Gaza – Page 2 – praag.org

British minister resigns over Gaza

A Foreign Office minister has resigned from the Conservative government in Britain, saying its policy on the crisis in Gaza is “morally indefensible”.

Baroness Warsi wrote on her Twitter feed that she was leaving with “deep regret”.

Lady Warsi, who was previously chairman of the Conservative Party, became the first female Muslim cabinet minister when David Cameron took office in 2010.

The prime minister thanked her for her “excellent work”, adding that he wanted an “unconditional ceasefire” in Gaza.

Labour backed Lady Warsi’s comments, but Chancellor George Osborne called her resignation “disappointing and frankly unnecessary”.

Lady Warsi grew up in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and worked as a solicitor before entering politics. She was demoted from the cabinet to a middle-ranking Foreign Office post in 2012, being made minister for faith and communities at the same time.

She wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: “With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister & tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza.”

Several backbench Conservative MPs have called on Mr Cameron to take a more robust line with Israel amid concerns its actions in Gaza are “disproportionate”.

Source: BBC

Israel declares ceasefire over and kills 50 Palestinians

Israel declared a Gaza ceasefire over on Friday and killed more than 50 Palestinians in renewed shelling, saying militants had breached the truce shortly after it began and apparently captured an Israeli soldier.

The 72-hour break announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was the most ambitious attempt so far to end more than three weeks of fighting, and followed mounting international alarm over a rising Palestinian civilian death toll.

The ceasefire, which began at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT), had prompted Palestinian families to trek back to battle-devastated neighbourhoods where rows of homes have been reduced to rubble. It was to be followed by Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Cairo on a longer-term solution.

The Israeli military said that 90 minutes into the truce, militants attacked soldiers searching for tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip.

Asked if the ceasefire was over, Lerner replied: “Yes. We are continuing our activities on the ground.” He said Israeli forces were mounting an “extensive effort” to locate the soldier.

The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 50 people were killed and 220 wounded by Israeli shelling after the incident near the southern town of Rafah.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a special meeting of his security cabinet for later on Friday. A statement from his office said the Israeli leader spoke by telephone with Kerry and told him “the Palestinians had blatantly breached the humanitarian ceasefire and attacked our soldiers”.

Source: Reuters

Antwerp doctor refuses treatment to Jewish patient

A Belgian physician who refused to treat a Jewish woman with a fractured rib suggested she visit Gaza to get rid of the pain.

The physician made the remark on Wednesday while manning a medical hotline in Flanders, Belgium’s Flemish region, whose capital, Antwerp, has a sizeable Orthodox Jewish population, the local Jewish monthly Joods Actueel reported Thursday.

The woman, Bertha Klein, had her son, who is American, call the hotline at 11 p.m.

“I’m not coming,” the doctor reportedly told the son and hung up. When the son called again, the doctor said: “Send her to Gaza for a few hours, then she’ll get rid of the pain.” According to Joods Actueel, the doctor confirmed the exchange, saying he had an “emotional reaction.”

Health ministry officials were looking into the incident, according to the monthly’s online edition. According to Joods Actueel, the doctor knew the patient was Jewish because of Klein’s son’s American accent.

The family called a friend, Samuel Markowitz, who is an alderman of the Antwerp district council and a volunteer paramedic. He called the doctor to confirm the exchange, and also recorded their conversation.

Hershy Taffel, Bertha Klein’s grandson, filed a complaint with police for discrimination.

“It reminds me of what happened in Europe 70 years ago,” Taffel told Joods Actueel. “I never thought those days would once again be repeated.”

Joods Actueel editor-in-chief Michael Freilich said the incident is particularly alarming because it comes amid a string of recent incidents which involved boycotts against Jews in Belgium since the start of Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza on July 8.

Since then, an Orthodox Jewish woman was refused service at a clothes store in Antwerp, and police removed a sign in French and Turkish from a café near Liege which said dogs were allowed but Zionists and Jews were not.

