BREAKING NEWS: 10 pm Israel time
Zones 271, 272, 245, and 248 came under missile fire from Palestinian terrorists in Gaza just after 9 pm this evening. The zones are all in the Ashkelon-Ashdod-Gan Yavne area. Your humble servant’s house is in Zone 271.
According to reports from residents, 5 missiles were fired and 4 exploded on the ground in Israel. At least 1 missile exploded in the industrial area of Ashdod and another in Gan Yavne. There were no missile interceptions by the Iron Dome because there were no Iron Dome batteries to intercept the missiles.
The IDF, in its infinite wisdom, moved the Ashdod Iron Dome battery out of Ashdod one week after last summer’s war.
There are no reported physical casualties, but MADA reports that numerous Israeli men, women, and children have been treated for shock.
UPDATES
7 pm Israel time, Tuesday, May 26 2015
**Three hours ago, a Border Guard was wounded in a “stone” throwing attack by an Arab mob in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras Al Amud. The Guard is currently under medical care at Hadassah Hospital in “moderate” condition.
**About two months ago, your humble servant was in the kibbutzes at Kfar Aza and Nahal Oz on a self-directed tour of the Gaza border. In fact, anyone can drive down to within a stone’s throw of Gaza.
On Thursday evening, Kfar Aza will host a “Concert without Borders” to mark the anniversary of last year’s war in Gaza.
The message of the concert, in which more than 130 singers will participate, is that both Israelis and Gazans suffered immensely and that we need to “recognize the pain of both parties” and “cease violence on both sides.” The concert organizers seem to have forgotten that last year’s war, as previous ones, was started by the Hamas launch of thousands of missiles into Israeli communities.
Interestingly, Kfar Aza–the closest kibbutz to the Gaza border and one of the hardest hit by Hamas missiles and mortars–is also one of the most “left wing” kibbutzes in Israel.
Anyone who travels to the Kfar Aza or nearby Nahal Oz these days can easily see Palestinian terrorists busy at work building new anti-tank berms and tunnels. Hamas makes no attempt to hide these activities at all–and that work will continue full speed while the concert singers sing of peace.
**The Parole Board of the Israel Prison Service ordered the immediate release today of Shlomo Dvir, the head of the Bat Ayin Jewish underground who has languished in prison for 13 years. His release follows that of his fellow underground head, Ofer Gamliel.
**The attempt of Christian missionaries to proselytize in Israel has reached new proportions. Yesterday, a Baptist group dropped off 35,000 leaftlets to be mailed to a post office in Ashkelon. The leaflets, written in Russian and Hebrew, called on readers to “turn to the path of Jesus.”
To the credit of the Ashkelon postal service, postal workers refused to deliver the leaflets.
Isn’t it fascinating that instead of focusing on the atrocities being committed against Christians by Muslims all over the Middle East, Christians are in Israel trying to convert Jews–the one people in the Middle East who give Christians safe haven?
Unbelievable.
TODAY’S BLOG:
The Israeli news is all abuzz today with reports that PM Netanyahu has agreed to discuss what Judea and Samaria will look like after any final peace agreement with the Palestinians.
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More specifically, Netanyahu is apparently willing to draw a map which defines the boundaries of Jewish community blocks that will remain after any peace agreement with the PLO. He is supposedly willing to do this in order to jumpstart talks with the PLO yet again.
What are the Palestinians willing to do to start talks? Absolutely nothing. As usual, the international community led by the European Union and the United States are doing all of the “negotiating” for them–“negotiating” that consists of arm-twisting Israel into ever more concessions.
The reports of the Netanyahu offer have brought down the wrath of both the “right” and “left”–and the left’s friends in the PLO.
Uri Ariel, the new minister of Agriculture and the man in charge of the “settlement activities” of the World Zionist Organization had this to say:
“If there is truth in the report, then the proposal is a dangerous precedent that clearly defies the first article in the government’s guidelines: ‘The Jewish people have an indisputable right to a sovereign state in the Land of Israel, its national and historic homeland.'”
A fellow member of Ariel’s Jewish Home party, Bezalel Smotrich, was more blunt:
“Everyone in this government knows that if it ever goes back to dangerous diplomatic adventures, it [the government] will fall that day.”
Meanwhile, on the other side, PLO Executive Council member Hanan Ashrawi blasted the Netanyahu proposal:
“This is a disingenuous and manipulative exercise of political and legal deception. All settlements are illegal and in flagrant contravention of international law and consensus, and any efforts to annex and to legalize the settlements blocs is a blatant attempt to steal more Palestinian land and to legitimize Israel’s ongoing system of apartheid, land theft and expansion. Any negotiations must be based on international law, a binding and concrete timetable to dismantle and remove all illegal settlements, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital.”
Actually what Netanyahu is attempting is an interesting reversal of the focus on “lines”.
Instead of having the international community endlessly focus on the 1949 Armistice lines (aka the June 4, 1967 lines), Netanyahu wants the internationalists to focus on boundary lines of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
Uri Ariel and Bezalel Smotrich’s comments notwithstanding, explicit in Netanyahu’s “talking about lines” is the fact that the Jewish communities are legal–and always have been–and that Israel is never going back to the 1949 Armistice Lines.
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.