Gaza rocket strikes southern Israel for second time in 24 hours

[oberliner]

A Qassam rocket fired from the Gaza strip Saturday landed on a public structure at Sha'ar Hanegev regional council, just hours after Israel Air force jets struck Gaza in response to rockets fired from the coastal enclave.

According to the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson's office, the rocket damaged the structure's rooftop and destroyed most of the second floor of the building, which serves during the day as a daycare for people with disabilities.

No injuries were reported in the attack.

IDF patrol units have been scanning the area for the rocket's remains.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/gaza-rocket-strikes-southern-israel-for-second-time-in-24-hours-1.305191

[peacetalksforall]

1. To be blunt. When I hear these reports, my immediate reaction is subterfuge. Yesterday we

heard that Palestinians were getting thrown out of a house or multi-tenament building so that settlers could move in. With what the Gaza Ghetto is going through, I doubt that the Gazans would be up-to-date about Jerusalem and this may not be the usual eye for an eye, but this could be a set-up - yes, a set-up by Israel to keep the hate current.

Meaning, I don't trust what comes from the Israeli leadership or military. They are good planters. I now only trust neutral intermediaries and there never are any in this kind of action. Where would the intermediaries come from anyway - on boats? What a laugh. Cynical about the Religious, Military, Political leadership of Israel. Who even cares about the leadership of the Palestinians. It is year-end after year-end tiresome agony. With disrespect for Zionism and the chaos that is the Palestinian cause - not all through their own fault.

Power to the peacemakers, peace wishers, peaces praying neutrals, and the children who know no prejudices until taught.

Long live solutions and people smart enough to seek them.

Edited to correct many typos.

[oberliner]

3. Do you suspect that Israel launched a rocket at itself?

Or are you suggesting that no rocket was launched at all?

Or perhaps that someone on the Israeli side is working with someone in Gaza to launch rockets at Israel and make it seem like it was a Palestinian group?

[peacetalksforall]

6. Gaza is a Ghetto and Israel doesn't care how it slips into and out of Gaza. What they

did during the seige of Gaza and the wall they have created around it from the Egypt border to hundreds of miles into the Mediterranean means Israel is in charge of everything. They have movement and a life, the Gazans don't. And Israel is loose enough with the tricks and harm to do it. If they bulldoze down a female. If one of their soldiers trows a tear gas canister at the face of female to explode the gas and the crush the jaw and kills the eye, why not lobby a couple of missiles to maintain status quo.

By Israel, I don't mean all Israelis and I don't include Jews anywhere in the world who are as upset as I am.

It's the perception. And it's my perception that the Israelis could do it more easily than the Gazans could with the Ghetto that has been created. I have no respect for those calling the shots and lobbying the shots on either side. On either side.

Gaza is in effect - Israel, the only remaining problem is that some Gazans are still living or haven't exiled themselves.

[pscot]

2. Was that before the Israeli air strikes

or after?

[oberliner]

4. Gaza militants fired a rocket into the Israeli city of Ashkelon early Friday

Then:

IAF strikes Gaza targets in response to rocket attack on Ashkelon

Now, this other rocket attack.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. I would be more concerned if it was another Grad

Qassams, while deadly in their own right, lack range and stability and more importantly will not cause concern with the Israelis as a Grad would.

[parkia00]

8. Who fired the rocket?

I mean really, who fired the rocket? Was it Hamas? The trouble with Gaza is that there are many factions and not under the control of any one leadership. If Hamas fires a rocket and Israel response then there would be less to argue about. After all and eye for an eye so everybody goes blind is standard policy in the area. But if it was some other group that was being naughty and Israel ended up spanking Hamas who did not do the deed but was in the area and easy to spot cause they are the largest naughty entity in the area, then you got a problem. Now you pissed off Hamas as they now view Israel's spanking as unjustified and vows revenge by flinging shit at the offender. Maybe this was the second projectile?

[here_is_to_hope]

7. Ya sure it wasn't "thousands of rockets"?

That's the standard, thousands...never just one or two.
I call (more) bullshit.

[Shaktimaan]

11. You call BS on what?

This attack or that thouands of rockets have been launched in the past few years?

[Chulanowa]

14. It is "kind of" bullshit

Yes, thousands of rockets have been fired over the past decade. That part is not bullshit. However, it is rarely presented as sporadic ones and twos, threes and fours over a period of ten years. Rather it is portrayed as a constant barrage of "thousands upon thousands" that are, the reader is led to believe, coming in every day. That part is bullshit. Also never mentioned is that over a period of ten years and thousands of rockets, only 26 people have died from the things. During Operation Cast Lead, Hamas (and other groups) fired 2,048 rockets and 1,672 mortars. And killed eight people.

Now, I'm not going to belittle the deaths these things cause. Any death is a tragic waste of life. But these things are certainly not the existential threat they're often made out to be. In a given year, Israelis kill an average of ten times more Israelis than rockets have in ten.

Lots of rockets have been fired. That is fact. People have died and been injured by them. That is also fact. it's the presentation of these facts - that the air is filled with rockets and that they pose a terrible threat to all of Israel - that is bullshit.

[oberliner]

9. Gaza: Salafi group claims responsibility for projectile

Gaza – Ma'an – A military group affiliated to the Salafi movement in Gaza claimed responsibility for launching a homemade project toward southern Israel on Saturday, a statement issued Sunday read.

The At-Tawhid and Jihad wing said the projectile was fired at 9:42 p.m. "in retaliation to the ongoing Israeli aggressions against the Palestinian people."

http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=304109

[shira]

10. First Person: When a rocket hits a child therapy center

First Person: When a rocket hits a child therapy center
By NOAM BEDEIN
08/02/2010 06:01

On any other day, the facility on the Sapir campus would have been packed with kids, and the losses would have been devastating.

The child hydrotherapy rehabilitation center adjoining Sderot’s Sapir Academic College provides therapy and workshops for specialneeds children who live in the western Negev and is used by children from the entire country.

On Saturday night, an upgraded Kassam rocket scored a direct hit on the ceiling of the center.

<snip>

Had the rocket struck on any other day, it would have been a catastrophe, killing and wounding the children at the center. During the week the center is open until 10 p.m. and is packed with hundreds of children and therapists.

Because there were no casualties the attack has not remained in the headlines for very long. In the eyes of the media and the public, again, because there were no causalities, it was of little importance. The incident came at the height of summer vacation, when weather reports on the expected high temperatures across the nation take precedence over the lethal missiles raining down on southern Israel.

But had there been children at this rehabilitation center during the Kassam strike, and had lives been lost, the IDF might have had no choice but to reenter Gaza, and we might then have witnessed the firing of thousands of upgraded missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

<snip>

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=183354


I wonder how many people know Hamas just bombed a children's hospital? :shrug:


VIDEO of recent firecracker damage to children's hospital
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYgal1K0AGw&feature=player_embedded


Imagine the outrage if a Gaza children's hospital were bombed by Israel.

[Chulanowa]

12. First point; it wasn't Hamas

Second point; if it were reversed, you would be finding some way to defend it. Just like you defend bombing Gaza hospitals, and lebanese Hospitals, and gazan water tratment plants, and running over invalids with bulldozers, and shooting down nurses and...

[Chulanowa]

13. My first thought isn't "subterfuge"

it's "building codes violations." either this building's second floor was the size of a small bedroom, or it was terribly structurally unsound; a qassam just lacks the firepower needed to "destroy most of" the floor of a building. No matter how you paint it, that's one hell of a flying pipe.

Now. Perhaps this was not a qassam; given that it wasn't Hamas, this could be a possibility. it might have been a higher ordinance; katushya, perhaps?