Life with bad neighbours
Tuesday, 12th November 2019
Mid-week update
08:30 in the morning and half of Israeli children are not in school because so far over 50 rockets have been launched from Gaza, Red Alerts reaching from the South to the central region. Surprisingly Hamas is not involved.
The head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Al-Quds Brigades in Gaza, Baha Abu al-Ata was warned by both Egypt and Hamas that if he didn’t stop launching missiles into Israel he would be “taken out” and neither of them would do anything to help him.
He didn’t listen.
This morning, at about 04:00, the IDF carried out the targetted assassination of Baha Abu al-Ata in Gaza. From 06:00 onward the constant barrage of rockets and missiles began throughout the lower part of Israel. I repeat that Hamas, who has an “agreement” with Israel, is being very careful not to be involved.
The clear reason for my opening statement, that children are not in school, is because here in Israel every house or apartment building has a “safe room”, a bomb shelter, similar to storm shelters around the USA but these are steel lined rooms with secure heavy windows and are, by law, part of every building project since the ’70’s.
It’s now 8:30 at night and the number of rockets is close to 250. Red alerts were sounded in Sderot, the Kibbutz farms near Gaza, Beersheva, Ashkelon and Ashdod, Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva, Rishon le Zion and Modi’in. Almost all were halted mid-air by Iron Dome but not all. Israelis are well schooled in safety precautions, sadly it comes with living in an area surrounded by terrorists. Someone created a map of the UK with a similar number of rockets launched at the South Coast and it crossed my mind that had it been the UK, or USA or any other country it would have been deemed causus belli!
We don’t know what the night holds, we know that the Mayors of several towns in the South have decided that the children are better off at home than in school because at home they all have safe rooms nearby whereas running to the school shelter leaves them traumatised. Israel spends a great deal of money on public bomb shelters, especially in the South, but our record of no injuries even in direct hits when the residents were in shelters remains intact. I suppose that’s the difference between us and them. We spend fortunes on civilian safety and they spend fortunes on civilian destruction.
The Security Cabinet has stated very clearly that they do not want to enter into a full blown conflict and are holding back from sending troops into Gaza. Why? Because we know that as always the terror leaders will go into their bunkers and the oppressed citizens of Gaza will suffer.
In the following article you will see a video of Baha Abu al Ata’s home after the IDF’s pin-point assassination. Incredibly we didn’t touch the other apartments in the same building, just the one in which he lived. We do not risk human life, only the lives of those in-humans who want us dead.
I knew you would want to know what is happening. I hope that the current barrage is over but am not holding my breath.
Sheila