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Israel At 'War to the Bitter End,' Strikes Key Hamas Sites

Monday , December 29, 2008

Israel's defense minister said Monday the country is engaged in a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and said the military operation against the terror group would continue and intensify.

"We have stretched our hand in peace many times to the Palestinian people. We have nothing against the people of Gaza," Ehud Barak said to a special session of parliament. "But this is an all-out war against Hamas and its branches. The restraint that we have demonstrated is the source of our strength when it is time to fight."

Israel's air force obliterated symbols of Hamas power on the third day of its overwhelming Gaza assault, striking a house next to the Hamas premier's home, devastating a security compound and flattening a five-story building at a university closely linked to the Islamic terror group.

In a retaliatory strike, Palestinian militants sent a deadly barrage of missiles deep into Israel, demonstrating that Hamas still had firepower three days into Israel's punishing air offensive in Gaza. Three Israelis were killed and two seriously wounded.

In a barrage Monday night, a missile crashed into a bus stop in Ashdod, 23 miles from the Gaza Strip. A woman died and two others were wounded, one seriously — the first casualties in the city of 190,000 residents.

Another Israeli was killed and one seriously wounded by a rocket strike in the Negev desert community of Nahal Oz, closer to the Gaza border. Earlier, a missile killed a construction worker in the city of Ashkelon. In all, four Israelis were dead since the Gaza offensive began Saturday, bringing to 19 the number of people killed in attacks from Gaza since the beginning of the year.

Hamas missiles hit near Ashdod on Sunday, but Monday's attack marked the first time the city suffered casualties from missiles. Ashdod is 23 miles from Gaza, twice as far as the frequent target of Ashkelon and only 25 miles from Israel's heart in Tel Aviv.

Israel declared areas around the Gaza Strip a "closed military zone" Monday, citing the risk from Palestinian rocket fire.

The closure could also help Israel mount a ground assault, as Israeli troops continue to amass at staging sites on the Gaza border and the Cabinet approved the call-up of 6,500 reserve soldiers. Military experts said Israel would need at least 10,000 soldiers for a full-scale invasion.

Click to view photos from the conflict (WARNING: Graphic)

A Hamas police spokesman, Ehab Ghussein, said 180 members of the Hamas security forces were among the dead. The United Nations agency in charge of Palestinian refugees said at least 62 of the dead were civilians. The three-day death toll rose to 364, including eight children under the age of 17 who were killed in two separate strikes overnight, medics said.

Israel launched its deadliest attack against Palestinians in decades on Saturday in retaliation for rocket fire aimed at civilians in southern Israeli towns, which have killed 17 Israelis this year.

Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters Monday, while "Hamas is looking for children to kill."

"Hamas is targeting deliberately kindergartens and schools and citizens and civilians because this is according to their values. Our values are completely different. We are trying to target Hamas, which hides among civilians," Livni said.

A senior Hamas official in Damascus said there is no chance of a new truce with Israel unless all attacks on Gaza cease and the border crossings are reopened.

Moussa Abu Marzouk said Hamas has a right to strike everywhere in Israel and called for Arab countries who have peace treaties with Israel — namely Egypt and Jordan — to sever those ties over the deadly strikes on Gaza.

Hamas, whose charter specifically calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdon and the European Union and is banned in Jordan.

From 2000 to 2004, Hamas was responsible for killing nearly 400 Israelis and wounding more than 2,000 in 425 attacks, according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
From 2001 through May 2008, Hamas launched more than 3,000 Qassam rockets and 2,500 mortar attacks against Israeli targets.
Israeli military sources estimated Monday that Hamas' military wing was still intact and that it was capable of carrying out substantial operations in the near future, YnetNews reported.

Three days of strikes have damaged Hamas' ability to launch rockets, but the group still managed to fire dozens Monday deep into southern Israel. One medium-range rocket fired at the Israeli city of Ashkelon killed a man and wounded several others. It was the second fatality in Israel since the beginning of the offensive, and the first person ever to be killed by a rocket in Ashkelon, a city of 120,000.

