Operation Pillar of Defense

Operation Pillar of Defense has started.  Apparently the media is reporting this is because of the killing by Israel of the Terrorist leader Ahmed Jabari.  The fact that Hamas had escalated rocket activity in the last month had been completely ignored by all outside of Israel.

Can you imagine the gall of people who say "Israel broke the Truce".  What Truce, where you are able to rain missiles on innocent civilians?

The usual response in the media is that Palestinian rocket fire is harmless.  Supposedly small homemade firecrackers.  Well one of those rockets killed 3 people, including a baby.  And they are landing in Tel Aviv!  That is some serious distance.  These are Grad missiles smuggled from Iran.  Cynically fired from underground sites within densely populated areas.  Hamas will do whatever they can to provoke Israel and attempt to make more martyrs.  Nobody complains that they are putting their own people in the firing line.  To do so would risk death from their own leaders.

Iron Dome is intercepting about one in three.  I guess that is something.

Locally, cynical people are referencing the upcoming Israeli election.  Firstly, the operation is being undertaken by the IDF, not the government.  And it has bipartison support.  There is only so much terror activity that civilians will put up with.  Whilst protecting citizens would definitely be a popular topic, this can hardly be taken just to win political points scoring.  If anything, this is a risk to government if the military operation goes bad.  The Lebanon operation in 2006 was politically bad for the Olmert government

However, speaking of elections, any word on Palestinian elections?  People seem to forget about those.  If you want to be cyncial about anything, remember that only the other week, Mahmoud Abbas renounced his right to live in Sefad, to the anger of Hamas.  Next week, Palestine go to the UN to recognise Statehood.  How does it look if they are firing rockets wanton into Israel.

This operation is being documented in Social Media like never before.  Hamas and the IDF are tweeting each other.

And right on cue, if you search twitter for "Israel" or "Gaza" you will see a war going on.  My facebook account has been awash with Memes.  I'm not going to reproduce any here - in essence I don't feel they achieve anything but whip up more fervour.

Hamas are keen to promote the idea of Israel as "baby murderers", and that is the majority of what is posted under the Gaza hashtags are such.  Again, just to get the emotions going to try and promote and justify their own atrocities.  Given they are attempting to generate their own martyrs (in the name of God!) is disgusting and despicable.