Gaza Welcomes ISIS.

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ISIS Comes to Gaza by Khaled Abu Toameh July 11, 2016 at 5:00 am http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8431/isis-gaza-sinai 42 Comment Recent reports leave no doubt as to cooperation between Hamas and ISIS groups in Sinai. These reports, the Egyptians and Palestinian Authority argue, provide further evidence that the Gaza Strip remains a major base for various jihadi terror groups that pose a real threat. The report said that terrorists wanted by the Egyptian authorities were admitted to the Gaza Strip hospital in return for weapons given to Hamas by the Islamic State in the Sinai. Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) can continue to talk all they want about a Palestinian state that would be established in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. But when ISIS-inspired groups are active in Gaza and there are no signs that the Hamas regime is weakening, it is rather difficult to imagine a Palestinian state. The jihadi groups clearly seek to create an Islamic emirate combining the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Abbas might thank Israel for its presence in the West Bank -- a presence that allows him and his government to be something other than infidel cannon fodder for the jihadis. Hamas denies it up and down. Nonetheless, there are growing signs that the Islamist movement, which is based in the Gaza Strip, is continuing to cooperate with other jihadi terror groups that are affiliated with Islamic State (ISIS), especially those that have been operating in the Egyptian peninsula of Sinai in recent years. This cooperation, according to Palestinian Authority security sources, is the main reason behind the ongoing tensions between the Egyptian authorities and Hamas. These tensions have prompted the Egyptians to keep the Rafah border crossing mostly closed since 2013, trapping tens of thousands of Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip. In 2015, the Egyptians opened the Rafah terminal for a total of twenty-one days to allow humanitarian cases and those holding foreign nationalities to leave or enter the Gaza Strip. This year so far, Rafah has been open for a total of twenty-eight days. Sources in the Gaza Strip say there are about 30,000 humanitarian cases that need to leave immediately. They include dozens of university students who haven't been able to go back to their universities abroad and some 4,000 patients in need of urgent medical treatment. Surprisingly, last week the Egyptians opened the Rafah terminal for five days in a row, allowing more than 4,500 Palestinians to leave and enter the Gaza Strip. The unusual gesture came on the eve of the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr. However, the terminal was closed again at the beginning of the feast on July 6. The renewed closure of the Rafah terminal coincided with reports that efforts to end the tensions between Hamas and Egypt hit a snag. According to the reports, the Egyptian authorities decided to cancel a planned visit to Cairo by senior Hamas officials. The decision to cancel the visit, the reports said, came in the wake of the dissatisfaction of the Egyptians with the way Hamas has been handling security along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. The closure of the border crossing came as a blow to Hamas's efforts to patch up its differences with Egypt and pave the way for easing severe travel restrictions imposed by Cairo on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In recent weeks, Hamas announced that it had deployed hundreds of its border guards along the shared border with Egypt in order to prevent infiltration both ways, especially of jihadi terrorists who have been targeting Egyptian security personnel and civilians in Sinai. However, the Egyptian authorities remain extremely skeptical about Hamas's measures. Egyptian security officials are convinced that Hamas is not serious about preventing jihadi terrorists from crossing the border in either direction. Moreover, the Egyptians suspect that Hamas maintains close relations with some of the ISIS-affiliated groups in Sinai, and is providing them with weapons and medical treatment. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has refused to conduct high-level contacts with Hamas since he came to power in 2013. His regime views Hamas as a threat to Egypt's national security. The few meetings that did take place between the two sides were restricted to security issues; that was why Sisi entrusted his General Intelligence officials to conduct the discussions with the leaders of the Islamist movement who visited Cairo in the past months. Apparently, the Egyptian skepticism towards Hamas is not unjustified. In recent weeks, reports have surfaced that leave no doubt as to cooperation between Hamas and ISIS groups in Sinai. These reports, the Egyptians and Palestinian Authority argue, provide further evidence that the Gaza Strip remains a major base for various jihadi terror groups that pose a real threat not only to Egypt's national security, but also to Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, as well as neighboring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon. Reports have also emerged that some of the jihadi terrorists in Sinai have been receiving medical treatment in hospitals in the Gaza Strip, with