• I’ll forgive Irish Times readers if they’re unclear on the chronology of unfolding Gaza events. Reporter Mark Weiss doesn’t even mention a laser-guided Kornet anti-tank missile fired at a school bus. Fortunately, the Wall St. Journal got the chronology correct and clear:
Israel Strikes Gaza After Antitank Missile Hits Israeli School Bus:
Violence flared anew on the Gaza-Israel border as an antitank missile fired by Palestinian militants hit an Israeli school bus, prompting retaliatory artillery and helicopter strikes by the Israeli military.
• The NY Daily News recognizes intentionality:
This was a war crime by any definition: Hamas deliberately and in cold blood targeted an Israeli school bus for a rocket attack.
This bears repeating so the words ring loudly against the silence of the hypocrites of the United Nations Human Rights Council: Hamas fired a laser-aimed anti-tank missile at a yellow school bus with the intent of killing children.
• IDF intelligence believes Haniyeh has lost control over what’s going on in Gaza. The Media Line elaborates:
“Al-Qassam is controlling the situation in Gaza,” a senior Gaza businessman told The Media Line on condition of anonymity. He said Khaled Mishal, the head of Hamas’ Syrian bureau, was paying the salaries of the Al-Qassam fighters in Gaza and could therefore ignore the wishes of the group’s civilian leadership.
I’ve always maintained that there’s no distinction between the political and military “wings” of Hamas. Nothing’s changed. Uber-boss, Khaled Mashaal is clearly (no pun intended) calling the shots.
• Hamas confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald what everyone was already saying about the Sudan strike:
“Abdul-Latif Ashkar was a senior member of Hamas; his job was the same as Mabhouh,” a Hamas spokesman told the Herald yesterday. “He was in Sudan co-ordinating new smuggling routes for weapons arriving from Iran, which then pass through the border into Egypt, across to the Sinai and into Gaza. No one but Israel could have been responsible for the attack.”
• Reports of some 2,000 Palestinians fighting for Gaddafi:
On April 1, the newspaper reported, citing a Palestinian source in Lebanon, that PFLP-GC leader Ahmad Jibril, who is a friend of Qadhafi’s, had recruited hundreds of Palestinians from Lebanon and Syria and sent them to Libya to help Qadhafi, for wages of $200 per day.
On April 8, the newspaper reported that the Qadhafi regime had expressed willingness to pay every Palestinian who joins the forces €12,000 a month along with Libyan citizenship and a plot of land.
I hate to say it, but that’s better than the extremely limited job opportunities Palestinian refugees have in Lebanon . . .
• The BDS movement against Israel has become a hot political issue in Australia. This commentary articulates some great criticisms:
Many reasonable people who aren’t ideological extremists are naively attracted to the BDS’s emotive, humanitarian claims. We urge them to rethink their support. For instance, why would you boycott the only country in the Middle East where homosexuality is not a capital offence or even a crime? This is to say nothing of the illogicality of delegitimising a pluralist, parliamentary democracy which boasts an independent judiciary, free press and vigorous public debate.
Isn’t that the sort of society which the recent uprisings across the Arab world are fighting for?
• Last but not least, Happy Passover from the PA:
The Palestinian Authority has just honored the terrorist mastermind responsible for the ‘Passover Massacre’, a terrorist atrocity which claimed the lives of 30 innocent Israeli citizens attending the ‘Seder’, the traditional Passover meal, at Netanya’s Park Hotel on March 27, 2002 . . .
Despite an often voiced Palestinian commitment to end the glorification of terrorists and incitement to violence, on March 28 Issa Karake, the Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs, visited the family of Hamas suicide-bomb mastermind Abbas Al-Sayed, awarding them with an official, festive plaque, in celebration of the anniversary of the massacre.
