A rocket launched on Monday evening from Gaza landed in Gaza.

The explosion was heard in Kibbutz Be’eri, which is close to where the rocket fell short.

Iron Dome did not go off.

In an interview aired on the Lebanese al-Manar news site on Monday, Jan. 19, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah made many of the standard blowhard assertions everyone expects. To wit: Hezbollah has much modern weaponry, Hezbollah’s military prowess and arsenal has increased and continues to increase in strength every year.

Nasrallah also claimed that his fighters are training day and night, that they will be ready to liberate the Galilee, and they will penetrate far into enemy territory “in case of a new Zionist aggression in Lebanon.”

No explanation for why this latest “Zionist aggression” was not the one they’ve been waiting for,  just more threats about the next time.

But in the course of the six minute interview, Nasrallah said something worth noting.

The interviewer asked Nassrallah whether Turkey has relations with either ISIS or the al-Nusra Front.

“It has relations with both of them,” Nasrallah replied.

The terrorist leader also claimed that despite what U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama “say in the media,” behind the scenes the U.S. administration has revealed in “confidential letters to some regional countries” that it is “not concerned with whether President Assad remains in power or departs.”

Nasrallah said that only Turkey and Saudi Arabia really care about dethroning Assad.

The terrorist leader also said that Hamas is very interested in having close and complete relations with Iran and with Hezbollah.

Egyptian security forces blew up a 3/4-mile long smuggling tunnel reaching into the Northern Sinai from Gaza on Saturday, hours after terrorists bombed an Egyptian train.

The tunnel was similar to those that the IDF uncovered during the Protective Edge counter-terrorist campaign last summer, complete with electricity and telephone lines.

The tunnel opening in Gaza was underneath a smuggler’s house. The tunnels are used to smuggle weapons , food and money for terrorists.

Earlier on Saturday, terrorists derailed an Egyptian train with a bomb explosion. No one was injured.

The U.S. State Dept. has strongly attacked the International Criminal Court (ICC) for opening a probe of alleged Israeli war comes and left open the question whether the ICC even has the a right to conduct a probe of last year’s war with Hamas.

The State Dept. called the ICC announcement a “tragic irony,” a statement that was further bolstered by praise for the ICC decision by Hamas, which may find itself under the ICC microscope.

Jeff Rathke, director of the State Dept. press office, stated:

We strongly disagree with the ICC Prosecutor’s action today. As we have said repeatedly, we do not believe that Palestine is a state and therefore we do not believe that it is eligible to join the ICC. It is a tragic irony that Israel, which has withstood thousands of terrorist rockets fired at its civilians and its neighborhoods, is now being scrutinized by the ICC.

He told reporters at Friday’s daily press briefing:

We don’t think that the Palestinians have established a state, and we don’t think they’re eligible to join the International Criminal Court. I would highlight that many other countries share this view.

In answer to a question whether the ICC is conducting “an illegitimate preliminary examination,” Rathke responded, ” I’m not going to characterize it.,” and he declined to say one way or the other if the United States will appeal to the ICC to drop the preliminary examination.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke with Sec. of State John Kerry Friday and asked him to intervene against the ICC on behalf of Israel

Hamas was thrilled by the ICC decision and declared on Saturday, “We are ready to provide (the court) with thousands of reports and documents that confirm the Zionist enemy has committed horrible crimes against Gaza and against our people.”

“Tragic irony” is an excellent definition of the ICC decision, which is even more astonishing since it apparently follows a complaint by the Palestinian Authority, which will not be a member of the ICC until April 1.

Technically, the ICC is off the hook of overreaching its authority.

The “Rome Statute” concerning war crimes states that non-members cannot ask for an investigation of war crimes.

The ICC got around this restriction by stating it is “examining” whether an investigation should be conducted, and it obviously cannot make a decision until April 1.

But how can the ICC examine alleged war crimes dating back to last year, when the Palestinian Authority did not even apply for ICC membership.

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas presented documents to the ICC giving it authority to act retroactively.

The ICC stated it will open its examination on alleged Israeli war crimes in last summers’ war with “full independence and impartiality.”

If so, it will have a hard time ignoring Hamas war crimes, which Israel documented day by day in the war, having learned to do so after the United Nations’ scathing Goldstone Report that barely mentioned Hamas’ war crimes in the three-week Operation Cast Lead counter-terrorist campaign in late December 2008 and early January 2009.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the ICC announcement of a preliminary examination as based on an “outrageous request” by the Palestinian Authority.

The US Consulate in Jerusalem is training Jerusalem Arabs as armed security guards to escort American diplomats in Judea and Samaria, according to reports in Yediot Achronot and Arutz-7.

The report states that 7 Israeli guards were recently fired and 3 more Israeli guards quit in protest, following the appointment of the Consulate’s new security officer, Dan Cronin, and his new policies.

Cronin is reportedly hiring 35 Arab guards and sending them for training in Jericho and the US.

According to some of the former Israeli guards, a number of the Arab guards already hired have previously been arrested for stone throwing attacks and have relatives with terror records.

The former guards also describe a secret arsenal in the US Consulate, consisting of machine guns, rifles and shotguns — all without permission or coordination with Israel.

On January 4, JewishPress.com reported on an incident where US Consulate security guards allegedly pulled out a gun and an M-16, pointing their weapons at Israelis near the community of Adei Ad. The US denied they pulled out any weapons on Israeli citizens during their surveillance mission.

There has been an inordinate amount of coordination between anti-Israel activist groups and US Consulate officials as of late.

In 2010, it was revealed that the US Consulate in Jerusalem had hired the son of Hamas leader to manage their motor pool. The position gave him access to US Consulate vehicles and visiting VIPs. The employee’s brother was an advisor to a senior Hamas official in Jerusalem.

