The Kirya, the IDF’s military headquarters, and Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv suffered a major fire in the dining hall of the base, on Wednesday morning.

Thick black smoke from the fire can be seen for miles.

Large firefighting forces are operating at the base. There are no reports of injuries.

After many years in which the IDF was publicly criticized for maintaining its headquarters, including highly visible communication devices, in the heart of the most densely populated city in Israel–exposing thousands of civilians to a possible attack, the IDF is now in the process of moving its main high command operations to the more sparsely populated Negev in the south.

The IDF certainly is the most exceptional army in the world, but sometimes it really goes overboard.

The army has distributed a video, seen below, that explains how soldiers handle demonstrations every Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, when apparently it is a big mitzvah to throw rocks at the heads of Israeli soldiers.

Rock throwing is common in Judea and Samaria, and along with Molotov cocktails and booby-trapped tire throwing, is a terror act that comes under the definition of “popular terror,” military spokesmen explain.

The attacks are too undramatic for the media establishment to report them, let alone describe them as terror – unless they kill someone. That happens once in a while.

The rock-throwers are not just trying to break a window. They want to cause the driver to lose control and crash, hopefully – in their eyes – a fatal crash.

That is what happened in September 2011 when a rock smashed into the car of Asher Palmer, hitting him and causing him to spin out of control and into a guardrail near Kiryat Arba. He and his two-year-old son were killed.

Last March, Adva Biton was driving with her three daughters on her way home near Ariel in Samaria when an Arab youth – a minor – threw rocks at the truck in front of her car. The truck stopped suddenly and Adva did not have time to react. She collided directly with the truck. Adva’s five- and four-year-old daughters were slightly injured, but her three-year-old remains in the hospital until today, and requires the constant presence of Adva or her husband.

Besides the more than 2,400 rock-throwing attacks last year, there are the protests every Friday, gleefully filmed by leftists who edit out that rock-throwing and only show those mean IDF soldiers firing tear gas to disperse the mob instead of turning the other cheek, where a rock more than once has broken a few jaws.

Of course, the soldiers simply could leave and go home and allow the Arabs to find other targets, like the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Judea and Samaria. As long as the government doesn’t decide to expel any more Jews, the IDF is staying put.

They are very nice about it. They do not want to incite Arabs, but their polite behavior is most certainly seen by protesters as a sign of weakness and the ultimate incitement.

As Captain Naveh Pepper explained, “Our mission is not to educate or to stir up tensions, but to protect the civilians who are present. If we were to act violently, it would only make the situation even tenser, which is the opposite of what we want.”

“Good morning, the people of Kadum,” says the officer. “We ask you today not to choose violence.”

While the “people of Kadum” burn  tires and arm themselves rock rocks and boulders, the office continues, “It is ok to demonstrate,, but it is not ok to use violence.”

Sure. Arab protesters definitely would take that to heart and conduct themselves in a civil manner, looking to Martin Luther King as a role model, but for some strange reason, they don’t.

“We ask you to stop throwing stones,” pleads the officer.

After a barrage  of rock-throwing, IDF vehicles enter the village, and the officer resumes his role of a diplomat that would put John Kerry to shame. “We came in because you threw stones,” he explains. You injured one of our officers.”

The IDF then shot rubber bullets, and the rioters threw more rocks.

“We ask you to stop,” the officer pleaded again.

Only in Israel.

Approximately half a million Haredim are expected to turn out for a massive “million-man” rally in Jerusalem early Sunday afternoon to protest the pending legislation to jail Haredim who refuse to report for duty in the IDF.

Highway 1, the major highway from Tel Aviv to the capital, will be closed at the entrance to the city from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m., as well as Yafo (Jaffa) Road and other main arteries.

The Jerusalem branch of the Histadrut national labor union has issued a call to employers to release all workers from work by 12:30 p.m., with a full day’s pay, so they can head for home before mammoth traffic congestion. At least 1,700 buses are expected to bring Haredim to Jerusalem form all parts of the country for the protest, according to Daniel Bonfiel, director of the Jerusalem branch of the Histadrut.

That works out to more than 120,000 Haredi protesters, not including those from Jerusalem. However, Bonfiel predicted that 600,000 Haredim will attend the demonstration

The number of people who are defined as “Haredi” in the entire country varies from a bit less than half a million to 900,000.

The weather forecast favors the Haredim, with temperatures expected to be higher than usual for this time and no rain in sight.

Given this winter’s drought, one of the worst in recent memory, the Haredi community is wasting a wonderful opportunity to use their physical and spiritual powers to pray for rain.

But why waste prayers for rain that would help Zionist farmers, and anyway, who needs the water from the Kinneret since it may not be Kosher for Passovers, so who cares? The Haredi demonstrators will most probably leave the chore for praying for rain to the less Orthodox Jews and carry on with their protest.

Sunday’s black-hat rally is only the first shot in the Haredi war – and that is the correct word – against the Knesset in general and specifically Yair Lapid, chairman of the Yesh {arty who paraded through the last general elections on a platform that included getting rid of the rite of exempting Haredi youth from serving in the IDF so they can stay in yeshiva. That includes a large number who are listed as yeshiva students but spend most of their day at home, working for money “under the table” so they don’t have to pay taxes, or catching up on the latest Internet YouTube videos.

A vast number really do learn in yeshivas, supporting their rabbis’ claims that their devoting time to learning Torah is Israel’s real defense.

Let’s leave that issue aside for the reader and God to decide.

Lapid has either climbed up a very safe political leader or has crawled out on the longest limb on the highest tree he could find. There is not way he can retreat, and the Haredi rabbis refuse to compromise. For them, the IDF is treif. There is no middle ground.