the approval of Hamas. The terrorists, who are wanted by the Egyptian authorities, are believed to have entered the Gaza Strip through smuggling tunnels along the border with Egypt. According to one report, one of the terrorist leaders from Sinai, Abu Sweilem, was documented lying in bed at the Abu Yusef al-Najjar Hospital in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. The report said that Abu Sweilem was hospitalized under the heavy guard of members of Hamas's armed wing, Ezaddin al-Qassam. It said that he, and other terrorists wanted by the Egyptian authorities, were admitted to the Gaza Strip hospital in return for weapons given to Hamas by the Islamic State in Sinai, which is known as Wilayat Sina'. Another report by the same source claimed that Mohamed Abu Shawish, a senior member of Ezaddin al-Qassam in the Gaza Strip, has been helping train and organize the jihadi terrorists in Sinai. Hamas claimed that the man had fled the Gaza Strip to join ISIS and was wanted by its armed wing for defection. The report, however, noted that Abu Shawish was moving freely between the Gaza Strip and Sinai and was even using Hamas vehicles to commute between the two areas. It added that Abu Shawish has even set up a vast network of relations along the Palestinian side of the border with Egypt to facilitate the smuggling of weapons and terrorists in both directions. The report goes on to reveal that the top Hamas operative is in touch with Eyad al-Khaldi, the owner of a clothing factory in the Gaza Strip, who has been supplying him with military uniforms and other equipment for the terrorists in Sinai. The report cites this as evidence of the growing activities of the Sinai-based jihadi terrorists inside the Gaza Strip, which is taking place with the blessing of top Hamas officials. Hamas has in the past indeed cracked down on ISIS-affiliated groups and individuals in the Gaza Strip. But this happens only when they seem to pose some kind of a threat or challenge to Hamas's rule over the Gaza Strip. This crackdown, however, has clearly not stopped Hamas members, especially those belonging to Ezaddin al-Qassam, from collaborating with other groups that are linked to ISIS and that are engaged in terror attacks against the Egyptians in Sinai. Isolated and desperate for cash in the Gaza Strip, Hamas seems prepared to cooperate with anyone in order to retain its control and survive. Some Palestinians in the Gaza Strip argue that the double standard Hamas employs in dealing with the jihadi terrorists is the result of a split between its political and military wing. While the top political leaders of Hamas appear to be keen to distance themselves from the jihadi terrorists, the commanders of Ezaddin al-Qassam are acting independently and working with anyone who hands them weapons. These Palestinians also point out that an increasing number of Ezaddin al-Qassam members have in recent years fled the Gaza Strip to join ISIS in Sinai, Syria and Iraq -- a development that continues to worry the political leadership of Hamas. Those who have not been able to flee the Gaza Strip are joining other jihadi groups that are operating inside the Gaza Strip. Reports indicate that an increasing number of Hamas gunmen have in recent years fled the Gaza Strip to join ISIS in Sinai, Syria and Iraq. Pictured above: An August 2014 image of terrorists from the Islamic State in Sinai (then known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis), preparing to behead four Egyptians they accused of spying for Israel. Last month, further evidence of this trend was provided by the death of Khaled al-Tarabin, a former Hamas operative killed while fighting alongside ISIS in Syria. He is the seventh Hamas-affiliated Palestinian to be killed while fighting alongside ISIS in Iraq and Syria in recent months,according to sources in the Gaza Strip. Regardless of the level of cooperation between Hamas and jihadi terrorists in Sinai, the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip will pay the price. Reports about this cooperation simply entrench in the minds of the Egyptians the need to close the borders, humanitarian needs be damned. As for the Palestinian Authority, all it can do for now is watch the Gaza Strip -- which it is hoping will become part of a future Palestinian state -- descend into hell. Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of the Palestinian Authority can continue to talk all they want about a Palestinian state that would be established in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. But when ISIS-inspired groups are active in the Gaza Strip and there are no signs that the Hamas regime is weakening, it is rather difficult to imagine a Palestinian state. Abbas has not been able to set foot in the Gaza Strip since 2007. Even his private residence in Gaza City is off-limits to him. But Hamas is just the beginning of the story for Abbas. The jihadi groups clearly seek to create an Islamic emirate combining the Gaza Strip and Sinai. The Palestinian Authority president might thank Israel for its presence in the West Bank -- a presence that allows him and his government to be something other than infidel cannon fodder for the jihadis. Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem. Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter © 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Attacks On Israelis Is NOT An Intifada