The White House said Hamas was showing its "true colors as a terrorist organization" and called for it to cease its rocket attacks. "In order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable ceasefire," said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

At first light Monday, strong winds blew black smoke from the bombed sites in Gaza City over deserted streets. The air hummed with the buzz of pilotless drones and the roar of jets, punctuated by the explosions of new airstrikes.

One strike on Monday destroyed the home of the top commander in Hamas's armed wing, killing seven people, including several members of his immediate family.

At least 20 people were injured in the blast, though the target, Hamas chief rocket senior Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades commander, Maher Zaqout, was not at home at the time, Hamas said.

The Israel Defense Forces said Monday that the battle in Gaza was only beginning, and that "the worst is not behind us — it is still ahead of us" during a briefing to southern communities.

"After this operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza," said IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Brigadier-General Dan Harel, according to YnetNews.

Israel carried out five separate strikes on the houses of field operatives, though there has been no confirmation that any of them were killed. In another air assault, an Islamic Jihad commander was killed as he was walking near his house.

A group of Iranian hardline clerics volunteered to fight in the Gaza Strip in response to Israel's air strikes, the Fars news agency reported on Monday.

"From Monday the Combatant Clergy Society has activated its web site for a week to register volunteers to fight against the Zionist regime (Israel) in either the military, financial or propaganda fields," the semi-official news agency said.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a religious decree to Muslims around the world on Sunday, ordering them to defend Palestinians in Gaza against Israeli attacks "in any way possible."

One strike destroyed a five-story building in the women's wing at Islamic University, one of the most prominent Hamas symbols. Another attack ravaged a compound controlled by Preventive Security, one of the group's chief security arms, and a third destroyed a house next to the residence of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister. Like other Hamas leaders, Haniyeh is in hiding.

Late Sunday, Israeli aircraft attacked a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp next to Gaza City, killing a woman, a toddler and three young teenage girls, Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said.

In the southern town of Rafah, a toddler and his two teenage brothers were killed in an airstrike aimed at a Hamas commander, Hassanain said. In Gaza City, another attack killed a man and his wife.

Gaza's nine hospitals were overwhelmed. Hassanain, who keeps a record for the Gaza Health Ministry, said over 1,400 were wounded over two days of fighting, and that casualties were now being taken to private clinics and even homes.

Abdel Hafez, a 55-year-old history teacher, waited outside a Gaza City bakery to buy bread, one of the few people visible outdoors. He said he was not a Hamas supporter, but believed the strikes would only increase support for the group. "Each strike, each drop of blood are giving Hamas more fuel to continue," he said.

Israeli leaders have said the operation might be long. "The goal of our current operation is to ... create a situation where Israeli civilians living in the south of the country no longer have to live in constant fear of a Hamas rocket attack," government spokesman Mark Regev said Monday.

Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year military occupation, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the territory to hunt militants firing rockets at Israeli towns. But it has shied away from retaking the entire strip for fear of getting bogged down in urban warfare.

The assault has sparked diplomatic fallout. Syria decided to suspend indirect peace talks with Israel, begun earlier this year. The U.N. Security Council called on both sides to halt the fighting and asked Israel to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza. The prime minister of ..........................http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473448,00.html

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Dec 29, 2008 11:39 | Updated Dec 29, 2008 21:43
IAF strikes Hamas rocket chief's home
By YAAKOV KATZ AND JPOST.COM STAFF


An IAF aircraft on Monday night struck the home of Maher Zakut, the commander of Hamas's rocket-firing forces, the army said. In was unclear whether Zakut was in the house at the time. Palestinian sources said that seven people were killed in the strike. According to reports, several more targets were struck in the Strip.

Several secondary explosions were caused by the strike because of a large weapons warehouse alongside the senior operative's house.

Five people were reportedly killed when an IAF aircraft targeted a car. Palestinian sources reported that 14 people were killed in air-strikes Monday evening.

