U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s press secretary hastily called The Jewish Press Monday night to announce that Ban will visit rocket-battered communities in southern Israel as well as devastated areas of Gaza.

The phone call would not be news if it weren’t for the fact that that the visit to the Negev was not previously announced by U.N. officials nor by Ban, who made special mention to journalists in Cairo Sunday that “I am announcing today that I will visit Gaza on Tuesday to listen directly to the people of Gaza, survey the situation for myself.”

We don’t usually like blowing our horn, but when Ban’s press secretary calls us directly to ask us to publicize a previously unannounced omission, it deserves attention because it only shows how biased the United Nations really is.

We asked Ban’s press secretary Stefan Dujarric why the official U.N. press releases made such a big deal out of the misery in Gaza without any mention of Israel.

The omission was an ”unfortunate error,” he explained, adding he will “look into” how it happened.

For the record, Dujarric said of Ban’s itinerary, “He will go to Kibbutz HaShlosha near and will meet with inhabitants of the kibbutz and with families impacted by the rockets and relatives of people who lost loved ones, and he will meet with them privately.”

We give the press secretary credit for admitting there was an “unfortunate error” but also suggest that the error goes a lot deeper.

It probably was not intended. It simply is natural, part of the inherent pro-Arab, pro-Hamas and anti-Israel agenda of the international community’s hold on the United Nations.

Gaza’s branch of Fatah, Hamas’ rival terrorist party headed by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, showed off its continuing rocket-manufacturing capabilities for visiting Russian journalists, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported.

Fatah invited Russian TV (RT) last week to a rocket production facility to witness and film the actual production of new rockets. Fatah’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, depleted its reserves while taking an active part in the Gaza war alongside Hamas, firing rockets at Israeli towns and cities:

“The moment the war ended, the Palestinian military wings renewed military production in order to replenish the stock, which was emptied during the war,”  according to an Arab journalist for RT, quoted by Fatah on its Facebook page.

A Fatah video, as seen below, shows Fatah members at work producing new rockets, and a masked Fatah terrorist explained, “We are preparing and developing rockets in the productions’ division of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – Al-Asifa Army following the ceasefire agreement in preparation for the coming battles.”

The Palestinian Authority does not want another cease-fire unless it has plenty of rockets on hand to make sure that the truce is temporary. Terrorists in Gaza, like those in the Judea and Samaria who received thousands of rifles from Israel in the 1990s to keep the peace as part of the Oslo Accords, never store their weapons for a long period of time. Their idea of “defense” is to use them to attack Israel, whose existence is considered an offensive act.

The journalist added that Fatah is making rockets because the partial blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt interferes with efforts to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

Of course, Israel could put an end to all smuggling simply by removing the maritime blockade. Then, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and all of the other terrorist groups simply could bring in weapons at will in response to the “humanitarian gesture” by Israel.

Fatah’s activity in the war, in which it lost 17 times more members than those identifying with Hamas, is a sign that Fatah and Hamas have achieved unity in the area of terror, if not on the diplomatic front.

A Sept. 10 Fatah post, translated and published by PMW, quoted the RT reporter as stating. “We are visiting the Al-Aqsa Brigades – Al-Asifa Army (i.e., Fatah’s military wing)… where fuel for rockets and mortar shells is being produced.”

An Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fighter added, “We are preparing and developing rockets in the productions’ division of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – Al-Asifa Army following the ceasefire agreement in preparation for the coming battles. During the last war, we fired rockets at the Zionist enemy. We have notified the enemy that we have many more [rockets]. We have also successfully developed the K-132 rocket, which is here beside me.”

Lady Gaga received assurances from the White House before she traveled to Tel Aviv for her performance earlier this month, she told the Associated Press in an interview.

Either she never heard of the Boycott Israel movement, a virtual impossibility, or she simply showed great political savvy by ignoring the issue when asked in the interview, “Other singers have backed out of performing in Tel Aviv. How did you make the decision to perform there this week?”

Lady Gaga didn’t miss a beat and responded as if the interviewer asked if it was safe to be in Israel only a few days after an uncertain end to the war in Gaza.

“I was very confident based on my relationships with lots of internal, political people,” she answered.” We’re very lucky to have great relationships with the White House. They let us know it would be very safe while we were there.”

Lady Gaga and President Obama have a solid political relationship based on a politician’s best friend – money.

They met at a fundraiser in 2011 where approximately 70 guests paid the privilege to attend to the tune of $38,500 per couple.

She was her usual gutsy self, having tweeted before the event that she intended to raise the issue of bullying when she would meet the president.

“I am meeting with our President. I will not stop fighting. This must end. Our generation has the power to end it. Trend it #MakeALawForJamey,” the singer tweeted.

Obama reportedly spoke to her of his administration’s work against the practice of bullying, and he later commented that his meeting with her was a little intimidating.”

If that is the case, Israel can learn from Lady Gaga how to deal with Obama and with has become his legendary pressure on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to toe his line.

After having performed at Obama’s second inaugural in 2012, she has an inside track to the White House.

With a war going in Gaza and missiles exploding over the skies of Tel Aviv, Lady Gaga had reservations about her life and turned to the White House for assurances, that presumably precluded any pressure by the White House on Netanyahu to stop funding for the Iron Dome anti-missile system for Israel is he did not soften up on a cease-fire.

Now we know that Lady Gaga should be Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

Np one could have spoken for Israel as well as she did after her performance. She told the Associated Press that she hoped “to share…with the world…that they know it is safe to be in Tel Aviv right now…I felt a beautiful energy when I was there.”

