How would you like to live like this? Residents of my home city city of Ashdod running to a bomb shelter during a Hamas Grad attack. (Photo: Allvoices.)
Yesterday, I blogged about the sheer insanity of Israel offering Ramadan ‘goodwill gestures’ to Hamas. It didn’t take long for Hamas to say ‘thank you’; last night, just after the time for the evening Ramadan meal, Hamas launched two grad missiles toward southern Israel in yet another indiscriminate terror attack against Israeli children, women, and men–one striking near Kiryat Gat, the other in Ashkelon.
And I am struck yet again this morning at how the Israel government has deprioritized Israeli citizens in southern Israel–and at how the Israeli media underreports Hamas terror against them.
The following brief news report about the Hamas missile attack appeared online at YNet News this morning and is exemplary of the reportage that occurs whenever there are missile launches against southern Israel [the bracketed notations and comments in blue are mine].
[Title] “2 rockets fired from Gaza” [Note: The title words are not capitalized. The title of the article does not specify the type of rockets. The title of the article does not specify who fired the rockets–and please don’t tell me that there are many different groups in Gaza and any one of them could have fired the missiles–Hamas controls everything in Gaza. The net effect of the title is to make the reader think that the launching of the Grad missiles by Hamas was inconsequential.]
[Subtitle] “One rocket explodes near town in Lakhish region” [Not mentioning Kiryat Gat at the outset dehumanizes the terror attack. Placing the ‘town’ in the ‘Lakhish region’ makes it appear like it is in the middle of nowhere. Actually, the city of Kiryat Gat is located a mere 68 kilometers (42 miles) south of Tel Aviv, has a population of 50,000 people, and is the home of a large Intel microchip and flash memory plant] “another at entrance to Ashkelon. Palestinian sources report of subsequent IDF strike in Gaza.”
[Author] Ilana Curiel
“Palestinian sources reported that IDF aircrafts (sic) struck Gaza targets overnight, in apparent response to Wednesday’s rocket fire on southern Israel” [Note how the article still has not said a word about possible victims, not said a word about Hamas, and instead focuses on ‘Gaza targets’. Again, we have read the title, subtitle, and first sentence and there is no mention of ‘Hamas terror’. By the way, as every journalist knows, many readers only read the title and first sentence of a newspaper or or online article].
“According to the Gaza sources, the strike targeted a Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades’ hub in the Strip” [Finally, we see Hamas mentioned for the first time (and only time)]. “Two Grad rockets” [Finally, we see what type of missiles–remember that a Grad is a significant upgrade from a Qassam] “were fired from Gaza late Wednesday evening after a period of relative calm” [A ‘period of relative calm’ is Israeli governmental and media euphemistic parlance for a period during which only one or two missiles are being fired each day] “in the south.”
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“The first rocket exploded at around 10:30 pm in an open area” [‘In an open area’ is again Israeli governmental and media euphemistic parlance to express the inconsequential nature of the attack] “between Sderot and Kiryat Gat, near a town in the Lakhish Region. The second exploded some two hours later at the entrance to the southern city of Ashkelon. No injuries or damage were reported in either case” [Amazingly, after all the medical reports through the years about the devastating psychological trauma suffered by residents–especially children–of the Israeli South–government spokesmen and the media continue to use the euphemistic ‘no injuries of damage were reported’.]
“Security forces made were able to recover remnants of the first rocket, saying search for those of the second, which apparently fell in agricultural fields” [Again, the writer emphasizes that the missile landed in an insignificant area] “near the town, will resume at first light.”
“The areas in which the rockets fell currently lack the protection of Iron Dome, due to testing being done on the systems. Defense officials say they will only be returned to the area if violence escalates significantly” [Which is it? Was the Iron Dome inactive because ‘testing is being done on its systems’? Or was the Iron Dome simply moved? Actually we (and Hamas) already know that the latter is true because there were published reports in recent weeks that the Iron Dome system has been moved north to the Haifa region (why in the world this would be published I can’t possibly fathom). The bottom line is simply that the citizens of southern Israel are simply not an Israeli government priority].
“Ynet received dozens of emails reporting a rocket alert that sounded in the southern city of Kiryat Gat. Residents of the area also reported hearing loud blasts” [Loud blasts? I thought there was only one Grad missile that struck near Kiryat Gat?] .
“A resident of one of the towns in the Lakhish region told Ynet of the terror” [So now it is finally terror?]. “‘We heard a very loud blast and hoped that it didn’t explode in a house. We were frightened, but we have nowhere to go because many of the residents here don’t have bomb shelters,’ she said” [After all that has happened in the South–the firing over 15,000 rockets in the last five years–there are still, unbelievably, no bomb shelters for many residents. And there are marches in the streets about the cost of cottage cheese.]
“Ynet heard similar reports from a resident of another town as well. We don’t have fortified buildings here, either” [Same point as before. How is it possible that there are no fortified buildings? I’m sorry that people are charged exorbitant prices to rent apartments in downtown Tel Aviv, but someone needs to get their priorities straight]. “‘After the explosion many people came out to the main street to check that it didn’t happen in our town,’ she said.”
In sum, residents of southern Israel such as me have grown tired of token IDF strikes against ‘smuggling tunnels’ and ‘Qassam factories.’ As I have blogged before, it is time to stop the continuous terror attack on southern Israel once and for all.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.