The Hamas “military” wing trained with machine-gunfire in an exercised ono the ruins of destroyed Jewish communities in the pre-dawn hours Thursday morning, hours after the European Union Court of Justice ruled that there was not enough evidence to justify the terrorist organization’s remaining on the list of banned terrorist groups.

The midnight-to-dawn exercise was carried out where Jews use to live in Dugit and Nissanit, from where they were expelled in the summer of 2005 as part of the Sharon government’s lunacy that the expulsion was the road to peace.

The number of soldiers – remember, the EU court says they are not terrorists – involved in the training indicates that It was the largest military exercise that Hamas has carried out since the Protective Edge campaign in the against Hamas in Gaza last summer, Israel Defense reported..

If the justices needed more evidence that Hamas is a terrorist organization, all they had to do was visit Jewish communities in the Gaza Belt – unless they wanted to take a chance on a one-way ticket to Gaza – and lose sleep just like the Israelis who heard explosions and gunfire for hours.

One of those explosions probably was the one that killed one Hamas member and wounded several others in a “work accident,” another semantic whitewash for terrorists preparing to kill Jews.

According to the European Union court, this is not terror. Maybe it is part of the peace process, or maybe it is the expression of “unity” with the rival Fatah movement headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

Speaking of Abbas, posters of the Palestinian Authority chairman were displayed in Gaza Thursday morning with one message that the European Union court might be interested in seeing. Abbas was pictured as being hanged, and the posters included the words ”dictator” and ”traitor.”

Is this the work of terrorists?

Perhaps the European Union Court of Justice – the most unsuitable name imaginable – views the posters as freedom of expression in a democratic society.

The IDF has confirmed to JewishPress.com that Hamas test fired yet another rocket into the sea, on Monday afternoon.

The rocket was launched from the ruins of the Jewish town of Netzarim, in northern Gaza.

Gadi Eizenkott will replace IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz in February, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon announced Saturday night, with the blessing of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Eizenkott, now Gantz’s deputy, took over the Northern Command after his predecessor quit in 2006 after sharp criticism of his conduct in the 34-day Second Lebanon War that summer, a war which was arguably one of the most embarrassing for Israel in terms of the military’s lack of preparation, poor intelligence, logistic fiascos and loss of life.

Eizenkott has restored some dignity to the IDF following the Second Lebanon War and is backs a policy to show “no mercy shown when it comes to hitting the national infrastructure of a state that, in practice, is controlled by terrorist organization Hezbollah.”

After an 18-month leave of absence to serve as a researcher in an Israeli think tank, Eizenkott returned to the army as Gantz’s deputy in 2013.

“Maj.-Gen. Eizenkott has been chosen from an excellent group of major generals to lead the IDF in the face of the complex security challenges facing the State of Israel. On behalf of the citizens of Israel, I wish him success,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said.

That would seem be a given, but given the recent years of the IDF commanders anxious to please the Obama administration, it is a “revolution” to think that that enemies should be killed and not “engaged.”

Eizenkott is not considered trigger-happy and will not send soldiers into war unless diplomacy does not work, Yediot Acharonot observed. But when the army has to hit, it will do it the way it should.

He enlisted in the Golani unit, which has produced many of IDF Chiefs of Staff.

Reserve Maj.-Gen. Ilan Biran, who worked alongside Eizenkott and was his senior commander, told Yediot, “After the Oslo Accords, as the GOC Central Command, I was looking for a brigade commander who knew how to handle a complicated and complex area – on the one hand there were the settlers and on the other hand militant cities like Tulkarem and Kalkilya. Eizenkott showed qualities of a model brigade commander, he showed common sense, restraint, unusual responsibility and creativity. He managed to avoid unnecessary conflicts and controlled these cities successfully in what was an extremely delicate task.”

In the recent Protect Edge operation against Hamas this past summer, Eizenkott favored a policy of not trying to destroy Hamas or take over Gaza.

He is known not to be afraid to say what he thinks, a rarity among recent senior military leaders.

The hope is that the Peter Principle will not change him when he takes over from Gantz and that he will continue to be homiest, tough and modest, characteristics sorely lacking in the top military echelon where commanders often worry more about being politically correct rather than protecting the country.

Published on Jewish Business News

The UN Palestine refugee agency UNRWA on Thursday evening declared a state of emergency in Gaza City amid massive rains that have shut down normal life in the city, Ma’an reported. This could also mean damage to the hundreds of underground tunnels that are still being dug fastidiously by Hamas, in preparation for the next war.

Thursday marks the fourth straight day of unusually heavy rain across the region, causing temperatures to dip across the coastal region.

