Cease Fire Ends Operation Pillar of Defense
November 22, 2012 16:52 by Pesach BensonGaza Crisis: The Day After
• Gazans face harsh reality after op. After celebrating a so-called victory, it’s time to rebuild.
• Egypt seized 108 Grad rocket warheads along with 9,646 rounds of ammo. The Jerusalem Post says the arms were most likely en route to Gaza or Sinai jihadis.
• Reuters on Iron Dome’s cost:
Israel’s Iron Dome interceptions of Palestinian rockets during eight days of Gaza fighting cost $25 million to $30 million, the government said on Thursday, arguing the U.S.-backed system was well worth the money. . .
If more Hamas rockets had got through, especially the handful fired at the commercial hub Tel Aviv, and caused mass casualties, devastating Israeli retaliation perhaps including a full-scale ground assault would have been nearly certain.
A senior official estimated that such escalation could cost Israel as much as $380 million a day.
On a related note, Ambassador Michael Oren elaborates on the Iron Dome as a manifestation of US-Israel relations.
• The Media Line looks at the view from the West Bank.
• Does he still qualify for the 72 virgins?
Man killed by celebratory gunfire in Gaza
• Lebanese rocket fail of the day: Two rockets fired at Israel instead landed in the Lebanese village of Sahl al-Khiam. The army found and defused a third rocket set and aimed at Israel. More at the Daily Star.
• Here’s a Christian Science Monitor headline I never imagined to see anywhere:
The Monitor cites four reasons:
- Diplomatic emphasis that Israelis can’t be expected to live under rocket fire.
- Sympathy for Israel after the Tel Aviv bus bombing.
- Fewer Palestinian casualties.
- Lessons learned from Cast Lead.
Post-Crisis Commentary/Analysis
• Israel Kasnett of the Jerusalem Post assesses the successes of citizen journalists and media watchdogs (including HonestReporting) during the crisis.
• A NY Times staff-ed recaps what’s known without taking a stand except to go out on a limb with this line:
. . . this moment of calm will not create real stability if it is not followed by a serious new peace effort aimed at a two-state solution.
• Ben Wedeman, Fareed Zakaria and Anne-Marie Slaughter discuss the military status of Hamas and Israel after the crisis in a CNN video.
• Silly staff-ed in The Guardian. Memo to the north London newsroom: Hamas established itself a player by throwing Fatah members off Gaza rooftops. They’re not going to treat Israel any better.
• Over at the LA Times, Uri Resnick the deputy consul general of Israel in the City of Angels, got a right of reply to fisk Daoud Kuttab. (The LAT rolled out a paywall.)
Phoebe Greenwood
• The Daily Telegraph points out that a lot of reporters covering the Gaza crisis were women. Phoebe Greenwood counter-intuitively says that women reporters covering conflicts in Islamic areas actually have an advantage over their male counterparts:
“We sort of become a third gender and in some ways are safer because we are women,” Greenwood discloses. “The Muslim men treat with us a kind of deference and actually talk to us about the war, their strategy and their weapons – which they wouldn’t do with the women of their country. At the same time they would very rarely harm a female journalist as most Islamic militants don’t want to behead a woman or kidnap them.”
Moreover, in war-torn Muslim countries, the majority of the women and children only feel comfortable opening up to women reporters as they are not allowed to be seen talking to men outside of their families. Greenwood says this means female journalists can often get better access to the whole story.
• For commentary and analysis, see Khaled Abu Toameh, Fareed Zakaria, Jennifer Rubin, Jeff Jacoby, Max Fisher, Steve Bell (yuck), Dan Ephron, Haroon Siddiqui, a New Statesman staff-ed, Bloomberg News, Mort Zuckerman, and former US envoy Richard Haass (Financial Times via Google News).
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Syrian airstrike on Aleppo hospital while world watched Gaza. No Palestinians among the 40 killed, which is why you probably haven’t heard about it.
• Did the Gaza crisis bring Hamas and Iran together? Judging from the NY Times, the boost to Tehran will be temporary.
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
Clicking “Unsubscribe instantly” on your mailing will remove you from the Israel Daily News Stream list, but not from your regular HonestReporting emails.
Steve Berger
9:00 pm
Nov 22, 2012
Much of the media hype accuses Israel of disproportionate (exaggerated, etc) response. Would BBC favor Israel if we could just arrange for 500 more Jewish bodies ?!? Surely the doctrine of measured response would have Israel send 8,000 missiles and scores of Jewish suicide bombers into Gaza.
