Dramatic Sunday in Southern Israel
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The wreckage caused by a grad missile in Netivot November 12 2012.
Photo Credit: Edi Israel/Flash90
For hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in the south, yesterday was tumultuous in the worst way. Unstemmed rocket attacks have been conducted by one or another of the terrorist groups based in Hamas-controlled Gaza at all hours of the day and night. While it’s tempting to look at the absence of deaths on the Israeli side, the reality is any one of these rockets and mortars can easily have exacted the heaviest of prices. It’s our great fortune that this did not happen today.
Based on eye-witness reports we collected during the day (Sunday), here is a summary of the regions in which the Tzeva Adom missile warning system detected an incoming attack or (where Tzeva Adom did not operate for whatever reason) actual rocket-born explosions occurred:
08:50: Sha’ar Hanegev
09:50: Sha’ar Hanegev – no fewer than 4 rockets
10:10: Sderot and Sha’ar Hanegev
10:35: S’dot Negev and Sha’ar Hanegev
10:45: Sderot and Sha’ar Hanegev
11:55: Eshkol, S’dot Negev, Sha’ar Hanegev
12:00: Shaa’ar Hanegev
12:30: A hail of rockets right across Israel’s Gaza border area, plus a rocket in Hof Ashkelon
12:55: S’dot Negev
13:00: Hof Ashkelon
14:00: Be’er Sheva. Israel National News reported that two explosions, possibly three, were heard in the city about 90 seconds after the siren sounded the alert for residents to head for the shelters. At least one, and possibly two, of the incoming missiles – believed to be long-range GRAD Katyushas – were intercepted and destroyed by the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system.
15:55: Hof Ashkelon, Lachish, Sha’ar Hanegev
16:55: Sha’ar Hanegev
17:00: Sha’ar Hanegev
17:20: Eshkol – believed to be four rockets in a single volley
Times of Israel reports that more 70 rockets in total have been fired into Israel since (and presumably including) Saturday night.
“On Sunday morning, four Israelis were wounded by shrapnel when Palestinian terrorists fired a barrage of rockets at the Sha’ar Hanegev region. Two people in their fifties were wounded when a rocket scored a direct hit on a car, while a third woman was hurt as a rocket fell near a school in a nearby town. Two residents of Sderot were treated for shock. All of the casualties were evacuated to hospitals in Beersheba and Ashkelon. Hamas’s armed wing announced that it was actively participating in the fighting by firing mortar shells at IDF positions around the Gaza Strip… Television reports noted that recent cross-border fire from Gaza had included highly accurate Katyusha rockets, capable of doing far more damage than previous rocket fire.”
TOI summarizes the Sunday’s events with this fatalistic commentary under the title “The approach of an unwanted war in Gaza | Neither Israel nor Hamas nor Egypt seems to wish it, but as rocket fire intensifies again, a deeper conflict looms”:
Israel doesn’t want war. Hamas doesn’t want war. Egypt doesn’t want war. And yet this weekend’s bloodshed on the Israel-Gaza border, along with the increase in rocket fire, has brought all sides to the brink…
Visit This Ongoing War.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Frimet and Arnold Roth began writing and speaking publicly soon after the murder of their fifteen year-old daughter Malki Z"L in the Jerusalem Sbarro massacre, August 9, 2001 (Chaf Av, 5761). They have both been, and are, frequently interviewed for radio, television and the print media, including CNN, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Al-Jazeera, and others. Their blog This Ongoing War deals with the under-appreciated price of living in a society afflicted by terrorism which, they contend, means the entire world. Frimet is a native of Queens, NY while her husband was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia. They brought their family to settle in Jerusalem in 1988. They co-founded the Malki Foundation in 2001 and are deeply involved in its work as volunteers. They can be reached at thisoingoingwar@gmail.com .
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Israel doesn’t want war.
Restrained Israel's appeasement and retreat and it's religious devotion in following the Road Map leads only 1 place, to war.
You're going to get war because you worked so hard to do the opposite of what God commanded you to do. Israel's failure to defeat Hezbollah and Hamas when the opportunity came will be another of many costly mistake by those who threw their hard won deterrence away for lies of peace from false friends and their Road Map to Sheol.
Exodus 23
"You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you."
Israel doesn’t want war.
Restrained Israel’s appeasement and retreat and it’s religious devotion in following the Road Map leads only 1 place, to war.
You’re going to get war because you worked so hard to do the opposite of what God commanded you to do. Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah and Hamas when the opportunity came will be another of many costly mistake by those who threw their hard won deterrence away for lies of peace from false friends and their Road Map to Sheol.
Exodus 23
“You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”