Source: Jerusalem Post

US restocks Israel with ammunition hours after condemning UN school attack

The United States confirmed it had restocked Israel’s supplies of ammunition, hours after issuing a strong condemnation of an attack on a United Nations school in Gaza, AFP reported.

The Israeli military requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, the Pentagon said. The US Defense Department approved the sale just three days later.

“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.

“This defense sale is consistent with those objectives.”

Two of the requested munitions came from a little-known stockpile of ammunition stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use by the Jewish state. The War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel is estimated to be worth $1 billion.

The decision to provide ammunition to Israel could fuel controversy, coming just as Washington expresses growing concern about the deaths of more than 1,300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, since the Israeli operation began on July 8.

Israel shells Gaza’s only power plant

Over a million people in Gaza could be without electricity after Israeli tank shells hit the fuel depot of the enclave’s only power station, causing it to shut down. Its director, Mohammed al-Sharif, said, “The power plant is finished.”

A thick column of black smoke rose from the facility, which supplies the territory with two-thirds of its energy needs, and the fuel containers were in flames. Al-Sharif added that the local fire brigade was not equipped to extinguish the blaze.

The deputy director of the energy authority in the Palestinian territory, Fathi al-Sheikh Khalil, told AFP: “Gaza’s sole power plant has stopped working due to Israeli shelling last night, which damaged the steam generator and later hit the fuel tanks which set them on fire.”

Gaza’s power plant was forced to shut down after two tank shells hit one of three fuel tanks, said Jamal Dardasawi, a spokesman for Gaza’s electricity distribution company. The shelling sparked a large fire and a huge column of smoke was seen rising from the site. Dardasawi said 15 workers were trapped inside by the fire and that the damage would take months to repair. There was no immediate word on casualties, AP reported.

Source: RT

Gaza protest in Paris draws thousands despite ban

Several thousand gathered in Place de la République in Paris, France to protest the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, defying a state ban on the demonstration.

Protesters chanted “Israel is an assassin, Holland is an accomplice” and “we are all Palestinians,” and some were seen gesturing the quenelle, a reverse Nazi-salute, AFP reported.

Palestinian supporters decided to defy the ban and hold the protest as planned.

Earlier, France’s interior minister called on the protest’s organizers to observe the order, fearing anti-Semitic violence.

Bernard Cazeneuve made his public appeal shortly before Saturday’s demonstration in Paris was to start. Hours earlier, the Council of State, France’s top administrative body, ruled the protest ban was legal.

A court had ruled likewise, but organizers said they still planned to hold the protest.

France has Western Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim populations.

Source: Haaretz

Security Council calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza

The UN Security Council on Monday appealed for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza at a late-night emergency meeting called as fighting between Israel and Hamas entered its third week.

The 15-member Council released a statement calling for the truce to allow aid deliveries during the Muslim Eid festival marking the end of Ramadan, and as the death toll rose to more than 1,030 Palestinians.

The Council expressed “strong support” for an “immediate and unconditional humanitarian ceasefire,” allowing for urgent deliveries of aid, and urged all sides to “accept and fully implement” the truce.

The statement was put forward by Jordan with the backing of Arab countries.

In its statement, the Council voiced “grave concern regarding the deterioration in the situation as a result of the crisis related to Gaza and the loss of civilian lives and casualties.”

The Council said “civilian and humanitarian facilities, including those of the UN, must be respected and protected” following outrage over the Israeli attack on a UN-run school in Gaza this week that left 15 dead.

Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor suggested the stance taken by the Council was biased.

“Miraculously it doesn’t mention Hamas. It doesn’t mention the firing of rockets. Those things are lacking in this statement, he said.

“You don’t have to have the IQ of a rocket scientist to understand that if rockets are falling on you, you are allowed to defend yourself.”

Source: AFP

Israel follows American expert’s public-relations rules

Israeli spokesmen have their work cut out explaining how they have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, compared with just three civilians killed in Israel by Hamas rocket and mortar fire. But on television and radio and in newspapers, Israeli government spokesmen such as Mark Regev appear slicker and less aggressive than their predecessors, who were often visibly indifferent to how many Palestinians were killed.