Next time there is a war, which is more likely to happen if and when there is a formal cease-fire with Hamas, Israel should pay Lady Gag to return for a performance in Sderot. Obama will make sure the Negev is safe, at least for a couple of hours while Lady Gaga performs.

Below are Lady Gaga’s performance at his inaugural and a spoof YouTube of a supposed rendition by Obama of her “Do What U Want.”

Residents of Gaza Belt communities in southern Israel once again raced in a mad dash for their bomb shelters when a Code Red rocket alert siren activated Monday at midday.

The siren sounded in Netiv Ha’Asara, Yad Mordechai and along the Mediterranean coast in the city of Ashkelon.

It was initially believed to be a false alarm, then later reported as a rocket fired at Israel that had fallen short, landing within Gaza territory.

Ultimately, it now appears that it really was a false alarm — but at the end of the day, it’s not clear because numerous jets were heard to scramble overhead, flying south.

Also in Karnei Shomron, Home Front Command apparently scheduled a test Monday morning for the Code Red incoming rocket alert system, but didn’t bother to inform residents about the drill. Talk about really bad timing.

In the north, the IDF has cleared for publication that early Monday morning a “stray rocket” landed in Israeli territory after being fired from the Quneitra border crossing in Syria.

The rocket exploded in an open area. No one was physically injured in the incident. According to the report, fighting on the Syrian side of the border has been “particularly intense” throughout the day.

8:56pm Residents in Israel’s north, near Metulla and Kiryat Shmoneh heard 2 sets of rocket sirens this evening, sending some residents scrambling to the bomb shelters.

TV Channel 2 did not show the alert, but Channel 10 did show it on the screen.

The IDF reports that the sirens were false alarms, and local residents do not report hearing any explosions.

It appears that last December’s unprecedented snowstorm produced August babies.

Hospitals throughout Israel noticed a baby boom last month, nine months after a month of a wicked early winter storm that flooded parts of the country and left a blanket of snow in much of the north and center of the country, bringing many areas to a standstill.

Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot reported 700 births took place this August compared with 500 births last year.

The Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where women gave birth in a delivery room reinforced against rockets, saw 1,484 births compared with 1,300 the previous year. Most of the new-born babies, as usual, were Bedouin.

“There were a few days in December that we couldn’t leave the house because of the storm, so it was a great opportunity to work on making a baby,” new mother Oxana Belayev told Ynet

What will summer rocket fire bring? Check back with us in nine months.

Hamas’ supreme leader Khaled Mashaal dashed any hopes of long-term peace with Israel in a speech in Qatar on Thursday in which he shot from the hip at Israel and also at his terrorist organization’s new partner, the rival Fatah movement headed by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

His lengthy speech in Qatar, which has financed Hamas terror and which fought Egyptian cease-fire proposals, followed by one day a “victory” speech by Ismail Haniyeh, the senior Hamas political leader in Gaza. Mashaal’s silence while Haniyeh accepted the cease-fire is a clear sign of a fierce power struggle between Hamas in Gaza and between Mashaal and Qatar, which holds the purse strings.

Mashaal also claimed victory, with lies that Hamas missiles hit the Ben Gurion Airport, which is not true, and that more than 5 million Israelis hid in bomb shelters, a gross exaggeration. However, there is no doubt that Hamas succeeded in scaring the daylight out of millions of Israelis, interrupting a few flights and generally turning half of Israel into sitting ducks.

And this won’t be the last time, regardless of a cease-fire, he warned.

“Whatever happened [in Gaza] is not the end to this story, and this is not the last operation to free Palestine. It was an important stop on the way to victory,” Mashaal declared.

His speech threw every obstacle possible on the road to negotiations with Israel. The talks are supposed to begin in a month, leaving open the possibility, or probability, that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is carrying on secret negotiations that will be formalized in 30 days.

The Prime Minister suffered another blow to any trust that Israelis may have for him with a report on Thursday that he met secretly with Jordanian King Abdullah, and perhaps Abbas, prior to the cease-fire, circumstantial evidence that Israel negotiated under fire, contrary to Netanyahu’s promise.

If Mashaal gets his way, there won’t be any talks because one of the new powers in Gaza is slated to be Abbas, whose security forces would patrol Gaza borders, according to the Egyptian proposal. That would provide Cairo with another tactic to get rid of Hamas.

Mashaal nailed Abbas to the wall in his speech, accusing him of throwing cold water on the resumption of the intifada during the war by allowing his security forces to limit protests.

“The next operation needs to use all of the Palestinian capabilities, not just part of them,” Mashaal said. “The resistance is holy and weapons are holy. There is no such thing as a country without weapons.”

A country or not, Gaza still has at least 2,000 rockets as well as anti-tank rockets and presumably anti-aircraft missiles. It still has rocket factories, one of which was filmed in production by Hamas during one of the failed cease-fires during the war.

Netanyahu had demanded that any halt in violence would be accompanied by disarming Hamas, but this week’s cease-fire only left the issue to be put on the negotiating table, along with Hamas’s demands for a deep-sea port and an airport.

Mashaal’s speech was full of hate and crude accusations that Israel inflicted a “Holocaust” on Gaza by “destroying schools and hospitals,” which all but the most extreme anti-Israel media now know were used by Hamas as rocket launching and terrorist command centers.

“We are against what Hitler did to the Jews, and Israel committed a second Holocaust in Gaza. Israel is an embarrassment to Jews and to the entire world,” according to Mashaal.

His rhetoric was aimed at Abbas as well as Israel. If and when negotiations begin, Egypt and the United States will be on the side of Abbas, who despite his unity government with Hamas has proved politically smart by a patient and single-minded tactic of using international support to slowly but surely win concession after concession from Israel until there is nothing left to negotiate.