Israel's Reality

f you think those rockets have a payload of 150# or the power to deliver 150# you are mistaken. Those rockets don't weigh 15#.

If Hamas was firing thousands of 150# payloads all over Israel do you really think Israeli casualties wouldbe so low? Really????

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hamas-qassam.htm

July 2014 witnssed yet another escalation in HAMAS rocket capabilities with the introduction of the new longer range Khaibar-1 M302 rocket, capable of targetting much of the Israeli population. On March 5, 2014 the Israeli Navy intercepted a shipment of “dozens” of rockets identified as “M-302" rockets aboard a cargo ship name the Klos-C in the Red Sea. The rockets were being shipped from Syria to Iran and destine for Sudan where they could be taken through Egypt to Gaza.

The M-302 rocket is a Syrian-made munition that can launch a 375-pound warhead as far as 125 miles. According to Israeli media reports, the model intercepted on March 6, 2014 was an A302, which is five meters long and with a total weight of 500 kilograms. It has a range of 90 kilometers and carries a 170 kilogram warhead.

In a Hizballah attack on August 4, 2006, what was evidently a 302 mm rocket landed close to the Israeli city of Hadera, some 90 km south of the Lebanese border, the southern-most hit of any rocket fired against Israel during the war. The system is clearly not related to any known Soviet/Russian or Iranian MLRS. It has long been thought that the M302 rockets are Syrian derivatives of rockets for the Chinese WS-1 and/or WS-1B MLRS. The WS-1 (Weishi or “Guardian”) series rockets are visually similar to the Khaibar-1, and the launchers also share some characteristics. Production of these systems is done under license in Turkey and more recently in Thailand.

artillery rockets artillery rockets
November 2012 witnessed a major escalation of HAMAS rocket capabilities, as the Iranian Fajr-5 artillery rocket was employed for the first time. With a range of about 75 kilometers, it had twice the range of rockets previously used by HAMAS, and brought Tel Avic and Jeruslalem within range of HAMAS attacks. At the outset of Operation Pillar of Defense, the IDF targeted a significant number of long-range rockets sites (over 40 km) owned by Hamas. This deals a significant blow to the terror organization's underground rocket launching capabilities and munitions warehouses that are owned by Hamas and other terror organizations. The aim of targeting these sites is to cripple the terrorist organization's rocket launching and weapons build-up capabilities. One Fajr-5 [range of about 75 km] launch site that was struck IAF aircraft was located in close proximity to a mosque and other civilian structures.

Sirens went off late Thursday 15 November 2012 in Tel Aviv sparking a panic and nearly crippling mobile phone service after missiles fired from Gaza approached the city. Israeli officials say the missiles fell into the sea. Palestinian militants issued a statement claiming responsibility, saying they had fired Iranian-made rockets. It is the first time sirens had sounded in Tel Aviv since the Gulf War in 1991. Tel Aviv is about 80 kilometers from Gaza, indicating the use of the Iranian Fajr-5, which has twice the range of the rockets previously used by HAMAS. On Friday 16 November 2012 one rocket landing in a field outside Jerusalem.

Yossi Mekelman, a regional expert at London-based Chatham House, told Radio Free Europe on 17 November 2012 that the Fajr-5 missiles were smuggled from Iran to Gaza through Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. "The assumption is that they arrived through the Sinai Peninsula through the tunnels [to Gaza] because since the end of the Mubarak regime the border [between Egypt and the Gaza Strip] at Rafah is quite open," Mekelman says. "And if you remember, Israel two weeks ago attacked an arms factory in Sudan. So the alleged route goes from Iran to Sudan into the Sinai Peninsula, and the lawlessness in the Sinai enables the smuggling of more and more sophisticated weapons."

Qassam-1 Qassam-2 Qa

Quote:

Hamas have got more sense than to hang about and get zapped after firing the rockets, the whole launch procedure takes less than a minute-

An how long do you think it take a jet pilot flying over the Gaza strip to take note of a launch and placed a five hundred pound bomb up their ass?

By a news story I read they even used such a bomb on two jokers trying to get away on a motorbike.