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Things We Need to Stop Hearing About the ‘Stabbing Intifada’

OCTOBER 21, 2015 3:16 PM 16 COMMENTS

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Bernard-Henri Lévy

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European Jews attacked MEMRI Israel Palestinian Terrorism stabbing attacks temple mount muslims third intifada

The knife used by an Arab terrorist in a stabbing attack in Kiryat Arba. The terrorist was shot and killed. Photo: Israel Police Foreign Press.

It is painful to hear the phrase “lone wolves” applied to the handful — and perhaps tomorrow the dozens and then the hundreds — of killers of Jews “liked” by thousands of “friends,” followed by tens of thousands of “Tweeters,” and connected to a constellation of sites (such as the Al-Aqsa Media Center and its page dedicated to “the third Jerusalem intifada”) that are orchestrating, at least in part, this bloody ballet.

It is equally painful to listen to the refrain about “Palestinian youth no longer subject to any control,” after seeing the series of sermons published by the Middle East Media Research Institute, in which preachers from Gaza, facing the camera, dagger in hand, call upon followers to take to the streets to maim as many Jews as they can, to inflict as much pain as possible and to spill the maximum amount of blood; doubly painful to hear that refrain from Mahmoud Abbas himself, at the outset of this tragic chain of events a few weeks back, describing as “heroic” the murder of the Henkins in the presence of their children, and then expressing indignation at seeing the “dirty feet” of Jews “defiling” the Al-Aqsa Mosque and declaring “each drop of blood” shed by “each martyr” who dies for Jerusalem “pure.”

Not only painful and intolerable, but also inapplicable, is the canned phrase about “political and social desperation” that is used to explain — or excuse — criminal acts. Everything we know about the new terrorists, their motives and the pride their relatives take in converting, post-mortem, crime into martyrdom and infamy into sacrifice, is, alas, much closer to the portrait of the robotic jihadist who yesterday would take off for Kashmir and today turns up in Syria or Iraq.

It is highly doubtful that “intifada” is the right term to apply to acts that bear more resemblance to the latest installment of a worldwide jihad of which Israel is just one of the stages.

It is doubtful that erudite disquisitions on occupation, colonization and Netanyahu-esque intransigence explain much about a wave of violence that counts among its favored targets Jews with sidelocks — that is, those Jews who are the most conspicuously Jewish, those whom their killers must consider the very image of the Jew, and who, by the way, are often at odds with the Jewish state when not in open secession from it.

It is doubtful that the very question of the state, the question of the two states and thus the question of a negotiated partition of the land — which is, for moderates on both sides, the only question worth posing — has anything to do with a conflagration in which politics has given way to fanaticism and to theories of vast conspiracy, one in which some decide to stab random others as they pass by because of a vague rumor reporting a secret plot to deny Muslims access to Islam’s third holiest site.

It is doubtful, in other words, that the Palestinian cause is being helped in any way by the extremist turn. On the other hand, it is absolutely certain that the cause has everything to lose by it, that the reasonable heads within the movement will be the ones who wind up flattened by the wave, and that the last proponents of compromise, along with what remains of the peace camp in Israel, will pay dearly for the reckless condemnations of the imams of Rafah and Khan Younis.