The air force also struck a truck carrying Grad-type missiles, setting off a series of secondary explosions, the IDF said. The army believes that Hamas was transferring the missiles to a hideout out of fear that their location had been compromised. The trasfer was also supposedly intended to bring them closer to areas from which they could be launched at Israel.

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Bush, Obama and the Gaza Blitz
by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)
Posted 12/30/2008 ET

Unwilling to control its fighters, who fired scores of missiles into Israel at the end of their six-month ceasefire, Hamas gave Israel the provocation it needed to deliver a savage blow to the Palestinian enclave in Gaza.

Saturday was the bloodiest day in the history of the Palestinian people since being driven from their homes in the War of 1948. One thousand were killed or wounded, as the Israeli Air Force conducted over a hundred strikes -- on graduation ceremonies for Hamas fighters, police stations and storage sites for rockets.

About Israel's right and duty to defend its border towns, there is no dispute. When Hamas permits Gaza to be used as a launch pad for rockets, it must expect retaliation. Nor can Hamas claim some right to dictate the limits of that retaliation.

Yet the wisdom of so savage a retribution for rockets that killed not one Israeli is open to question. And crass Israeli politics seems to be behind this premeditated and planned blitz.

With Likud's hawkish "Bibi" Netanyahu ahead in the polls for the Feb. 10 election, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Labor's candidate, had to show that he, too, could be ruthless with Hamas.

Kadima Party candidate and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has an even greater need than the highly decorated Barak to show toughness. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, departing in scandal, wants to exit in a blaze of glory, to blot out the memory of a botched war against Hezbollah that he launched in the summer of 2006.

However, while Israel's politicians all seem to have a stake in these devastating strikes, Israel herself will pay the price.

Given the casualty toll, over 300 dead and 1,300 wounded as of this writing, Hamas will have to exact its pound of flesh. The Hamas wing that seeks renewed war with Israel will now shout into silence the wing working with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak on a new ceasefire.

The moderate Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas, who has been talking to Israel, testifying to her good faith, has been made to appear the puppet and fool. A new intifada spreading to the West Bank, with suicide attacks inside Israel, is now possible.

Moderate Arabs, who have recognized Israel or backed peace, will now be seen by the Arab street as appeasers impotent to stop the public suffering of the Palestinian people.

As for President Bush's hopes of midwifing a peace that would create a Palestinian state, they are as dead as the Annapolis process he set in train. In advancing peace in the Middle East, Bush's eight-year record is now a near-absolute failure.

For four years, Bush refused to talk to Yasir Arafat, though Bill Clinton had negotiated with him, as had four Israeli prime ministers, two of who shared a Nobel Prize with Arafat. In his second term, Bush, after insisting Hamas be included in free elections in Palestine, refused to recognize Hamas when it won those elections.

Arafat was a terrorist and Hamas is a terrorist organization, declared Bush, and we don't negotiate with terrorists. Yet, Bush de-listed Libya as a state sponsor of terror and sent Condi Rice to chat up Col. Gadhafi, though Gadhafi still has on his hands the blood of scores of American school kids from the Lockerbie massacre of 1989 that Libya and Gadhafi engineered

For eight years, like the "dummy" in a hand of bridge, Bush has sat mute as his Israeli partner, Sharon or Olmert, played America's cards as well as their own. The Bush response to Saturday's carnage, as anticipated, was to blame Hamas for causing it and urge Israelis to be careful about civilian casualties as they go about their reprisals.

Whatever Israel decides, we support. For eight years that has been the most reliable guide to U.S. Middle East policy.

And Barack Obama? Forty-eight hours after the Israeli blitz began, he and his national security team remain silent.

Hopefully, Obama will bring with him a new Mideast policy, one made in the U.S.A., for the U.S.A. Hopefully, just as Israel has its private links to Syria through Turkey, to Hamas through Egypt and to Hezbollah, Obama will establish independent U.S. channels to all three, and adopt a separate U.S. policy toward all three, as Israel does.

