A Peek into a Mind

A grad missile had hit one of the malls in Ashkelon, my hometown. 10 wounded, including a baby girl and a woman in serious condition, and 2 kids. ( AP, Ynet (English), Jerusalem Post, Ynet (Hebrew) )

I knew my father is at home but my mom was out doing stuff so I called quickly to make sure she’s ok. She was home.

The mall at the time was full of people and there are many people there that were also wounded while trying to run away in panic. The concrete roof in the area on the impact simply collapsed to the floor below - which is mostly a medical center and clinics. A female doctor, a nurse and the patient were all wounded.

There was no siren before the fall, and the IDF already stated the Grad rocket was launched from Beit-Lahiea and they apparently missed noticing it.

There is a very big gathering near the mall now, some of the crying, some of them pretty angry. The police is trying to evacuate them, stating there is a danger in gathering in the same place the Palestinians already managed to hit it once.

Notice that only this morning the Hamas stated that they do not seek peace with Israel and they wish to completely destroy it - “After we defeat the Zionists we will persecute them… we will persecute them to eternity, and the sun of the freedom and independence of the Palestinians will burn all of the Zionists,” (source)

I’m pretty fed up with the whole shit. I say, fuck “civilians”. Just scrotch Gaza. Break their arms and legs, like a nobel prize winner once said.

I just got out of the secured room, after a sudden CODE RED alarm was heard in Ashkelon. I was actually just entering the shower before I leave back to the center, when the siren started. I went downstairs, opened the front door, called Leonardo (which came running) and we all went into the secured room.

As of the time I’m writing this, both Ynet and Ashkelon news only reported the siren and that 2 booms were heard in the city but no details yet.

There is a problem with the regular “CODE RED” alarm they use in Sderot (a female voice saing “TZEVA ADOM! TZEVA ADOM!”) - in Ashkelon not all areas manage to hear it. So they turned into using the regular war time/memorial days siren. So now you suddenly hear a siren going up and down really strong from all the directions. I mean, as if the Grad missiles weren’t scary enough…

Anyway, I’ll update with more information later.

Update: 2 rockets landed in open fields between Yad Mordehai kibbutz and southern Ashkelon. No one was hurt and no damages done.  This time.

Reports: Ashkelon News (Hebrew), Ynet (Hebrew), YnetNews (English)

I’ve spent the evening reading through other people’s blogs and news posts. I’ve also tried to find how are we, Israelies, are presented in the world mainstream media, as well as reading Ant-Israeli/Pro-Palestinian blogs. I have seen quite a bit of mis information and lots of lies. But still, it was quite an interesting read.

Since I’ve noticed it takes me a lot of time to find and track these sites, I’ve set a sub-site to this blog tracking the sites that I wish to track. Not all of them, though - there were a couple of sites I didn’t find RSS feeds of (for example, Guy Behor’s site - which is an excellent read if you know Hebrew).  Feel free to check it out yourself as well. If you wish to suggest new sites to track you can post them in the comments to this post.

Please notice this sub-site is mainly for my own personal use, and less of a public resource, so I’ll only add sites that are interesting read to me. Also, I would like to add more of “the other side” blogs. Yea, lies and all included…

My mother is currently in a Taxi going to her workplace - one of the community centers in Ashkelon. A Grad missile hit next to it so even though she has a day off she went there to calm the workers (she’s the manager of the center) and see what’s going on.

My father refuses to get into the shielded room. At least he’s not like the parents of my friend which still thinks the whole situation is “interesting” and every time there is a COLOR RED alarm, they go outside to see where the rocket hits…

I think the people of Ashkelon are still adjusting to the new situation. There is a lot of confusion and different people still behave differently. People who usually panic - are panicking. People who are usually indifferent - are still indifferent. A video from a restaurant near the marina, where a missile hit Saturday, showed how confused people are: The people there were inside the restaurant ran outside, people outside the restaurant ran inside and some of the people - both inside and outside, just froze.

I’m currently in Petach Tikva, where I work, but I’m seriously considering going back to Ashkelon to be with my parents at least for the coming week.

Update 17:40: 3 Grad Missiles landed inside Ashkelon. The missile not far from my mom’s workplace hit inside a house. A young girl was wounded from sharpnails and 2 others went into shock as well.

Side Note: In days like these people turn anywhere for a little bit more info on what’s going on. It’s the days when the local sites flourish.  Such is the case with Ashkelon News, a small local site (in Hebrew only) that immediately updated about COLOR RED alarms, where rockets  fell and who exactly are the people there. Since Ashkelon was up until a few years ago a small city, most of the long-time residents knows each other, so you even say the family names of people and where they work, and others will know who you’re talking about.

Update 6:43: 2 Soldiers were killed in the operation in Gaza. 6 others were wounded. Picture by Hetzel Yosef of Ynet.

17:10: Just came back from watching the special news broadcast on Israel Channel 2 (The site has video broadcasts in Hebrew but doesn’t like Firefox very much). According to what the experts said on the broadcast, the current fighting in Gaza is not just a simple retaliation operation.

According to Roni Daniel, this is not yet the real operation. The official targets the army was instructed to achieve include changing the whole equation and either weakening the Hamas considerable, or even, if the conditions will allow, wiping it out completely. Of course, firing of any rockets what so ever needs to halted.