There is a reason for this enhancement of the PR skills of Israeli spokesmen. Going by what they say, the playbook they are using is a professional, well-researched and confidential study on how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe. Written by the expert Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz, the study was commissioned five years ago by a group called The Israel Project, with offices in the US and Israel, for use by those “who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel”.

Every one of the 112 pages in the booklet is marked “not for distribution or publication” and it is easy to see why. The Luntz report, officially entitled “The Israel project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, was leaked almost immediately to Newsweek Online, but its true importance has seldom been appreciated. It should be required reading for everybody, especially journalists, interested in any aspect of Israeli policy because of its “dos and don’ts” for Israeli spokesmen.

These are highly illuminating about the gap between what Israeli officials and politicians really believe, and what they say, the latter shaped in minute detail by polling to determine what Americans want to hear. Certainly, no journalist interviewing an Israeli spokesman should do so without reading this preview of many of the themes and phrases employed by Mr Regev and his colleagues.

The booklet is full of meaty advice about how they should shape their answers for different audiences. For example, the study says that “Americans agree that Israel ‘has a right to defensible borders’. But it does you no good to define exactly what those borders should be. Avoid talking about borders in terms of pre- or post-1967, because it only serves to remind Americans of Israel’s military history. Particularly on the left this does you harm. For instance, support for Israel’s right to defensible borders drops from a heady 89 per cent to under 60 per cent when you talk about it in terms of 1967.”

How about the right of return for Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled in 1948 and in the following years, and who are not allowed to go back to their homes? Here Dr Luntz has subtle advice for spokesmen, saying that “the right of return is a tough issue for Israelis to communicate effectively because much of Israeli language sounds like the ‘separate but equal’ words of the 1950s segregationists and the 1980s advocates of Apartheid. The fact is, Americans don’t like, don’t believe and don’t accept the concept of ‘separate but equal’.”

So how should spokesmen deal with what the booklet admits is a tough question? They should call it a “demand”, on the grounds that Americans don’t like people who make demands. “Then say ‘Palestinians aren’t content with their own state. Now they’re demanding territory inside Israel’.” Other suggestions for an effective Israeli response include saying that the right of return might become part of a final settlement “at some point in the future”.

Dr Luntz notes that Americans as a whole are fearful of mass immigration into the US, so mention of “mass Palestinian immigration” into Israel will not go down well with them. If nothing else works, say that the return of Palestinians would “derail the effort to achieve peace”.

The Luntz report was written in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and January 2009, when 1,387 Palestinians and nine Israelis were killed.

There is a whole chapter on “isolating Iran-backed Hamas as an obstacle to peace”. Unfortunately, come the current Operation Protective Edge, which began on 6 July, there was a problem for Israeli propagandists because Hamas had quarrelled with Iran over the war in Syria and had no contact with Tehran. Friendly relations have been resumed only in the past few days – thanks to the Israeli invasion.

Much of Dr Luntz’s advice is about the tone and presentation of the Israeli case. He says it is absolutely crucial to exude empathy for Palestinians: “Persuadables [sic] won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Show Empathy for BOTH sides!” This may explain why a number of Israeli spokesman are almost lachrymose about the plight of Palestinians being pounded by Israeli bombs and shells.

In a sentence in bold type, underlined and with capitalisation, Dr Luntz says that Israeli spokesmen or political leaders must never, ever justify “the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children” and they must aggressively challenge those who accuse Israel of such a crime. Israeli spokesmen struggled to be true to this prescription when 16 Palestinians were killed in a UN shelter in Gaza last Thursday.

There is a list of words and phrases to be used and a list of those to be avoided. Schmaltz is at a premium: “The best way, the only way, to achieve lasting peace is to achieve mutual respect.” Above all, Israel’s desire for peace with the Palestinians should be emphasised at all times because this what Americans overwhelmingly want to happen. But any pressure on Israel to actually make peace can be reduced by saying “one step at a time, one day at a time”, which will be accepted as “a commonsense approach to the land-for-peace equation”.