Yeah, they did. And they killed a bunch of kids while doing it.

Stop the launching of the rockets and the danger to their children and Jewish children would be over.

What is the reason that Palestinians can use violence and Israel can't?

The Jews seems to lack the right of self defense and my guess is it base on a subconscious remains of two thousand years of religion base hatred that had been directed at them.

It is also envy. Mohammed died with it. His last words were directed at Jews, and they were not pretty.

Hamas can win by simply lying low while the Israelis are in Gaza, then come out after they've gone and start firing rockets again and digging new tunnels!

Oralloy said: The blockade is going to be tightened and no rebuilding materials will be allowed into Gaza. There are not going to be any new tunnels.

The 20 Oddest Things People Actually Claim to Believe about the Hamas/Israel Conflict

If you can't trust genocidal terrorists, who can you trust?

Want Peace? Send Hamas more concrete now.

It is a "cycle of violence"... which will end if the Palestinians get more power.

1. Israel started it:

"Look Carefully at Who Started the Current Israel-Hamas Conflict"
"What drove Hamas to take on Israel?"

2. War Crime -- Israel should have provided Iron Dome to Hamas:

"U.N. condemns Israel, U.S. for not sharing Iron Dome with Hamas"

3. Israeli conspiracy: Hamas is innocent:

"BuzzFeed Gets a Big Story Wrong"
"Did Israel Say Hamas Didn't Kidnap Its Teens? No."

4. It is all an Israeli marketing campaign for Iron Dome:

"A war to market the Iron Dome"

5. Hamas: Democratically elected terrorists with hearts of gold:

"Understanding Hamas: part terrorism, part good works"

6. Hamas does not want to eradicate Israel; it is just frustrated by the occupation... that ended in 2005:

"Legal Acrobatics: The Palestinian Claim that Gaza is Still "Occupied" Even After Israel Withdraws"
"Is Gaza still occupied?"
"Gaza is not occupied by Israel under international law - if you actually read international law"
"Hamas leader admits Gaza isn't occupied"

7. Want peace? Send Hamas more concrete now:

"Legitimizing Hamas's War Criminality"
"Kill 'all' Jews, Hamas TV host urges kids"
"'We Must Massacre Them': Hamas Politician Says Palestinians Must Kill, Humiliate and Tax the Jews"

8. War Crime: Israel has bomb shelters & Gaza doesn't:

"Deadly Sixth Day for Israel and Hamas"
"Hamas' mega-attack through Gaza terror tunnels exposed"
"Why Gaza Doesn't Have Bomb Shelters"
"Why Gaza doesn't have bomb shelters"

9. It is a "cycle of violence"... which will end if the Palestinians get more power:

"Moral clarity in Gaza"

10. No human shields, here... it is just that Gaza is small:

"Hillary: Hamas Uses Human Shields Because 'Gaza is Pretty Small'"
"The empty spaces in Gaza"
"Top Nine Gaza Media Myths"

11. Apartheid!

"Israel and Apartheid: The Big Lie"

12. Genocide!

"Murder by Numbers"

13. Hamas: fighting for freedom:

"To the Students for Justice in Palestine, a Letter From an Angry Black Woman"
"The Hamas Threat to the West Is No Different from ISIS"

14. PLO + Hamas "Unity Government" = bold step for peace:

"How to Fix It: Ending this war in Gaza begins with recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor."

15. Just critics of Israeli policies; no anti-Semitism here:

"The Everyday Antisemitism Project"
"Western Anti-Semitism Rages Again Beleaguered Israel"
"Anti-Semitism Rises in Europe Amid Israel-Gaza Conflict"

16. Israel - Not a partisan issue:

"Democrats, Republicans Differ Most on Views of Cuba, Israel"
"Why Don't More Democrats Support Israel?"
"Obama's Divide-and-Conquer Strategy on Iran Sanctions"
"ADL backs down on pro-Obama pledge"

17. They must be good guys; Human Rights is in their name:

"Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast"
"Right Turn: Morning Bits"
"HRW appoints alleged terrorist to Mideast Board"
"Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth Goes to Bat for Hamas War Crimes"

