IRIS Blog

More rocket attacks against Israel and pointless responses by the Israeli Air Force (IAF):

Throughout the day and evening on Thursday, Gaza rockets as well as mortar shells fell in southern Israel, including a Grad rocket which hit near a Netivot synagogue.

Other rockets hit an open area south of Ashkelon, a location near Netivot, in Sderot on Thursday night as well as rockets which hit Sha’ar HaNegev and Sdot Negev during the day, at least 11 rockets in all hit sites in southern Israel as well as mortal shells hitting western Negev.

In response to the daytime attacks, the IDF Spokesperson issued this report:

The Israel Air Force recently attacked four smuggling tunnels in the Rafah border area, in response to eight Qassam rockets and two mortar shells fired from the Gaza strip today, and to the ongoing firing of over 140 rockets, mortar shells and Grad missiles from the Gaza Strip since the holding of fire on January 18th. An additional smuggling tunnel was attacked earlier today.

It needs to be asked:

1) Didn't the IAF attack the smuggling tunnels during the recent Operation Cast Lead, a.k.a. "the war in Gaza"?

2) Did they miss the ones they attacked yesterday during the war, or have they been created since the war ended?

3) How many smuggling tunnels are there anyway?

4) If all the attacks against the tunnels during the war were not sufficient, or if it is so easy to recreate the tunnels that there are fresh ones to attack regularly so soon after the war, what exactly is the point of dropping a few bombs on them now?

5) Why are the smugglers, the terrorists, their leaders, their command-and-control centers, and their bomb and missile factories not being attacked also? The tunnels aren't launching the missiles at us.

And finally, the biggest question of them all:

6) Will Israel's security policy change for the better with the new government being formed?

The Jerusalem Post is now citing a TV news report that the Arab drove his tractor unhindered through Jerusalem to the attack scene:

The attacker - later identified as Mar'i al-Rdaidah, 26, from the capital's northeastern Beit Hanina neighborhood - reached the intersection near Teddy Stadium and managed to push the police patrol car for about 30 meters, police said. He pushed the police vehicle into the bus, but his momentum was apparently stopped by the bus and an electrical post pinned between the police car and the bus.

The bus was full of girls dressed in Purim costumes en route to cheer up patients at Hadassah hospital, according to the Zaka rescue and recovery service.

Rdaidah drove the construction vehicle unhindered through the city to the scene of the attack, Channel 2 reported.

According to the report, Rdaidah, who lived on the Palestinian side of Beit Hanina and did not have an Israeli ID card, was the owner of the vehicle, unlike in the two previous bulldozer rampages in Jerusalem last year.

The terrorist was pronounced dead at Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem neighborhood...

Hamas spokesman Munir al-Masri praised the attack.

Jerusalem District deputy police chief Nisso Shaham said at the scene of Thursday's attack that, following the previous attacks in the capital, police had compiled a list of bulldozer drivers and owners in the city in order to identify possible attackers. But, he said, "this kind of attack cannot be anticipated and therefore it is impossible to prepare for it."

There was yet another Arab tractor attack in Jerusalem today. Apparently employing potential murderers to save on building costs is still considered good economics for some:

A Palestinian driver rammed a bulldozer into a bus and police car on a Jerusalem highway Thursday, lightly wounding two officers before he was shot dead - the latest in a string of attacks by Palestinian terrorists using heavy machinery against Israeli civilian targets...

[Editor's note: The story is still breaking so some of the facts in the article have not been updated. It was a tractor, not a bulldozer, and apparently he only attempted to ram the bus but was unsuccessful, as explained below:]

A taxi driver who saw the tractor trying to approach the bus opened fire at the tractor driver, and a police officer also fired shots at the tractor driver...

An initial police investigation indicated that the tractor driver reached the intersection near the Teddy Stadium and managed to push a police vehicle for about 30 meters. After that, he tried to push the police vehicle into a bus, but was blocked apparently by an electrical post.

According to ZAKA, the bus was full of girls dressed in Purim costumes en route to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital to cheer up patients in advance of the holiday...

ZAKA operation commander Haim Weinrot said that "the girls were hysterical. They saw the enormous scoop heading toward them and saw death approaching, but they were saved at the last minute by the post. It is a Purim miracle."

Within a half-hour after the attack, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barakat was on the scene to personally inspect the situation.

"The attack targeted us for no reason other than the fact that we live in Jerusalem," said Barkat on the scene. "This was an attack carried out exclusively for the purpose of harming civilians."

He also thanked police, security forces and civilians who stopped the attack, and vowed that "everyone involved in the attack" would be brought to justice.

This appears to be another example of the very high cost of using "cheap" Arab labor. It is well known that crime of all sorts goes up when such workers are in a given area. Worse than the actual cost of the crime is the cost of the ubiquitous security guards at Jerusalem banks, restaurants, malls, etc., and the increase police and army presence required.

The solution is as simple as it is obvious. Want to guess what it is? Hint: it won't come from the contractors and other business owners who are forced by the market to use Arab labor to keep their prices down.

UPDATE 17:00 Israel time (10:00 US Eastern time):

Unlike those who were there, Al Jazeera is not sure if it was really a terror attack:

"A police officer at the site saw the tractor lifting the police vehicle into the air and opened fire at the driver," Niso Shaham, deputy head of Jerusalem police, said...

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent, said: "It is always possible that it could have been an accident but there have been a number of tractor attacks in the last year in Jerusalem, where Palestinians have used diggers as weapons against pedestrians and motorists."

Yep, could have been an accident... A tractor lifting a police car in the air? Happens all the time.

Here is another gem from the same article:

Hamas, the Palestinian movement which has de facto control of the Gaza Strip, said it supported the apparent attack.

"The operation in Jerusalem was a natural response to aggression against our people. The Zionist enemy should realise that they alone bear the responsibility for displacing our people in Jerusalem and for the killings in Gaza and the West Bank," Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas official, said.

As usual, for Hamas there is always a ready excuse for someone who tried to kill a busload of schoolgirls.

Christopher Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and a Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif., writes about how Moslems are demanding passage of a UN resolution which would criminalize opinions that differ with the Islamic faith:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference... are now demanding through the agency of the United Nations that Islam not only be allowed to make absolutist claims but that it also be officially shielded from any criticism of itself.

Though it is written tongue-in-cheek in the language of human rights and of opposition to discrimination, the non-binding U.N. Resolution 62/154, on "Combating defamation of religions," actually seeks to extend protection not to humans but to opinions and to ideas, granting only the latter immunity from being "offended."

Paragraph 5 "expresses its deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism," while Paragraph 6 "notes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001."

Paragraph 10 of the resolution says, in effect, watch what you say, because our declared intention is to criminalize opinions that differ with the one true faith. Let nobody say that they have not been warned.

Here is a must-see video from, of all places, the BBC. In it, former British colonel Richard Kemp, a commander of British forces in Afghanistan, debunks the Arab myth of Israeli "war crimes" by contrasting the IDF's great concern for the safety of Gaza civilians and Hamas or Hezbollah terrorists who train to fight from behind civilian human shields:



Hat tip: i Life World