Intolerable and inapplicable, too, is the cliché of the “cycle” or “spiral” of violence, which, by putting the kamikaze killers and their victims on the same footing, sows confusion and amounts to an incitement to further action.

Intolerable, for the same reason, are the rhetorical appeals “for restraint” and disingenuous pleas “not to inflame the street,” which, as with the “spiral of violence,” reverse the order of causality by implying that a soldier, police officer or civilian acting in self-defense has committed a wrong equal to that of someone who chooses to die after spreading as much terror as he possibly can.

Strange indeed, how tepid are the condemnations of the stabbings of innocent passers-by and rammings of bus stops — condemnations that I have to think would be less half-hearted if the acts had occurred on the streets of Washington, Paris or London.

More than strange — disturbing — is the difference in tone between the equivocal reaction to the recent killings and the unanimous and unambiguous international outpouring of emotion and solidarity elicited by the fatal hatchet attack on a soldier on a London street on May 22, 2013, a scenario that was not very different from those unfolding today in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Intolerable, again, that most of the major media have paid the grieving Israeli families only a fraction of the attention they have paid the families of the perpetrators.

Intolerable, finally, the minor mythology growing up around this story of daggers: The weapon of the poor? Really? The weapon one uses because it is within reach and one has no other? When I see those blades, I think of the one used to execute Daniel Pearl; I think of the beheadings of Hervé Gourdel, James Foley and David Haines; I think that the Islamic State’s videos have clearly gained a following, and that we stand on the threshold of a form of barbarity that must be unconditionally denounced if we do not want to see its methods exported everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

Bernard-Henri Lévy is one of France’s most famed philosophers, a journalist, and a bestselling writer. He is considered a founder of the New Philosophy movement and is a leading thinker on religious issues, genocide, and international affairs. His 2013 book, Les Aventures de la vérité—Peinture et philosophie: un récit, explores the historical interplay of philosophy and art. His new play, “Hotel Europe,” which premiered in Sarajevo on June 27, 2014, and in Paris on September 9, is a cry of alarm about the crisis facing the European project and the dream behind it.

This article was translated from the French by Steven B. Kennedy.

ISIS Is Very Active In Northern Sinai. Coming For Israel? They Say So.

IDF Bolsters Presence in Sinai Amid ISIS Attacks in Egypt

By Lea Speyer July 2, 2015 , 12:30 pm

Smoke rises in Egypt’s North Sinai as seen from the border of southern Gaza Strip with Egypt on July 1, 2015. ISIS jihadists launched a wide-scale coordinated assault on several military checkpoints in Egypt’s North Sinai on Wednesday in which 70 people were killed, security sources said, the largest attack yet in the insurgency-hit province. (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib /Flash90)

Fearing a spillover of fighting from Egypt, the Israeli Defense Forces has bolstered its presence in the Sinai Peninsula Thursday after dozens of people were killed in a wave of terror attacks by ISIS.

ISIS-affiliated Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s surprise attacks, which targeted Egyptian soldiers and has left at least 70 people dead.

In response to the unprecedented fighting, the IDF deployed additional troops in the southern region and is operating on high alert status. The army is monitoring the fighting in Egypt via the use of UAV’s, Israel Radio reported.

Clashes come one day after Israel’s Defense Ministry closed the border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt amid growing reports of terror related incidents. IDF sources told Israel Radio that security officials are concerned that the fighting could spill over into Israel.

The IDF is preparing for every scenario, the report added, including kidnapping attempts and infiltration by jihadists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his condolences to Egypt and stated that the attacks serve as a major warning sign to Israel. “Terrorism is knocking at our borders,” he said while visiting an IDF soldier injured in a terror stabbing attack earlier in the week.

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/useful_banner_manager_banners/7-LIBI-ShowSupport-Psalms-600WIDE.jpg

“ISIS is not just opposite the Golan Heights. At the moment it is also in Egypt, opposite Rafah, facing our borders, and we are joined with Egypt and with many other countries in the Middle East and the world in the struggle against the extremist Islamic terrorism that is guided by two elements – Iran and the Shiite extremists, and ISIS and the Sunni extremists — as well as other factions such as Hamas”

Former national security chief Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland (ret.) said there was a “real concern” that ISIS could capture Gaza and urged the government of Israel to ensure Hamas remains in control of the coastal enclave.

