SPECIAL NOTICE:
Happy July 4th to all of our israelsteeters in the United States!
UPDATES 8 am Israel time, Friday, July 4 2014:
**Massive rioting continued yesterday and last night in Jerusalem’s Shuafat neighborhood even as the circumstances involving the murder of 17 year old Mohammed Khedair remain unclear. Today’s rioting promises to be even more intense as the autopsy on Khedair’s body was completed last night and his burial will take place today.
There were numerous pitched battles in the streets of eastern Jerusalem yesterday. This picture was made of a policeman being hit with a Molotov cocktail (Picture: Oriya Ohana).
There is still no word from the Police as to the motivation behind the kidnapping (if there was one) and murder. CCTV footage purports to show the moment of the kidnapping; yet that tape merely shows two young men walking down a sidewalk, a car stopping (not a black one as claimed by Hussain Khedair, Mohammed’s uncle), and then the car whisking away with one of the young men inside.
The Temple Mount is closed to Jews again today (what’s new?), and even the number of Muslim worshipers to Judaism’s holiest site has been restricted. The Netanyahu government is struggling to “stabilize the situation.”
**Lest we forget, and that is precisely what the PLO-Hamas terrorists would love for us to do, Israeli security forces seem no closer to finding the PLO-Hamas murderers of the three Israeli teenagers.
Further recordings of the telephone call made by Gilad Sha’ar to the emergency control center continue to be made public, and we can now hear the Palestinian murderers laughing, singing, and celebrating after they killed the young men.
Further information about the incompetence of Israeli security forces also continues to leak out. As it turns out, not only the police but also the IDF was asleep at the wheel. Even though the Army was notified around 6 am of the kidnapping, they did not close the border with Jordan until six hours later at noon. This was enough time for the murderers to get to Amman and take a flight to Tehran. Who knows where they are now?
Probably still laughing, singing, and celebrating.
TODAY’S BLOG:
What can your humble servant say about the last 24 hours of missile and mortar fire at southern Israel?
The rubble of a house in Sderot (Photo: Hezki Ezra).
Numerous Israelis wounded–both physically and traumatically; numerous buildings hit–including ones containing summer camps and kindergartens; numerous fires started from the explosive impacts of missiles; numerous, numerous, numerous . . . even bomb shelters and fortified rooms heavily damaged by incoming missiles.
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In a word, the situation in the Israeli communities along the Gaza border is a “disaster”.
The missile volleys and mortar salvos are now coming so frequently that no one really knows even how many there are. All numbers that appear on this blog over in the right hand column are conservative statistics based on individual and official reports–the latter of which the government is doing its best to understate.
And the IDF, which has turned into a shadow of its former self, continues doing nothing to protect Israeli citizens. In the midst of the rain of terror yesterday, all the IDF spokesman could mumble over and over was that Israel wants Hamas to know that “quiet will be met with quiet.”
Say what?
Between 60 and 70 missiles and mortars fired, and the only IDF action was to strike one rocket launcher near Rafah, killing one terrorist. That’s it. Nothing more. Nothing that could be construed by Hamas as an Israeli attack on Hamas.
The simple fact is that the IDF and the Netanyahu government are terrified of Hamas and are desperate to avoid a confrontation. The pathetic fear in Jerusalem is that should the fighting escalate, we will quickly find Hamas missiles in Tel Aviv and farther north.
And heaven forbid there should be missiles in Tel Aviv.
The threat from Netanyahu yesterday was that Hamas has 24 hours to stop the missile fire. The threat from Netanyahu today is that Hamas has between 24 to 48 hours to stop the missile fire. The threat from Netanyahu tomorrow will be that Hamas has the rest of the week to stop the missile fire.
The fact is that the missile fire from from Gaza never stops. The fact is that every threat from the IDF and Netanyahu is hollow, and everyone in Gaza knows it. What are they doing in Gaza this morning?
Laughing, singing, and celebrating–and, oh yes, firing missiles at us. Three hours ago, Sderot and the surrounding area were hit again by 5 Palestinian missiles.
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.