In early November, the Egyptian army launched a program to destroy newly discovered hundreds of tunnels leading from Gaza into the Sinai, which had been used by Gaza jihadists to attack Egyptian security forces. In only a matter of days, the Egyptians cleared 10,000 residents from about 800 homes along the strip’s southern border, to erect an 8-mile buffer where anyone entering would be shot without a warning.

Unlike Israel, the Egyptians can be decisive on fighting terrorism, and they don’t catch international flak for it, either.

Since Israel evacuated its military and civilians from Gaza, in 2005, the PLO and then the Hamas governments have not invested a penny in upgrading the sewer systems and the roads, and so each rainy season sees the strip sitting under lakes of water and human waste. The major storm that brought a blessing to Israel this past week has filled the streets of Gaza City once again with water and sewage, causing further misery for the more than 100,000 Palestinians left homeless, including an estimated 30,000 in emergency shelters.

UNRWA announced that 63 schools across Gaza City and 43 schools across the northern Gaza Strip had been closed Thursday due to the flooding.

Hundreds of residents in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City had also been evacuated due to the rise of a “storm water lagoon” that had flooded many homes in the area.

“The flooding is exacerbating the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza caused by blockade and the unprecedented destruction from the latest Israeli offensive,” the UN agency said in a post on its Facebook page.

Back in 2013, Egyptian forces flooded the tunnels under the border with the Gaza Strip in a campaign to shut them down. A Reuters reporter saw one tunnel suddenly fill with water, sending workers rushing for safety. Locals said two other tunnels were also flooded, as the Egyptians were deliberately pumping in water.

“The Egyptians have opened the water to drown the tunnels,” Abu Ghassan, who supervised the work of 30 men at one tunnel, 200 yards from the border, told Reuters. And an Egyptian security official in the Sinai told Reuters: “We are using water to close the tunnels by raising water from one of the wells.”

But when it rains heavily, as it did this week, Gaza is prone to severe flooding, leading to the displacement of thousands. The floods are exacerbated by a chronic lack of fuel that limits how much water can be pumped out of flood-stricken areas.

Which means that the effect the Egyptians achieved by diverting well water into the tunnels is now achieved by natural forces.

The tunnels into Israel were constructed using the expertise of the Rafah families who have specialized in digging tunnels into Egypt for commerce and smuggling, and have been described by former Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya as representative of “a new strategy in confronting the occupation and in the conflict with the enemy from underground and from above the ground.”

The Israeli military has estimated that Hamas spent as much as $90 million, pouring 600,000 tons of concrete, in building three dozen tunnels. Some of these tunnels were estimated to have cost $3 million to construct.

A jeep driving along the Gaza border near Kibbutz Be’eri came under gunfire from Gaza.

No one was injured in the attack, but the bullet from what appears to be a light weapon (handgun) hit the windshield of the jeep.

An IDF tank returned fire at the source of the gunfire.

Hamas snipers fired from Gaza at an IDF routine patrol operating along the security fence early afternoon on Thursday.

No injuries were reported, and the vehicle was damaged.

The IDF responded with an artillery shell aimed at the source of fire.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) revealed Thursday it has exposed a huge terrorist network that was aided by terrorists and commanders operating from Jordan, Syria and Turkey as well as within Judea and Samaria.

One of their targets was Jerusalem’s Teddy stadium, home of the Betar soccer team.

They also were planned to use a car bomb and had drawn up plans for a mass casually attack on the Jerusalem light rail system, coordinated roadside bombs and shooting attacks with M-16 semi-automatic rifles, and infiltrations, murders and kidnappings in Jewish communities throughout Judea and Samaria.

The gag order on the arrests of more than 30 terrorists two months ago was lifted today. A large quantity of weapons and ammunition also were found.

At least two of those arrested are Jordanians who previously were soldiers for the kingdom, drafted by Hamas in 2010 and sent to Turkey and Gaza for training, entering the Hamas territory through smuggling tunnels from Egypt.

The command post from Turkey further shows how Hamas has been provided a deadly safe haven by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The cells had carried out two explosions in Samaria last August, but no one was injured. The terrorists set off the bombs using a timer so that the explosions would occur when security forces were on the scene. One of the bombs went off at the Rehalim junction.

The explosions were carried out under instructions from Hamas commanders in Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Investigations by the IDF and Shin Bet helped them track down the extensive terrorist network.

Among those arrested were two from Jordan, Manaf Mohammed Angvera, 28; and Abdallah Mahmoud Zitawi, 25, Jordan;

Kuwait native Mahmoud Airbajie, 25, who learned in Jordan; two Arabs from Tulkarem, east of Netanya, Rjyie Ahmed Amuri, 30; Adnan Samara, 30; Mutzav Ruwib, 23, from Bethlehem; and Tzuhiv Rabat, 29, from the Jordan Valley.