During World War II, 3,150,000 German civilians were killed vs. only 1,700 American and 67,100 British civilians. The bombing of Belgrade (N.A.T.O. vs Milosovic) resulted in 8,000 Serbian civilians killed, vs. 0 American and 0 British civilians.
So, will BBC give Hitler and Milosovic the “moral high ground” ?!
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Steve Berger
9:03 pm
Nov 22, 2012
Sderot has a population of 24,000, living on 4.472 sq km (5,366 per sq km).
Gaza has a population of 1,700,000, living on 365 sq km (only 4,657 per sq km)
So much for that media legend, “Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth”
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DHL
8:15 pm
Nov 23, 2012
NYC is denser than Gaza, as are many other cities across the world.
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Brian Burr
10:11 pm
Nov 22, 2012
Just as the media are beginning to uniformly represent the Israeli response to Hamas and Gaza rocket fire as justified defense of the S. Israeli citizenry, so too may we hope the Palestinians of Gaza will soon admit that the self-punitive cost of Hamas sanctioned terror, is not producing ‘martyrs’ but simply killing loves ones, and innocents. Perhaps this captive Palestinain population in Gaza, who can only desire freedom, infrastructure, jobs and peace, will soon free themselves from the iron grip of a tyranical Hamas.
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a kurtz
1:25 am
Nov 23, 2012
Mr meshal says the Palestinians have the right to return to what is called Israel. Dont the Jews have a right to return to Israel. Ahhhhhh
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Naomi
5:10 am
Nov 23, 2012
Don’t you like the fact that this hamas leader now asks for a “law of return’ and talks about the ‘diasporah’ of Palestinians…? Is there anything else he needs from the Israeli/jewish dictionary?
Of course if one takes his position and adds the children/grandchildren ( born somewhere else) to the numbers of the original Palestinian ‘refugees’, one should most certainly do that with the jews evicted from their homes in Palestine = at the same time ( which by the way were more then the Palestinians) and then the numbers can grow indefinitely on both sides.
And since we talk about ‘refugees’ ….In that case my son would be a ‘refugee’ from Poland!
Since my father and his families were evicted from their substantial landholdings near Warsaw and he managed to escape the concentration camps; The fact that I was born in France and my son in Canada doesn’t mean a thing..
Maybe we are Polish refugees? and if we follow that pattern, so will be his children who might be born God knows were?
If the Palestinian refuge numbers are allowed to multiply ten fold since the original event, I think all of us should now go and look to were our ancestors came from and lay claims in those countries of origin.
Some of us might make claims on Rome, or Paris.. I know of Native Americans who could definitely claim New York…
And maybe we should not accept any country’s right to exist until its all settled.
Welcome to CHAOS!
BTW how did the Palestinians get there in the first place? Wasn’t that through war? Who are the previous owners? Were are those refugees….?
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Andrew
8:37 am
Nov 23, 2012
this poor man could not lie straight in bed. His speech is full of rhetoric and distorted ideas, let him wear a vest and blow himself up in the desert
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Bari Tarmon
9:04 am
Nov 23, 2012
It is so obvious that he knows the truth but chooses to spew the lies, distortions and fabrications rather than answer the questions. He says that the palestinians should be allowed to go back to back to their state according to the 1967 borders, but there was no Palestine in 1967. The arabs lived in either Jordanian or Egyptian territories. Even if we go back to 1948, Israel was recognized by the UN under the UN partition plan which awarded three areas to the Jews and the rest to the arabs. So which area does he feel is the legitimate territory that constitutes Israel? As for Jerusalem, the League of Nations declared that it’s the capital of the Jews, not anyone else.
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Mrs. Rene O'Riordan
11:38 am
Nov 23, 2012
Talking to him is like trying to “nail jelly to the wall” – Rene
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John Hayworth
1:42 pm
Nov 23, 2012
“Palestine shall be free from the river to the Sea”–this is what this Hamas leader means when he speaks for the “end of the Occupation”!
