strength of spirit that has come to define the city’s inhabitants.

For some Sderot residents, however, the celebration of Hannukah, which commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish people’s defeat of the Syrian Greeks over 2,000 years ago, brings back more recent memories of hardship.

Aliza Amar lights the candles of her family’s Menorah with the face of a mother who has weathered a great deal in the past year. It is a cold and windy night in Sderot, as the Amar family gathers together to celebrate the seventh night of Hannukah.

It was around this time two years ago that a Qassam rocket directly struck the Amars’ home, injuring Aliza and leaving the family homeless for almost a year. The rocket attack took place on the eighth day of Hanukkah, Dec. 13, 2007, and only the Amars' Menorah and Jewish holy books were found completely intact.



“All the memories from that difficult period come flooding back during this holiday,” says Aliza, a mother of four children. “The Qassam rocket that destroyed our home, destroyed our way of life. It was a terrifying time. My husband and I had to relocate our family to a tiny apartment temporarily, get the kids into therapy, and find time to recover from the initial shock and injuries. We are still reeling from the impact of that attack to this day.”

Amar points to the entrance to the front yard which was only completed in the last month. “I haven’t had a front yard with a garden for almost two years. The first thing we had built after the rocket explosion was a new bomb shelter. All the other repairs had to wait.”

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