18. But UNWRA says:

"The UNRWA is Hamas"

19. If you can't trust genocidal terrorists, who can you trust?

"Palestinians Use Photos from Syria to Smear Israel Online"

20. It's the Occupation, stupid:

"Is Israel Truly an 'Occupying Power'?"
"Does the Levy Report Doom Israel?"
"A Japanese View of the Palestinians"
"The Illegal-Settlements Myth"

Then again, if Israelis were ever to start thinking like Hamas thinks, they might just take the normal tank rifles off about 40 of those Merkavas and replace them with 8" or 10" recoilless rifles with high explosive AP shells loaded with ball bearings and roofing nails..

"user ignored" = "hate boner"

Cement has been blockaded since 2007

Its a shame when Israelis killed 5oo Palestinian kids

Where's the Coverage? Palestinian Activist: "Hamas Paved the Road for the Death of our People"

For more than 26 years, I have dedicated my life to defending human rights. I have seen wars, terror, and abuse. Yet this past month – from the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish boys, thru the kidnapping and murder of Mohammed abu Khdeir, and to the war in Gaza – has been the most politically and emotionally difficult month of my life.

[…]

And yet, as a Palestinian, I must acknowledge: I am responsible for some of what has happened. As a Palestinian, I cannot deny my responsibility for the death of my own people.

The majority of Palestinians has opposed firing rockets into Israel. The Palestinians have understood that these rockets will achieve nothing. Palestinians have called on Hamas to stop firing on Israel and to try to negotiate with the Israeli occupation. But Hamas has never considered Palestinian needs – only its own political interests. And so they have continued to fire rockets at Israel, knowing full-well what the result would be: Hamas paved the road for the death of our people. We knew that Hamas was digging the tunnels that would lead to our destruction.

[…]

But Hamas leaders are more interested in their victories than in the lives of their victims. Indeed, Hamas needs these deaths in order to claim victory. Death of its own people empowers Hamas, enabling it to accrue more money and more arms.

Hamas has never been interested in liberating the Palestinian people from the occupation. And Israel could never destroy the infrastructure set up by Hamas. Only we, the Palestinian people, could dismantle it.

What could we have done? The residents of the Gaza Strip had the responsibility to rebel against Hamas rule. Yes, Hamas' control is deadly and people have been afraid to express their dissatisfaction with its rule and mismanagement. And yet, we abdicated our own responsibility to ourselves.

We knew this. And we let it happen.

[…]

The lesson is that we must rid ourselves of Hamas and completely demilitarize Gaza. Then we will open up the border crossings. I say this as a loyal Palestinian and because I care for my own people.

Antisemitism is a menace. Hatred of the Jewish people has persisted in European societies for two millennia, manifesting itself in blood libel, persecution, expulsions, pogroms and massacres. At various points in history it has been vigorously promoted by elites and absorbed by large swaths of the population. Living among us today remain survivors of the Holocaust, the only attempt to exterminate an entire people by industrialised, systematic means. This unparalleled atrocity certainly mobilised opinion against antisemitism, stripping it of the respectable status it had long enjoyed in many European countries, but that does not mean it vanished. Because it was allowed to course through the veins of European society for so long, even the utter horror of the Shoah was never going to fully expunge it. Far from being in retreat, the evidence suggests that anti-Jewish hatred is actually increasing again.

I write this because antisemitism needs to be treated very seriously indeed. Attempts to belittle it are dangerous, allowing the tumour to spread unchecked. But Israel’s assault on Gaza has highlighted another danger too. It has often been debated whether the charge of antisemitism is concocted against anyone who supports Palestinian justice or criticises the actions of the Israeli state. The principal objection is that such a tactic represents an attempt to silence critics of Israel’s occupation. Yet there are rather more dangerous potential consequences: not least that the meaning of antisemitism is lost, making it all the more difficult to identify and eliminate hatred against Jewish people at a time when it is rising.