Dr Luntz cites as an example of an “effective Israeli sound bite” one which reads: “I particularly want to reach out to Palestinian mothers who have lost their children. No parent should have to bury their child.”

The study admits that the Israeli government does not really want a two-state solution, but says this should be masked because 78 per cent of Americans do. Hopes for the economic betterment of Palestinians should be emphasised.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quoted with approval for saying that it is “time for someone to ask Hamas: what exactly are YOU doing to bring prosperity to your people”. The hypocrisy of this beggars belief: it is the seven-year-old Israeli economic siege that has reduced the Gaza to poverty and misery.

On every occasion, the presentation of events by Israeli spokesmen is geared to giving Americans and Europeans the impression that Israel wants peace with the Palestinians and is prepared to compromise to achieve this, when all the evidence is that it does not. Though it was not intended as such, few more revealing studies have been written about modern Israel in times of war and peace. – UK Independent

Ban Ki-Moon condemns Israeli attack on UN school in Gaza

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israeli attack on one of the UN-run schools in Beit Hanoun, serving as a shelter to Palestinian refugees.

“I am appalled by the news of an attack on an UNRWA school in Northern Gaza where hundreds of people had taken refuge,” Ban Ki-moon said Thursday.

Speaking from Erbil, Ban stated that “many have been killed – including women and children, as well as UN staff. Circumstances are still unclear. I strongly condemn this act.”

UN Secretary General noted that “more than 100,000 Gazans – that’s five percent of the total population – have sought refuge in UNRWA facilities. I once again stress to all sides that they must abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law to respect the sanctity of civilian life, the inviolability of UN premises and to honor their obligations to humanitarian workers.”

The deaths increased to 788 killed in total in Gaza and more than 5 000 wounded. The numbers do not include more than a dozen Palestins killed in southern Israel since the conflict began on 8 July.

Israel using flechette shells in Gaza

The Israeli military is using flechette shells, which spray out thousands of tiny and potentially lethal metal darts, in its military operation in Gaza.

Six flechette shells were fired towards the village of Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis, on 17 July, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Nahla Khalil Najjar, 37, suffered injuries to her chest, it said. PCHR provided a picture of flechettes taken by a fieldworker last week.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) did not deny using the shells in the conflict. “As a rule, the IDF only employs weapons that have been determined lawful under international law, and in a manner which fully conforms with the laws of armed conflict,” a spokesperson said in response to a request for specific comment on the deployment of flechettes.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, describes a flechette shell as “an anti-personnel weapon that is generally fired from a tank. The shell explodes in the air and releases thousands of metal darts 37.5mm in length, which disperse in a conical arch 300 metres long and about 90 metres wide”.

The munitions are not prohibited under international humanitarian law, but according to B’Tselem, “other rules of humanitarian law render their use in the Gaza Strip illegal. One of the most fundamental principles is the obligation to distinguish between those who are involved and those who are not involved in the fighting, and to avoid to the extent possible injury to those who are not involved. Deriving from this principle is the prohibition of the use of an imprecise weapon which is likely to result in civilian injuries.”

The legality of flechette munitions was upheld by the Israeli supreme court in 2002, and according to an Israeli military source, they are particularly effective against enemy fighters operating in areas covered by vegetation.

The source said a number of armies around the world deploy flechette shells, and that they were intended solely for use against legitimate military targets in accordance with international law.

The IDF has deployed flechette shells in Gaza and Lebanon before. B’Tselem has documented the deaths of nine Palestinians in Gaza from flechettes in 2001 and 2002. Flechettes have also killed and wounded dozens of civilians, including women and children, in conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Source: The Guardian

Hundreds of Japanese hold silent protest on Gaza

Hundreds staged a silent protest in Tokyo against the bloodshed in Gaza on Monday, the biggest such gathering in the Japanese capital since the violence began early this month, organizers said.

As night fell demonstrators holding candles formed huge letters spelling “Gaza” in a city park, and offered a one-minute prayer for victims of the violence in the Palestinian territory.