What Ehud Yaari suggested, is that the current battle is trying to achieve a starting point to Cease-Fire understanding that Israel could live with - which won’t mean the Hamas could arm itself to the teeth and continue smuggling weapon from Egypt and Israel could do nothing. Also, in no case the Israeli government will not agree to any cease-fire with Hamas in the west bank. Such a thing is the death warrant of the Palestinian Authority headed by Abu Mazen (we all so how brutal were the Hamas coup when they took over Gaza).

What currently happens in Gaza is that IDF went physically 3km deep into the strip to create some kind of a “security belt”. Since some of the 3km include heavily populated settlements, and almost all the terrorists (Hamas security forces, Islamic Jihad etc) flow there to fight, it became very intense. There is also use of artillery and F-16 fighter jets. Since there is serious fighting inside populated area, there are so far civilians hurt as well.

The leaders of Hamas in Gaza went all underground as they fear targeted assassinations (Which means both the army and me are on the same page here), and the spokesmen of Hamas currently are the Haled Mashaal guys that sits in Syria.

This time the alarm was closer. It took the kids about 2 seconds to disappear from the street. My parents, Leonardo (our dog) and I went all to the shielded room and waited until we heard the fall (which was in a close neighborhood).

There are sirens now, police and ambulances driving around. The kids are back in the street now, though the mothers shout to them to stay in the parking place and not go far.

Now I can understand why the people of Sderot feels so left out - as opposed to previous wars (including the last one with Lebanon) - it looks like nobody cares. The radio says nothing, TV continues as usual, even Ynet takes about 5 minuted to update and even then it’s only in the little scrolling updates - nothing on the front page or anything.

It’s only us and the rockets, and there is a feeling everybody else doesn’t care.

I’m going back to my apartment in the center this evening, have a meeting with a good friend who just came back from the UK. But my parents stays here and I already knows I’ll be worried sick.

update 4:50: While I won’t say exactly where the 2 rockets have hit, I’ll tell you it’s in the west side of the city. So far 3 wounded reported - 1 person was wounded medium and 2 light. Military helicopters keep fly back and forth over our heads here and I think I can also heard a few sounds of our artillery. Let’s hope they hit all the right targets.

According to this news report, there fighting goes on intensely in Gaza today:

According to reports, 32 Palestinians were killed in heavy exchanges of fire which erupted in the area. Palestinians reported that 12 of the casualties were civilians, including seven children, three women and two unarmed men. More than 60 Palestinians were injured.

Most of the gunmen killed were Hamas members. Several others were Islamic Jihad operatives and one was a member of the Popular Resistance Committees.

There were also earlier accusations from the Hamas-Controlled-Gaza that the Israeli army had hit a civilian house and killed 4, including a 1-year-old girl. However, reports says locals claim that the house was hit by a stray rocket fired by the Palestinians from within Gaza.

I got to admit that while I’m very unhappy with the whole escalation thing (I mean, not I need to worry to my parents on a daily basis), I’m very content with the way Israel is handling it so far. I would have liked to see only one thing added - targeted assassination of all Hamas seniors. Everyone of them. The media keeps talking that this option is not in a high priority cause there is a deep concern for the life of Gilad Shalit, the soldier the Gazan terrorists had kidnapped and still hold hostage.

I’ll sit and write some more of my thoughts about it later, probably.

Apparently, the COLOR RED I’ve experienced about half an hour ago was the second one in Ashkelon. Around 5am there was a COLOR RED alarm in a more distant part of the city (obviously I’m not going to give exact location…) and 3 rockets hit the city.

One of the rockets fell in an empty field, one hit a residential house and caused light injuries in the heads of 2 kids, a brother and a sister. Another rocket hit directly the home of two elderly couple. The were both saved (being at the bedroom sleeping) but the flat was pretty much ruined.

Since Midnight there were about 33 rockets launched from Gaza. I think it’s a relatively small number caused the Air Force is constantly hovering there and try to hit places where rockets are being shot from.

According tot he news sites, IDF was exchanging heavy fire with Hamas in Sajahie in the north of the Gaza Strip. It was originally a standard operation to hit terrorists that are working in this area, and scheduled even before the last escalation. The army, however, anticipated a bigger resistance this time and was right.Ynet reports 14 Palestinians killed, most of them hamas members (according to what the Hamas announced), 20 others were wounded. 5 Israeli soldiers were already wounded (light to medium) during the fight.

It is said that there is currently some serious fighting going on as the army take control of areas where they shoots the rockets from, and the Hamas, obviously not wanting to lose launching grounds, is fighting seriously.

On the other hand, the Hamas never had a problem shooting from inside residential areas, forcing the population to be human shields. For example - schools:

There are many first times in life. When you reach a certain age they get fewer and fewer. 5 minutes ago all of us in Ashkelon had another brand new first time. The first time of COLOR RED alarm in Ashkelon.

My mother heard it first. I was still sleeping when she rushed into the room and woke me up. We went down to the shielded room in the first floor. My dad, however, took his time - he went to the the kitchen first to get something to drink and was clearly more irritated by us than by the alarm. When my mom told him to hurry he said he had been through enough wars, and he’s over with running for every rocket falling around.

While we were in the shielded room we also heard the hit. It wasn’t very close so we weren’t really worried. It wasn’t like the one on Thursday that I could really hear the whistle of the fall and the hit ‘boom’ that followed was not that far at all.

I think the demonstration being organized by the residents of Ashkelon this evening might be bit more successful than I originally thought…