Egyptian officials told Arab media that the situation was “100 percent under control” on Wednesday night. However, in the early hours of Thursday morning, Egyptian warplanes resumed strikes against ISIS positions in the Sinai.

Sky News Arabic reported that 23 jihadists, including senior members of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, were killed overnight Wednesday-Thursday.

Since the launching of the jihadist insurgency in Egypt, when former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi was ousted in 2013, Wednesday’s attacks are being called the most brazen yet.

Jihadists fired rocket-propelled grenades from rooftops at a police station in Sheikh Zuweid after closing off the area to possible reinforcements, an Egyptian police colonel told the media. Car bombings, suicide bombing and rocket attacks followed throughout the day.

“This is war,” a senior Egyptian military official told AFP. “It’s unprecedented, in the number of terrorists involved and the type of weapons they are using.”

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/44512/netanyahu-warns-isis-knocking-israels-borders-sinai-attacks-jerusalem/#wmbY2Hc1dqB8ERm2.99

Gaza Tunnels Show Up On Egypt Side Of The Line

EGYPT FINDS HUNDREDS MORE TUNNELS FROM GAZA

NOVEMBER 3, 2014 · 12:00 AM

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Author(s):  AP and Times of Israel staff
Source:  Times of Israel.     Article date: November 2nd, 2014

Egypt is reportedly doubling down on its work to set up a buffer zone with the Gaza Strip, after it discovered hundreds more tunnels running from the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave into the Sinai Peninsula.

According to a report on Sky News Arabic on Saturday, Cairo recently uncovered the tunnels using satellite imagery.

The move to set up the planned 13-kilometer (8-mile) buffer zone, which will be 500 meters (yards) wide, was begun after militants attacked an army checkpoint near Sheikh Zuweyid town last week, killing 31 soldiers. No group claimed responsibility, but Egyptian reports pointed blame at Hamas and other Gaza terror groups.

After the attack, Egypt declared a three-month state of emergency and a dawn-to-dusk curfew in the area, and indefinitely closed the Gaza crossing, the only non-Israeli passage for the crowded strip with the world.

On Wednesday, Egypt’s army demolished dozens of homes along its border with Gaza, after the military ordered residents out to make way for the planned buffer zone meant to stop terrorists and smugglers.

The plan to clear 10,000 residents from some 800 houses over just several days has angered the area’s already disgruntled population, which has long held grievances with Cairo.

“To throw 10,000 people into the street in a second, this is the biggest threat to national security,” said Ayman Mohsen, whose sister left her house located 350 meters from the border. Speaking to The Associated Press via online messages, he said the army told residents to leave on Tuesday within 48 hours, and that houses would be blown up even if people remain inside.

Over the past decade, the northern region of the Sinai Peninsula has become a hub for Islamic extremists, although insurgency has spiked since last year’s military ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi. It has also spread to other parts of Egypt, with militants targeting police in Cairo and the Nile Delta.

Egyptian security forces secure houses which were destroyed by the Egyptian army on the Egyptian side of the border town of Rafah, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014. (Photo credit: AP/Eyad Baba)

Mona Barhomaa, a female activist who lives 800 meters from the border and who is not affected by evacuation order, said she supported the demolitions.

“The tunnels to me are like windows that for years my neighbors have used to infiltrate my house,” she said, referring to the underground passageways used to smuggle goods and weapons. “The tunnels led us into this hellish situation.”

Smoke rises after the Egyptian army demolished houses on the Egyptian side on the border town of Rafah, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014. (Photo credit: AP /Eyad Baba)

Many residents, however, were agitated by the short notice and poor local organization, as well as a hostile media campaign unleashed days earlier that saw private and public television commentators equating opposition to the plan with treason.