Some waved Palestinian flags while others carried signs reading: “Stop the killing in Gaza. Japan cares.”

“We want people in Gaza to know that they are not isolated from the world,” said Sonoko Kawakami, one of the organizers.

“Gaza is far from Japan, but we are going to continue to do whatever we can do here.”

Leading members of the Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and Jewish faiths delivered brief messages calling for an end to the violence.

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza has now topped 500, the overwhelming majority of them civilians. Israel said 18 of its soldiers had been killed, its heaviest losses in eight years, along with two civilians.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been held in recent weeks in cities across Europe, along with smaller protests in Asia.

In France they have spiraled into violent clashes with riot police, leading to dozens of arrests.

Nobel Peace Prize winners call for arms embargo on Israel

Seven Nobel Peace Prize winners were amongst the 64 public figures calling for an international arms embargo on Israel for its “war crimes and possible crimes against humanity” in Gaza. The statement came in a letter published in Britain’s The Guardian on Friday.

“Israel has once again unleashed the full force of its military against the captive Palestinian population, particularly in the besieged Gaza Strip, in an inhumane and illegal act of military aggression. Israel’s ability to launch such devastating attacks with impunity largely stems from the vast international military cooperation and trade that it maintains with complicit governments across the world,” read the statement.

“We call on the UN and governments across the world to take immediate steps to implement a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid,” the letter concluded.

Among the signators were Nobel peace laureates Desmond Tutu, Betty Williams, Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Jody Williams, Adolfo Peres Esquivel, Mairead Maguire and Rigoberto Menchu.

Also signing were academics Noam Chomsky and Rashid Khalidi, filmmakers Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, musicians Roger Waters and Brian Eno, writers Alice Walker and Caryl Churchill, and journalists John Pilger and Chris Hedges. Two Israelis, academics Ilan Pappe and Nurit Peled, signed the letter as well.

Gaza: France experiencing ‘torrent of internet hate’

Given the many threats of violence and murder they have to deal with, moderators struggle to cope psychologically.

The deadly Israeli offensive in Gaza has unleashed a torrent of hate on media websites and social networks in France that moderators find increasingly difficult to contain.

The bombardment by land, sea and air that has killed at least 425 Palestinians has enflamed tensions far afield from the Middle East, especially in France with its large Muslim and Jewish communities.

Paris protests in support of Gaza residents have degenerated into violence on several occasions.

“As soon as you talk about Israel, it crystallises all passions, with up to 20 000 or 30 000 comments sometimes after an article, of which we will only let five to 10 percent through,” said David Corchia, head of Concileo, a firm of moderators that counts the dailies Le Figaro and Liberation as clients.

Helped by software that automatically reports suspect keywords, online moderators can filter comments in accordance with special legal requirements in France as well as client requests. Those laws ban racist, anti-Semitic or discriminatory messages among others, as well calls for violence.

The moderators have little time to decide whether to let a remark through, and generally block 25 to 40 percent of comments.

But on the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rejection rate can reach 95 percent.

“There are three times as many comments than normal, all linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Jeremie Mani, head of Netino, which looks after the websites of the Le Monde daily, Europe 1 radio and major French television channels.

Netino’s 250 moderators, most of them based in Madagascar, deal with tens of millions of comments every month.

“We see racist or anti-Semitic messages, very violent, that also take aim at politicians and the media, sometimes by giving journalists’ contact details,” Mani said.

“This sickening content is peculiar to this conflict. The war in Syria does not trigger these kinds of comments.

“On the pro-Palestinian side, identical messages are posted on dozens of sites. On the pro-Israeli side, there are fewer messages but they are better organised,” he said.

The vitriolic messages about the conflict come up not only after content about the conflict itself — but can be found under any subject.

“On an article about the Tour de France, after four comments it’s about Gaza,” said Mani.

“On one story about salmon fishing, I saw a comment saying: ‘Stop talking about this, the problem is there are too many Jews’.

“Without any moderation, these hate messages would invade everything, particularly as they quickly breed followers.”

