The Utter Chaos of Tuesday Night: Part 2

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Happy 4th of July!

To all of you who celebrate the holiday, we wish you a very happy 4th of July. If you are not doing anything this evening, you are invited to come to our 30th annual 4th of July bbq on the beach in front of our house here in Ashdod. Just look for the American flag waving proudly in the wind, and come help yourself to all of the usual food and libations. See you there!

Amazing Facts Of The Day

727,000 Israelis left the country on vacation in June. Another 44,000 left the country to or more times, presumably on business.

727,000. One out of every 10 Israelis.

What is more, 3.8 million Israelis departed Israel between January and June–almost half the country apparently. We say “apparently” because this number was not broken down by the Central Bureau of Statistics into vacation and business leaves or into one time or multiple leaves.

The News On The Israeli Street

Palestinian terror in Judea and Samaria . . .

Molotov and “rock” attacks were carried out by terrorists near the Oranit Checkpoint on Road 5,  near Karmei Tzur, at Tel Zion, the Tekoa Junction, Al-Aruv, and at a host of other places.

Palestinian terror along the Gaza border . . .

Remember how the balloon terrorism was supposed to come to an end as a result of the pathetic agreement between Israel and Hamas? It never did.

There were at least 5 more fires in the last 24 hours:

A firefighter battles a blaze at Sdot Negev.

Another torched landscape:

The Eshkol Region continues to be hard-hit.

And yet another fire in the Be’eri Forest:

More dunams consumed at Be’eri.

You might ask yourself why, if dozens of explosive balloons are being launched everyday, there are not more fires than there are. The answer is simple. Many of the explosive balloons are defective and do not explode on impact–however, in such a condition, they remain dangerous booby traps like this one one found in a field near Netivot yesterday:

Look closely at the balloon. You can just make out the “you” of “I love you.” Remember that the Palestinian terrorists choose colorful balloons with peaceful slogans in hope that they will be picked up by Israeli children.

The breathtakingly stupid Israeli responses to terror continue . . .

If the non-agreement with the Palestinian terrorists in Gaza wasn’t enough, now we have word that Israel is trying to bail out Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO in Judea and Samaria.

As you know, the Knesset passed a law last year requiring Israel to deduct “the amount of money that the PLO pays terrorists in Israeli prisons and money that the PLO pays the families of terrorists who were killed while trying to murder Israelis” from the monthly tax revenues Israel turns over to the PLO. However, PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has been refusing to take any of the tax money as long as some of it is being deducted.

Now try to wrap your mind around this.

Every month, the PLO pays 200,000,000 shekels to Israel for fuel that it uses. Israel is now proposing that the PLO will not have to pay the two hundred million shekels at all in order to relieve the PLO’s budget crisis.

The budget crisis caused by the payouts to terrorists and their families.

Unbelievable.

And who will end up paying for the fuel?

Obviously your humble servant and every other Israeli taxpayer.

If this ridiculous payment to the PLO is not enough . . .

It turns out that Israel has now approved a new Palestinian settlement in Area C near Shilo, Adi Ad, and Amichai.

Can you believe this?

Jews cannot even build 1 home in Area C without running into a hundred obstacles thrown in their path by the Civil Administration, and now the Civil Administration has approved an entire new Palestinian settlement.

Incredible.

TODAY’S BLOG:

The Utter Chaos of Tuesday Night: Part 2

The view at 6 pm from the bridge leading to the south entrance to Ashdod. To the left below is the the highway leading to Ashkelon and on the other side, in the opposite direction, to Tel Aviv.

Your humble servant left you as we were stranded on the bridge leading into south Ashdod–ridiculously one of the only two entrances into our “little” city of some 250,000 people.

We had arrived there at about 6 pm at which time a small group of Ethiopian protesters (which we could see on our phones by the live report on ashdodnet.com) were milling about in the intersection at the end of the bridge.

We thought that our stoppage on the bridge would last a few minutes as the police would clear away the protesters.

They didn’t. And the small group of protesters grew by the hundreds as the hours progressed. 

7 pm., 8 pm. As darkness approached, the mood was one of resigned conviviality; the Russian-Israelis in the car in front of us pulled a propane burner from out of their trunk and began making coffee for those all around:

Note the water bottle and small coffee maker on the ground beside the guard rail.

9 pm. Things became more sinister. Suddenly acrid smoke began wafting our way from the intersection below–and we could see tires being burned in the street. Then a protester lit a tire on the train track below–the small fire stopped all train travel between Yavne to Ashkelon for hours:

Note the small fire on the track beside the lightpole to the left. In the distance in the upper right, you can see other fires set at the north Ashdod entrance.

10 pm. People became decidedly more grumpy and the conversation on the bridge went from empathy with the Ethiopians to something much less. Part of the conversation wondered why the Ethiopians were getting special treatment? As a number of people pointed out, if the protesters had been ultra-orthodox or any other group, the intersection would have been cleared hours before.

11 pm. Grumpiness turned to extreme impatience and anger. People actually tried to start turning their cars around and going down the bridge against the direction of the cars stalled on the bridge toward the freeway. But they couldn’t make it out.

12 am. Two policemen finally showed up (after 6 hours!) and told everyone to turn around and go down the bridge against the traffic flow toward the freeway which we all did. With one policeman standing in the freeway, we were able to get on to the freeway headed south–which meant that we had to go to the Ad Halom Junction and turn around and head north to the North Ashdod entrance.

12:15-1:00 am. Sheer madness on the road. If you can imagine a group of people crowding toward a point with no one in line, that is what the freeway was like. A two-lane freeway became a 5 lane freeway: no one was keeping in their lanes, people were driving crazily on the narrow skirting on both sides of the road, accidents were everywhere, and still we were just crawling toward the North entrance. Everyone was using his or her car as if it were a weapon.

1:00 am. With a sigh of relief, we finally made it to the North entrance where we were at least able to make it into the city. We arrived home about 1:30 am.

It was a night of utter chaos marked by the best and worst of Israeli behavior–and marked by what has become the hallmark of the Israeli police: total incompetence. 

Addendum. More protests were scheduled for last night, but few showed up. Of those who did, most of them were Israeli leftists. Ethiopian-Israelis were few and far between.