Tanks and armored vehicles sealed off all of Rafah late last week as thick grey smoke rose in the sky each time demolition charges went off and another house was toppled. Bulldozers knocked down other buildings as residents hurriedly left them, loading furniture, luggage, and personal belongings into pickup trucks before handing their houses over to the army for destruction.

“People are in a state of shock but helpless at the same time,” said Ahmed Aetaa, who lives in nearby Sheikh Zuweyid town and who is in touch with friends packing and leaving their homes in Rafah, where the main border crossing is located.

An Egyptian helicopter hovers over houses destroyed by the Egyptian army on the Egyptian side on the border town of Rafah, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014. (Photo credit: AP/Eyad Baba)

The corridor will eventually be monitored by surveillance cameras, and feature a water-filled trench that will be 40 meters wide, 20 meters deep and run all along the border to the Mediterranean Sea, officials said.

The border area is most populated in Rafah, a city that was split into two halves — one Palestinian and one Egyptian — after Egypt signed the Camp David accord with Israel in 1978. Plans to create a buffer zone along the Gaza border started after the Palestinian militant group Hamas seized the territory in 2007. Hamas used the tunnels as a way to escape an Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed on Gaza.

Previous administrations had tried but failed to implement similar measures to stop the endemic smuggling with the Palestinian territory, although they all backed down before protests by residents, who see the evacuation as forced displacement.

In an attempt to assuage residents’ frustration, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi ordered local authorities to quickly give compensation to residents who left their homes. “Egypt will never forget its honorable people of Sinai, their well-documented patriotic stances and their sacrifices to the nation,” he said through spokesman Alaa Youssef.

The statement came in stark contrast to the previous days’ media campaign against residents who opposed the plan, summed up in the words of retired Gen. Abdel-Moneim Said.

“They are either traitors, not aware of the dangers or have other purposes that we all know,” state news agency MENA quoted him as saying.

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Allegedly Informing On Hamas Results In Gaza Death Sentence. Where/When Was The Trial? Who Defended Them? Why Is The UN Not Condemning This? Notice The Fairness Of The Article!

Report: Hamas kills 18 suspected informants for Israel

By Jethro Mullen and Talal Abu Rahma, CNN

updated 1:38 PM EDT, Fri August 22, 2014

3 Hamas leaders killed by Israeli strikes

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: 4-year-old boy killed in mortar attack in Israel
• Hamas executes 18 suspected informants for Israel, TV report says
• Palestinian death toll is 2,092, according to Gaza Ministry of Health, not including executions
• IDF says the three leaders were responsible for "major terror attacks" against Israel

Gaza (CNN) -- Hamas executed 18 suspected informants for Israel in Gaza on Friday, the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV reported.

This comes one day after an Israeli strike in the Gaza city of Rafah killed three senior leaders of the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing.

Meanwhile Palestinian militants fired more rockets into Israel on Friday, and the Israeli Defense Forces kept up airstrikes on Gaza.

Ashraf el-Qedra, spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said 2,092 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began in early July. That figure did not include the reported executions. The United Nations estimates that around 70% of the dead in the conflict were civilians.

The fighting has killed 68 people on the Israeli side, almost all of them soldiers.

A 4-year-old boy became the latest civilian victim in Israel Friday, after a mortar shell exploded in the parking lot of a kibbutz close to Gaza, Israeli rescue services said. The boy is the first civilian casualty in Israel since the latest ceasefire collapsed, and the fourth in the recent fighting.

Photos: Israel-Gaza crisis

Hamas: We're aiming for Tel Aviv airport

Reporting in Gaza: CNN's Jensen reflects

El-Qedra said Friday that 76 Palestinians have been killed since the two sides resumed hostilities on Tuesday after the collapse of a ceasefire and talks aimed at finding a lasting end to the fighting.

The truce fell apart after Israel reported that militants had started firing rockets again.