Media sites are not the only platforms that fall victim to violent messages. Public spaces on social networks such as the Facebook pages of famous people are targeted, and those comments are first published before they can be removed.

And while the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict may generate a large amount of vitriol, other issues with a racial or ethnic element do too.

Corchia said that when a teacher was stabbed to death by a student’s mother in front of her young pupils earlier this month, racist messages began pouring in as soon as the foreign-sounding name of the assailant was revealed.

And when a former local election candidate for the Front National was given a nine-month jail sentence this week for comparing France’s black justice minister, Christiane Taubira, to a monkey, Corchia said that on one story, moderators were only able to publish 500 comments out of 10,000.

“We watch for word associations. For example, any allusion to World War II is eliminated,” he said.

Pierre Duhau-Laurent, marketing director for Atchik Services, which moderates the websites of the French presidency and the Le Parisien daily, said “organised propaganda” was currently sweeping social networks at night.

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has bought sponsored tweets for his messages. And Hamas’s response is just as organised,” he said.

Given the many threats of violence and murder they have to deal with, moderators struggle to cope psychologically.

Palestinian civilians props in a public relations war

Israeli commanders are trying to strangle Hamas from all directions. But the only certainty is that Gaza’s hospitals become more crowded by the day.

As I pointed out on November 23, 2012, “Hamas hides among unwitting civilians, who have no way of controlling its activities. This fact does not give Israel the right to kill innocent non-combatants, not even unintentionally. Besides, murder is not ‘unintentional’ when you know it is inevitable.”

Still, from the fact that the Palestinian side sustains more casualties—it does not necessarily follow that they are the innocent party in the dispute. It’s not Israel’s fault, moreover, that its population is well-protected by rocket-repelling technology, mandatory bomb shelters and that Israelis benefit from an all-round, well-organized emergency response. Who among us would tolerate living with a constant barrage of bombs from our neighbors? If Gaza, which was ceded by Israel to the dogs of war (Hamas), has nothing by way of safety infrastructure, it is because its leaders invest in terrorism instead of in trade.

Ultimately, and as National Post’s Lorne Gunter astutely observed many years ago, “If Palestinians stopped their attacks today, tomorrow there would be no Israeli attacks.” But if Israel stopped unilaterally, Palestinians would be at it again in no time.

The latest developments, via DEBKAfile: “Israel air, sea and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip Thursday night, July 17, as IDF ground forces embarked on a ground attack, just announced by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Debkafile reports a softening-up operation to prepare for the entry of armored and infantry units. The IDF calls on the half million Gazans of southern towns of Khan Younes and Rafah to leave their homes for their own safety. Israelis living close to the Gaza border were advised to stay in bomb shelters.”

By the Telegraph’s telling, “Israel’s leaders are grimly aware of the risks they are taking by sending troops to fight in the crowded alleys of Gaza. Now that their forces are embroiled in this urban maze, they will lose much of their technological advantage against Hamas gunmen. One Israeli soldier was duly killed within hours of the invasion starting.”

Yet Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, believes that a ground operation is the only way to stop the rocket attacks. Meanwhile, Mr Masri made clear that the Hamas viewed it as a chance to inflict casualties on its enemy. “The Zionist army is very surprised by what the resistance possesses,” he said. “The resistance attacked tanks and Humvees with missiles and went behind enemy lines to conduct intelligence operations.”
But Israel is now fighting Hamas by land, sea and air. Two jet fighters soared overhead like silver arrowheads yesterday, scattering decoy flares across a cloudless summer sky.
Sa’ar Class missile boats from the Israeli navy have grown bold enough to pound their targets from close to the shore, although Hamas struck back with a missile that fell just short of its target, sending up a plume of white water.
Israeli commanders are trying to strangle Hamas from all directions. But the only certainty is that Gaza’s hospitals become more crowded by the day.

I tend to agree with Hamas that “Israel’s ground offensive is ‘foolish’ and will have ‘dreadful consequences.’” Since the Hamasniks consider their population no more than props in a public relations war, Palestinian casualties affect them not at all.

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