While the United States must support Israel's right to defend her towns and to strike bases from which Israelis are being attacked, Obama should denounce the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, by Israel's cutting off their electricity in the dead of ...........http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30091

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Obama must still let Israel defend itself

    Re Dec. 28 article, "Israeli bombs rain on Gaza": Israel had occupied the land know as Gaza after Israel's defeat of the Arabs in the Six-Day War. Israel subsequently ceded control of Gaza to the Palestinians in accordance with the so-called Oslo "Peace" Accords. Hamas, a terrorist organization whose mission includes the destruction of Israel, took over Gaza in 2007 after its victory in Palestinian elections.
    Although operating under a ceasefire with Israel, Hamas has launched over 3,000 rockets into Israel's civilian population over the last year. In December, Hamas declared an end to the "cease fire" and subsequently launched 300 rockets into Israel's civilian population over a one-week period. True to their cowardly ways, Hamas launched these rocket attacks from Palestinian civilian areas.
    At long last, Israel has decided to defend itself by launching air strikes on the areas where the Hamas rocket attacks originated. Thankfully, President Bush has condemned Hamas and has declared support for Israel to defend itself. Not surprisingly, the Arab world, as well as some of our so-called allies in the United Nations, have condemned Israel for defending itself.
    Hamas endorsed Barack Obama for president during the U.S. elections. Hopefully, President Obama will continue the policy of President Bush and support Israel's right to self-defense.

    TIMOTHY J. GAFFNEY SR.
    Rotterdam

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U.S. too tolerant of Israel’s belligerence

    Once again the Israeli government has bombed the Gaza Strip, using U.S.-made weapons, killing hundreds.
    The Israeli government claims the air attacks are designed to halt Palestinian rocket fire into Israel. Numerous other motives can be seen. These include a desire to perpetuate the conflict, allowing Israel to confiscate more Palestinian land, show the world how powerless President Bush is, pressure President-elect Obama to pledge allegiance to Israel and to keep the Israeli public believing that there is no Palestinian partner to make peace with.
    Missing from most of the news reporting is any discussion of the causes of the conflict. Let us not forget that it is Israel that maintains a brutal military occupation of millions of Palestinians in the West Bank, prevents the return of millions of Palestinian refugees to their former homes or to be compensated for the Israeli theft of their property, imposes apartheid of the non-Jews who live within Israel, refuses to negotiate in good faith while defying international law and a near-worldwide consensus that Israel withdraw its military forces to its May 1967 borders and imposes genocide on Gaza Palestinians — all with the blessing of the U.S. government and much of the American Jewish political and religious leadership.
    The whole world is watching. The Gaza Palestinians should end their rocket fire into Israel. Ambushing and slaughtering hundreds of police will not end these attacks. The Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts will end when Israel treats Palestinians and other Arabs with dignity and respect. The United States should require Israel to do so.

    THOMAS ELLIS
    Albany

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NYC mayor heads to Israel to 'show his support'
Jan. 4, 2009
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is heading to Israel along with police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and New York Rep. Gary Ackerman.

Spokesman Andrew Brent says the mayor "is going in order to show his support for Israel."

The trip comes as Israel launches a ground offensive in Gaza following eight days of punishing airstrikes that failed to halt militant rocket attacks on Israel.

Bloomberg, who is Jewish, is scheduled to spend Sunday meeting with the mayors of Sderot and Ashkelon and with New Yorkers who have moved to Israel. He's expected to be back in New York by Monday morning.

The mayor has already voiced his support for Israel in recent days, saying he believes Israel has a right to defend itself.