Since the fighting flared up again this week, 360 rockets have been fired from Gaza toward Israel, according to the Israel Defense Forces. They have caused some injuries but no deaths. Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system has intercepted 56 of the rockets, the IDF said.

The Israeli military has attacked around 200 targets in Gaza during the same period, the IDF said.

Hamas, the militant group that holds power in Gaza, has warned that Israel will "pay the price" for killing three high-ranking leaders of its military wing, the Qassam Brigades, on Thursday.

Seven civilians also were killed in the bombing of the house in southern Gaza where the leaders were located.

The IDF said the military leaders were responsible for "major terror attacks against Israelis."

The Qassam Brigades' threat this week to target Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv doesn't so far appear to have affected flights.

If You Think Obama Will Apologize For Lies About School Attack, You Are Smoking His Funny Cigarettes!

Evidence Shows UN School Attack Staged by Hamas; Obama Should Apologize

The Zionist Organization of America pointed to strong and emerging evidence that the death of civilians in Gaza at a UNRWA school was in fact staged by Hamas.

The Zionist Organization of America has called upon the Obama Administration to retract its condemnation, noting that the evidence now shows that Israel did indeed, as it claimed at the time, fire at terrorists just outside the school, where a missile strike on the road outside is plainly evident; that dead bodies were moved by Hamas from outside the school to inside its courtyard to mislead people into believing that the school itself had been hit; that the body of a small girl was added to the pile of adult bodies to make it look as if all the deaths came from the school, then was later removed, leaving doubt as to whether she was in fact killed; and that the bodies of two dead men photographed outside the school were also later shown inside the school courtyard, indicating they too were moved.

Israeli Strike Aimed at Terrorists

The Israeli strike directed at Hamas terrorists on the scene reportedly killed 10 Palestinian civilians and wounded dozens more at a UN Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA)-run school which was serving as shelter during the ongoing hostilities for 3,000 Gaza residents. This led State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki to condemn Israel, saying, “The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful [attack] outside a UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3,000 displaced persons, in which at least 10 more Palestinian civilians were tragically killed … We once again stress that Israel do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties.”

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Israel has received massive condemnation, including from the Obama Administration over this incident – condemnation that appeared even before the facts in the case were established.

“Now, after two days, it appears that Israel was correct when it said that it fired at terrorists outside the school and that it did not strike the school directly. It also appears that at least some of the dead bodies shown on television were placed there by Hamas after the event and may not have been killed by Israel action at all.

“President Obama should immediately retract the astonishing condemnation uttered by the State Department over the weekend. It would have been bad enough to make this condemnation even if Israel had inadvertently struck the school.”

US Condemnation of Israel Encourages Hamas Terrorists

“As I said yesterday,” Klein continued, “can one imagine the outrage in Washington if the Israeli government condemned a U.S. strike on Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces near a school in Afghanistan which inadvertently resulted in civilian deaths? Would this be proper? Would this be the behavior of an ally?

“To add insult to injury, this condemnation came only a few hours after Israel began a partial unilateral pull-back from Gaza that was met by increased terrorist rocket and mortar fire.

“Such condemnation incentivizes Hamas’ terrorism and its resort to war crimes against the Jewish state. It makes such crimes pay in the coin of opprobrium for Israel, which, coming from the country supposed to be Israel’s best ally, the US reaction can only encourage. This would be bad at any time, but it is inexcusable at a time of heightened anti-Semitic frenzy in Europe and elsewhere. This adds fuel to the fire of Jew-hatred, rantings and actions.

“This is also giving aid and comfort to Hamas. President Obama should immediately apologize that his Administration jumped to conclusions and uttered a false and damaging condemnation of an ally. We strongly urge President Obama to publicly state that Hamas started this war by unprovoked, illegal missile attacks upon Israeli civilians, compelling Israel to take legitimate defensive steps against Hamas to end the threat to its own citizens. We also strongly urge him to condemn the anti-Semitic demonstrations in Europe and elsewhere which have been marked by the most horrific anti-Semitic expression.”

Source: Zionist Organization of America