The former US Consulate employee had been arrested a number of times by Israel, previous to his being hired by the US Consulate in 2003, and was part of an Israeli 2007 investigation into Hamas activities in Jerusalem. The consulate fired him from his sensitive position in 2006 when it couldn’t ignore his Hamas connections.

Hamas does it again with its Top Hits of All Time, and this week it’s a smashing music video from that Top Terror organization heating up all the beating hearts in Gaza.

The group’s Islamic Block at Al Quds University has just produced a special quick flick showing all the fans out there exactly how to murder Jews. It’s a musical enactment of the murder of two praying Jews, wearing their prayer shawls.

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The first praying man up is clearly no match for the heroic Hamas fighting men of radical Islam, with one who approaches with stealth and vigor, swiftly stabbing him to death over and over before slinking away and vanishing.

Our second contender is seen absorbed in his prayers, standing tall – but again, no match for the overwhelming forces of the fearless fighters of Hamas, who dance over to the praying Jew in a special choreographed movement, surrounding him completely and emptying their assault rifle clips into his body. He falls to the floor, his lifeblood leaving his body after the masked heroes of Hamas “open fire, [and] have no mercy.”

Overcome with gratitude to Allah for having merited the honor to murder two Jews, the entire terror squad – oops, I mean, Resistance Battalion – drops to its knees and bows their heads reverently in prayer.

It’s a top-of-the-charts video, folks. “Islamic Block (Hamas) of Al-Quds University”

(Translation courtesy of the Palestinian Media Watch organization) and you can catch it on Facebook (Jan. 12, 2015) on the page of the Islamic Block (Hamas.)

Lyrics:

“Load your machine gun and advance, son of proud Jerusalem

Gird yourself with flames and capture the soldiers

Open fire, have no mercy, shoot the Zionists!

Advance with your men, O keffiyeh-masked one!

The land of the Night Journey [Jerusalem] is our [first] direction of prayer

Its liberation is our goal

Palestinian, lead the attack and raise our flag.”

Ed. Note: PMW has documented that the Palestinian Authority led by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the entity’s leading Fatah faction, also led by Abbas, have publicly glorified the murderers who recently slaughtered four rabbis – three U.S.-Israel dual citizens and one UK-Israel dual citizen – in a Jerusalem synagogue. Hamas is a partner with Fatah in the PA unity government. An advisor to Abbas himself posted on his own Facebook page “pictures from the scene of the heroic operation,” showing the bloodied, badly mutilated dead bodies of the Jewish martyrs. Decades-long incitement through carefully cultivated media campaigns such as these have created the monsters who are no longer able to even envision a world in which peace is a possibility, let alone a need.

This is the Tale of Two Cities: Old Rafah, and New Rafah – that is, the Egyptian half of the Gaza city that currently straddles the border with Egypt, and the one soon to be on the drawing boards of /Egyptian engineers.

North Sinai District Governor Abd al-Fattah Harour told journalists at a news briefing Wednesday that Egypt has decided to raze Rafah to the ground – at least, the part that exists on Egypt’s side of the border.

“A new Rafah city is being established with residential zones appropriate to the nature and traditions of the residents of Rafah,” Harour said, according to the Ma’an news agency.

He confirmed that engineering units have already been authorized to begin work on the project.

Egypt is currently evacuating some 2,044 families from 1,220 homes located on a stretch of land along the border with Gaza. The families are to be compensated for the loss of their homes and also will receive additional funds with which to rent new accommodations until they can find new places to live.

The evacuation is being carried out in preparation for creation of a wider buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza. Original plans a year ago called for a buffer of 500 meters; the current buffer zone is to measure at least a kilometer wide.

However, this latest development has come about because the existence of the city of Rafah still constitutes a military weak point for Egypt vis a vis Gaza and Hamas, as it does for Israel.

Rafah is also the sole international crossing which is not under Israel’s control and which remains vulnerable to seizure by international terrorists. (In Jordan, the sole crossing with Iraq was shut down last year after the Iraq side was seized by terrorists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). European monitors in Rafah who were supposed to remain at the site to “keep the peace” and maintain its neutrality abandoned their posts at the first sign of danger years ago.

On January 23, 2008 Hamas blew a hole in the security barrier built in 2003 near the Rafah crossing, destroying a significant part of the wall. The United Nations estimated that as many as 750,000 Gazans flooded through that hole into Egypt from that day forward until the breach was repaired, 11 days later. Many came to shop for food and supplies, but several thousand were also wanted terrorists; Israel Police raised the alert in the Jewish State knowing it was likely these “shoppers” were also purchasing “supplies.”

Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization was spawned by Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organization. The group has sparked endless anti-government attacks in Egypt, and developed alliances with other groups, leading to further problems.

During the recent brief reign of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s predecessor, Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist-majority parliament, Sinai became saturated with radical Islamist terrorists.

Terror groups such as the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which recently swore allegiance to ISIS, grew there exponentially. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda-linked Army of Islam Salafis also planted bases in Sinai as well.

In particular, Hamas honeycombed the area under the border in Rafah with tunnels which they used for smuggling military supplies and luxury items into Gaza – and terrorists out, in to Sinai and elsewhere.

It is this activity the Cairo government is determined to end. Egypt’s security personnel have destroyed hundreds of terrorist tunnels over the past 18 months, but they are often rebuilt when Hamas obtains new supplies.

As international aid organizations bring concrete and other building materials into the enclave to “help” the poverty stricken Palestinian Authority residents rebuild their homes, Hamas confiscates the items to reconstruct their terror tunnel network. It’s an expensive project: each tunnel costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to build.