Lapid has the support of a large majority of Israelis, who for years have suffered from the Haredi stranglehold on almost every government coalition, the budget and even the future of Jews in Judea and Samaria.

For decades, money for yeshiva has been their platform, which explains why the Sephardi Haredi party backed the Oslo Accords lest the government coalition fall.

Two year ago, Lapid’s success and that of the Jewish Home changed everything. The only way that the Haredi parties will be needed in a government is if the coalition breaks up over U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace talk follies, and that is unlikely, much to the dismay of Kerry and his boss.

That leaves the Haredim and Lapid to fight it out.

Israeli soldiers killed a wanted terrorist near Ramallah early Thursday, the same day Amnesty International, reported here,  grilled “trigger-happy” Israel for supposed “war crimes”  by allegedly using “excessive force” in killing 45 Palestinian Authority Arabs last year.

Dear Amnesty: Don’t forget February 27, 2014, in Berzeit, near Ramallah.

The suspect was called a “man” by the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency which reported he was “found dead” in a house after a stand-off with Israeli soldiers who allegedly killed him with an artillery shell. Israeli media said he died when a wall collapsed on him as an IDF bulldozer destroyed part of the house to flush out the suspect.

He was identified as Muatazz Washaha, 24, and the IDF said he was wanted for suspected terrorist activity.

Amnesty, please take note how the trigger-happy soldiers committed another “war crime.” Even Ma’an admitted that there was a “stand-off” in the house. The soldiers called for him to surrender, but instead he barricaded himself inside the building.

Soldiers had arrested two others suspects and waited and waited for Washaha to come out of the house, during which time approximately 150 of his peaceful neighbors rioted and threw rocks and whatever else they could get their hands on to throw at soldiers.

Washaha was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been responsible or some of the most monstrous terrorist attacks on Israelis.

The International Criminal Court defines war crimes as including “serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict and in conflicts ‘not of an international character’ listed in the Rome Statute, when they are committed as part of a plan or policy or on a large scale. These prohibited acts include: murder; mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; taking of hostages; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population; intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historical monuments or hospitals; and conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities.”

Armed with that definition, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for several thousand war crimes; so, please, Amnesty International, who did you say commits war crimes?

The IDF put soldiers along the Lebanese border on high alert Wednesday following the acknowledged bombing of Hezbollah terrorists and a weapons convoy near the Syrian-Lebanese border earlier this week.

Farmers have been told to stay away from their land that in some cases is adjacent to the border.

Hezbollah admitted on Wednesday that the Israeli Air Force successfully staged the bombing raid, it insisted there were no casualties, but other reports from Lebanon said that a major Hezbollah army officer and up to three others were killed.

The Beirut Daily Star reported that the aerial strike hit two trucks smuggling a missile and a missile launcher to a Hezbollah facility in Lebanon.

The IDF preceded an upcoming anti-Israel Amnesty report Wednesday night and charged that “Amnesty International wholly ignores the substantial increase in Palestinian violence initiated over the past year, and shows a complete lack of understanding as to operational challenges the IDF is posed with.”

Amnesty routinely picks part the IDF for alleged violations, such as shooting at terrorists and warning suspects to stop or be shot.

Military spokesmen noted that in 2013, there were more than 5,000 reported rock-throwing attacks, a sharp increase from the year before. More than 130 Israelis were injured, some of them seriously. One baby girl still is hospitalized and remains unconscious as a result of a rock-throwing incident in Samaria.

There also were 66 other terrorist attacks in 2013, including shootings, the planting of explosive devices, blunt weapon attacks and the abduction and murder of a soldier.

A rabbi-lawyer warned  on radio that an “important’ Torah scholar told him that Yair Lapid is in line to be the first politician to be assassinated since the murder of Yitzchak Rabin 18 years ago.

The host of the radio show in the national religious Galei Israel radio station immediately half-joked that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) was on the way to arrest the guest, Dan Halberthal.

The program, by coincidence or not, is called “Don’t Gag the Mouth.” Since the assassination of Rabin, police from time to time have arrested people for suggesting that someone should be shot, although officials have conveniently ignored outright incitement from Arab and even one or two Jewish Knesset Members.

Halberthal defended his statement and said he feels an obligation to make a public warning as a matter of prevention. For the record, The Jewish Press, like Halberthal, is reporting what was said. Nothing more and nothing less.

The background to the rage in the Haredi community is the work of the “Shaked Committee” that has drawn up legislation for a universal draft that would put draft dodgers in jail if they don’t report for military duty.

The sounds of voices of extremism and for violence are becoming more commonly heard in the Haredi community, according to Halberthal.

“A guest of mine on Shabbat, who is an important figure in the world of yeshivas, told me – and I think there is a lot of truth to it – that “there is going to be a new Rabin assassination. Lapid is going to be killed by a Haredi.”

Shrugging off warnings about the Shin Bet, Halberthal, who also lectures on Jewish judicial law, continued, “When someone tells me something that I think is true, I listen.”

In a subsequent interview with Channel 2, Halberthal said, “Since the murder of Rabin, there has not been such a situation… as with Lapid. He is a marked man in the Haredi community.

“It is not exceptional to hear comparisons between Lapid, Amalek, Haman and Auschwitz when his name is mentioned. On Purim, there definitely will be costumes of Lapid as the modern Haman.

Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that some crazy nut will get up one day and decide to carry out the act [of assassination].” The Haredi street is entirely emotional now, and I feel I must issue a warning.”

Israeli Air Force war planes launched two bombing raids on Hezbollah posts in near the Syrian border eastern Lebanon Monday, the Beirut Daily Star reported.

Quoting “security sources,” the newspaper said that four missiles were dropped in a mountainous area where Hezbollah recruits and trains its soldiers and near a known route for smuggling arms from Syria into Lebanon.