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Unrealistic idealism when it comes to Israel

    Re Jan. 2 letter, "U.S. too tolerant of Israel's belligerence:" Once again, Albany’s Tom Ellis is to be commended for his efforts to enlighten the world (or at least the Capital Region) on how to bring about a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue in light of recent events in Gaza. And once again, his one-sided concern and skewed idealism fall well short of his intended goal.
    Mr. Ellis fails to mention that just two years ago Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza after a decades-long occupation in the hopes that both sides could begin negotiating an equitable settlement to their 61-year-old conflict. Unfortunately, the radical Hamas arm of the Palestinian movement wrested control of Gaza from the more moderate Fatah wing and began sending rockets and suicide bombers into Israel, proving to the world that “land-for peace” initiatives are fraught with danger.
    As far as Israel imposing “apartheid of the non-Jews who live within Israel," Israel’s Muslims control their holy sites, enjoy representation in the Knesset and by their own admission enjoy more freedoms and a higher standard of living than their counterparts in other Islamic lands. If only the same could be said for those Jews who still live in fear as oppressed minorities in those same lands.
    In short, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end when:
    The Muslim world finally accepts the existence of Israel on its ancestral territories;
    Moderate Arabs compel the Palestinian leadership to hand over the $900 million stolen by Arafat and his cronies from the United States and the European Union and use the money as it was originally intended — to build the infrastructure of a viable Palestinian state rather than the luxury villas in the West Bank and Gaza that overlook the squalor of many Palestinian neighborhoods. Even that can’t be blamed on the “Zionist Entity”;
    Well-meaning activists like Mr. Ellis finally refrain from romanticizing the Jews as cardboard cutout figures from children’s Bible story books or as one-dimensional characters from “Fiddler on the Roof” or “The Ten Commandments."
    Most Jews have, I believe, Mr. Ellis’ capacity for idealism. But like Mr. Ellis, they can also be just as petty, provincial and one-sided in their efforts to survive in a brutal and unjust world as anyone else. For idealists like Mr. Ellis to expect the Jews to respond from the vantage point of a higher moral and ethical plane is unrealistic and just another form of bigotry disguised as “social action."

    NEIL B. YETWIN
    Schenectady

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Palestinian supporter misconstrued facts

    Tom Ellis' Jan. 2 letter, "U.S. too tolerant of Israel's belligerence," is incorrect and disregards the facts.
    The Palestinians are responsible for their cult of terrorism, hatred and martyrdom. Hamas terrorists are launching terrorist missiles against Israeli civilians, while using women and children as human shields.
    Israel has endured many thousands of rockets and mortars since 2001, fired into civilian areas by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who are the real purveyors of terror. I was in Sderot, Israel, in 2004, and our bus missed a terror missile by five minutes. We saw young children with scars on their bodies from these Palestinian terror weapons.
    Other Arab states also oppose the Iranianbacked Hamas terrorists that also threaten Egypt, Jordan, etc.
    Israel phoned civilians in Gaza prior to attacks on Hamas terror bases to avoid civilian casualties. It also provides humanitarian aid and treats wounded Palestinians in its hospitals.
    Ellis and others erroneously accuse Israel of occupying Palestinian lands. Hamas regards all of Israel as occupied, and has a covenant to destroy Israel. In reality, Israel occupies 22 percent of the historic lands of Israel; Jordan the remainder.
    Instead of trying to rescue false victims, we should support those who practice coexistence and civility, and want true peace. The world has given the Palestinians billions of dollars in aid to see their leaders living in luxury, driving Mercedes and buying Iranian terror weapons — instead of helping their people become self-reliant, and to free them from their evil cult of hatred and death.

    JACK D. LAUBER
    Latham

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U.S. must stop Israeli incursion into Gaza

    Our leaders can and must enforce international and U.S. law with regard to the Israeli invasion of Gaza.
    Israel receives over $3 billion of our tax dollars annually as the biggest recipient of U.S. economic and military aid. Under the Arms Export Control Act, U.S. weapons transferred to another country may only be used within one’s own territory, for very narrowly defined defensive purposes — not in an offensive onslaught, as Israel is currently engaging in.
    In the international realm, Israel is clearly violating established law against collective punishment of a civilian population for the actions of an armed adversary, and is also violating the principle of proportionate response to a security threat.
    No matter who the aggressor is, any response to violence by a country must protect civilians and be proportionate.

    ZUHAIR AL-ATWI
    Berne