The vast majority of pro-Palestinian sentiment is driven by a sense of solidarity with an oppressed people subjected to occupation, siege and a brutal military onslaught. The response of many supporters of Israel’s attack has been instructive. In a world where there is so much injustice and bloodshed, they say, why not march against the sectarian murderers of Islamic State (Isis) or Boko Haram? This is known as “whataboutery”: an attempt to deflect from one injustice by referring to the suffering of others. Some defenders of Israel’s governments believe the supposed special attention received by the conflict is itself evidence of antisemitism. But Israel’s atrocities attract this attention because the state is armed to the teeth and backed by western governments, rendering them directly complicit; IS and Boko Haram, on the other hand, are (quite rightly) opposed by our rulers. Demonstrations and protests are generally a means of exercising influence over supposedly democratically accountable governments.

That does not mean that the monstrosity of antisemitism has been absent in the backlash against Israel’s actions. Last month a synagogue and Jewish-owned businesses were attacked in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles. I have encountered sentiments that conflate the Jewish people and the Israeli government – though this is echoed by some staunch Zionists, and is no less antisemitic in implication. Threats and assaults have been directed at Jewish people in several European countries.

One sinister piece of pedantry that keeps cropping up is the claim that the term “antisemitism” is itself false, because Arabs are Semites too. Never mind that the term antisemitism has been popularly understood to mean hatred against Jews since the late 19th century – here is an attempt to make it impossible to identify this hatred by engaging in disingenuous wordplay.

One retort repeatedly offered is that Israel is itself the source of antisemitism; that its brutality towards the Palestinian people encourages hatred against the Jewish people. This is a nonsense, like rationalising anti-Muslim prejudice as the inevitable consequence of Islamist fundamentalist terror; responsibility for prejudice lies with the prejudiced. Most of us are quite capable of opposing brutality without turning into bigots. Racism needs to be eliminated, not excused.

To defeat all forms of antisemitism – including those that masquerade as solidarity with oppressed Palestinians – we need to be able to identify them. That becomes impossible when the very meaning of the word is abused and lost. Take Douglas Murray, a writer with a particular obsession with Islam. “Thousands of anti-Semites have today succeeded in bringing central London to an almost total standstill” was his reprehensible description of a Palestine solidarity demonstration last month. This is not simply an unforgivable libel against peace protestors – Jews among them – who simply object to their government’s complicity in the massacre of children. It makes it much harder to identify genuine antisemitism. The same goes for the Daily Telegraph’s Brendan O’Neill, who recently suggested the left was becoming antisemitic. Bizarrely, his evidence included the left’s stance against the disproportionate influence of the Murdoch empire: ironic, given that the non-Jewish Rupert Murdoch once drew on a classic antisemitic trope when he tweeted: “Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?”

Yet there really is plenty of antisemitism that must be confronted. Take Greece, where the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn has thrived amid economic trauma. Back in May, 16% of Athenian voters opted for the Golden Dawn candidate for the city’s mayor.According to a recent study, 69% of Greeks had antisemitic views; in Poland – despite suffering some of the Nazis’ worst horrors – it was 48%, Spain 53%. In Hungary the antisemitic party Jobbik won a fifth of the vote in April’s parliamentary elections. Like most of Europe’s far right, France’s Front National focuses its bile against Muslims, but the party’s roots are deep in antisemitism; and a few months ago it topped the country’s European parliamentary elections. Hatred against Jews is a clear and present danger.

Antisemitic themes are depressingly constant: of Jews being aliens, lacking loyalty to their countries, acting as parasites, wielding disproportionate influence. Sometimes this hatred is overt, other times more subtle and pernicious. It needs the broadest possible coalition to defeat. Because it is so embedded– dating back as it does to Roman times – it requires special determination to challenge. That does not mean antisemitism is somehow biologically hardwired into the European mindset: it can and will be eliminated. But that means defending its meaning from abuse. It is not simply about defending supporters of the Palestinian cause from smear and slander, but preventing the seriousness of antisemitism being devalued, making it harder to confront wherever it emerges. This is no small matter. The future security of Europe’s Jews depends on it.