The Arabs left Arabia and conquered the whole of the Middle East and North Africa subjugating the Berbers and other non-Arab peoples. Then The Turks came and subjugated the Middle East through the Islamic caliphate. Britain came in and overthrew the Caliphate. During this period the Arabs raised pogroms against their Jewish populations causing a huge refugee problem as Jews fled into Palestine. After WW2 Israel came into existence. The Arabs were offered the land to the East of Jordan for a State–they refused thus causing the Palestinian problem.
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Martin Kantor
7:48 pm
Nov 23, 2012
We have heard much banter about how Israel is a tool of the United States, and vice-verse. The truth is that it is the Palestinians that are the tools of Iran. Iran has provided only arms and rockets, not the help they really need. When Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians, they left functional factories and greenhouses which would have greatly helped the Gaza economy. Instead, the Palestinians destroyed and looted these gifts.
Iran is pushing for a conflict because it wants to divert the attention of the world away from their nuclear ambitions. If the media is engaged in covering the Israel-Gaza conflict, Iran’s bomb making industry is largely ignored.
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hfiers
9:28 pm
Nov 23, 2012
After listening to the interview of Meshaal by Amanpour (CNN), I found Meshaal double talking. He says that he will accept peace along the 1967 borders, Jerusalem as the capital, and “true” peace. But when asked if he will recognize Israel. he evades the question. It is a joke to listen to him state “true peace does not allow the killing of any innocent in the world,” he, again, avoids any blame to his own organization. Look at the Hamas Palestinian Charter. Introduction: “For our stuggle against the Jews…until the enemy is defeated; Art. 7: “Ther time will come until the Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them)…”; Art. 14 The Three Circles: The Palestinian, The Arab, the Islamic has the role to paly in the stuggle against the Zionist…”; Art. 15: “…Jihad becomes a duty on all Muslims…In order to face the usurption of Palestine by the Jews… Read the rest online!
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MARTIN BROSCHOWITZ
1:53 am
Nov 24, 2012
It appears that main stream media, print
and electronic, have adopted a biased
mindset against Israel. Even when
Hamas exposed journalists to danger
in Gaza, by putting some of their
command and control antennas
atop the building housing journalists in
an attempt to use them as human shields.
The editors employing those reporters,
do not condemn the outrageous use
of innocent people… but instead
blamed Israel for injuries sustained.
thus media dishonesty encourages the
use of innocents as shields for
trrrorists.
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Naomi
9:53 am
Nov 24, 2012
Hi ” hfiers”
Would love to read that palestinian/Hhamas charter – where can I find it online?
I like to have all the facts so I can argue more effectively.
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Steve Berger
11:34 am
Nov 24, 2012
Hi Naomi – Every relevant document + lots of history on Wikepedia. Hamas charter = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter PLO coventant = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Covenant etc
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martin
1:32 pm
Nov 24, 2012
Naomi, just check out the Oslo Accords and you will see that the Fakestinians have not complies with 1 iota.
Excellent news though about the ceasefire. I thought Bibi had gone soft.
Check out DEBKAFILE, the Israel iintelligence site, whic is often critical of him. Bibi squeezed every need out of Obama and clinton before agreeing. US military is on its way to stop infiltration from Egypt into Gaza of military hardware.
Morsi, nor Hamas are trhe winners here. Never mind the cowardly, ignorant and prejudiced media, it is facts on the ground that’s important.
Well accomplished IDF, once again kol ha kavod le kulam
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martin
6:28 pm
Nov 24, 2012
Naomi, just google or search for Palestine Charter 1968. You can also find and read the Oslo Accords.
By the way, the Fakestinians have never complied with one detail of the Accord/
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Cease Fire Ends Operation Pillar of Defense | Blogs about Israel aggregation
12:43 am
Nov 25, 2012
[...] Continued on Page 2 [...]
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Naomi
2:05 pm
Nov 26, 2012
Thank you for the link Martin!
What an eye opener.. I think it should be compulsory for any ‘wanna be’ journalist to actually
READ this!!
Hello ” Hall of Fame” guys/girls ..:
If I had researched my exams the way you ‘research’ ( ????) your stories I would be homeless, starving and living under the bridges now.
How the hell do you get away with being soooooooooooooooo inefficient?inacurate?un-informed
and ~~~ being paid for the garbage you write on top of it ??
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Khaled Meshaal Returns to Gaza | Blogs about Israel aggregation
11:44 am
Dec 10, 2012
[...] fiery statements stood in sharp contrast to a recent interview he gave to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, where he said that Hamas accepted a Palestinian state [...]
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