After a relatively quiet night, Gaza militants resumed rocket fire into Israeli on Saturday with ten rockets landing in the country's territory since 06:52 am.
At around noon, a rocket landed in an open area in Sdot Negev Regional Council, as sirens sounded in Sha'ar HaNegev. At 11:00 am, three rockets exploded in Eshkol Regional Council, with no reports of injuries or damage.
At 08:57 am, a rocket was launched toward a community in Eshkol Regional Council. The rocket exploded in an open area.
At 6:52 am, sirens sounded in several communities in the Sdot Negev and Sha'ar HaNegev Regional Councils. One rocket exploded in an open area in Sdot Negev.
Ten minutes later, the alert sounded in a community in Eshkol Regional Council, after which four rockets exploded in open area. No injuries or damage were reported in this incident as well.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force continued to carry out strikes in the Gaza Strip overnight Friday, attacking, among other things, warehouses, training sites, houses and mosques. Palestinians reported that two people were killed during an attack on a mosque in Nusseirat refugee camp.
Palestinian sources also reported that an IAF aircraft targeted a motorcycle in the al-Maazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing two Palestinian men in the attack.
Saturday's violence follows the collapse of a three-day truce aimed at bringing an end to the deadliest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas since the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007.
On Friday, dozens of rockets and mortar shells were launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel. In the evening hours, rockets were fired at the Be'er Sheva area, several of which the Iron Dome system intercepted.
While different in many ways, the two most active Middle East conflicts, waged by the US in northern Iraq against the Islamic State, and by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, have strong common features:
1. Both stood idly by for years as Islamist fundamentalists, Al Qaeda’s IS in Iraq, and the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip, systematically built up military force for bringing forward their aggressive designs.
The Obama administration shrugged when al Qaeda started forging ahead, first in Syria and then in Iraq.
But for occasional air strikes against “empty sands” in Gaza, Binyamin Netanyahu’s government neglected to step in when Hamas built up a vast stockpile of rockets and an underground terror empire, as former AMAN director Amos Yadlin admitted publicly last week.
When, in mid-2013, IS commander Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi executed a major tactical move by relocating his entire force from Syria to Iraq, Washington was unmoved - even when in Jan. 2014, the Islamists took over the unresisting western Iraqi province of Anbar and a row of important towns, including Falluja and Tikrit.
The Iraqi army’s armored divisions, rather than resist the ruthless Islamists sweeping across the county, turned tail, bequeathing the conquering force the rich spoils of heavy, up-to-date American weaponry in mountainous quantities.
And still President Barack Obama saw no pressing cause to step in - even though, by then, it was obvious that this booty was destined not only for subjugating Baghdad, but being injected into the Syrian war and the IS arsenal in preparation for leaping on its next prey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and at some point, Israel too.
The US president was finally jerked out of his unconcern when the soldiers of Allah started marching toward the gates of Irbil, capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish Republic of Iraq (KRG).
Friday, on Aug.8, a couple of US warplanes and drones went into belated action to curb their advance. According to the Pentagon statement, two FA-18 jets, launched from the USS George HW Bush aircraft carrier in the Gulf, dropped 500lb laser-guided bombs on a “mobile artillery piece” that was shelling Kurdish forces defending Irbil, “where US forces are based.”
A little more than one hour later, four F/A-18 aircraft hit a stationary convoy of seven vehicles and a mortar position near Irbil, wiping them out with eight bombs.
2. The US appears to be falling into the same error of judgment made by Israel’s war planners in the month-long Operation Defense Edge, i.e., that air strikes are capable of wiping out an Islamist terrorist peril. That lesson was there for Washington to learn in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and latterly Gaza.
3. President Obama refuses to put American boots back in Iraq, specifically, special operations forces, because this would reverse what he considers his crowning foreign achievement, the withdrawal of the US army from Iraq.
For very different reasons, Israeli leaders abstained from sending special forces deep inside the Gaza Strip to eliminate the Hamas high command and main rocket stocks.
For very different reasons, Israeli leaders abstained from sending special forces deep inside the Gaza Strip to eliminate the Hamas high command and main rocket stocks.
Because of these common factors, the two campaigns are destined to share a common outcome: IS will forge ahead in Iraq, and Hamas will continue firing rockets at the Israeli population, to force Jerusalem into submission. Neither conflict looks like ending any time soon.
Kurdish army is showing the first signs of fallilng apart in the same way as the Iraqi divisions in earlier rounds of the IS onslaught. The sense of doom in Irbil is such that the US and Israel are preparing to evacuate their personnel.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that US warplanes and drones are the wrong weapons for stopping Al Qaeda’s jihadis, just as Israeli air strikes were never much good against Hamas, and will not stop the war of attrition the Palestinian fundamentalists launched Friday, Aug. 8.
Islamist fundamentalists, fighting on separate battlefields 1,327 km apart, have gained the tactical advantage in both over the US and Israeli armies. President Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had better take a hard look at their tactics before it is too late.
IDF planes struck more than 20 targets Saturday in the Gaza Strip, killing five Palestinians including a senior Hamas member, as rocket fire continued following the end of a three-day truce aimed at ending the war between Israel and the Palestinian terror group. The Palestinian interior ministry said Israeli jets launched 21 strikes after midnight, destroying three mosques, one in the Zeitoun area, one in Jabaliya in the north and Nuseirat in the middle of the enclave. At least two of the mosques were considered close to Hamas. Hamas officials claimed Israeli airstrikes hit houses, mosques, warehouses and training sites. Three bodies were found under the ruins of the al-Qassam mosque in Gaza, including that of senior Hamas official Moaaz Zaid, said Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Qudra. He said two other men were killed in a strike that “targeted a motorbike in the al-Maghazi camp.” Over 10 rockets were fired from Gaza Saturday toward Israel, for a total of 75 since the truce expired. Israel targeted more than 30 sites in the Strip on Saturday, the IDF said.
Hamas resumed its firing of multiple rockets, aimed for Israeli population centers, immediately at the end of the 72 hour ceasefire Friday morning, Israel was willing to extend the ceasefire indefinitely, but Hamas refused. Indeed, Hamas’s military wing signaled its intention to go back on the warpath with its threat that, unless Israel acceded to its demands, Hamas would launch new rockets with larger warheads and thousands of Israelis would die.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesperson issued a mealy-mouthed statement expressing “deep disappointment that the parties were unable to agree to an extension of the ceasefire in their talks in Cairo.” While condemning “the renewed rocket fire towards Israel,” there is not one mention of Hamas in the statement as the culpable party, let alone holding Hamas responsible for war crimes in aiming its rockets not just “towards Israel,” but deliberately towards Israeli civilians. Instead, the statement called on both parties “not to resort to further military action.”
The Secretary General’s statement is, as usual, too little too late. Israel’s citizens are once again under attack. Israel has no choice but to firmly respond.
In his letter to the UN Security Council, Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor called upon the Security Council and the Secretary General to wake up and assign the blame for the fighting where it belongs -
Hamas:
“By breaking the cease-fire this morning, Hamas has proven once again that it has no regard for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. Hamas must be held responsible – for preventing humanitarian relief from reaching the people of Gaza and for using its own people as pawns and human shields.
Israel is committed to ending the current round of violence, but will not negotiate while its citizens are subject to ongoing attacks from the land, air, and sea. It is time for the United Nations and its agencies to finally place the blame where it belongs – on Hamas.”
In his letter to the UN Security Council, Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor called upon the Security Council and the Secretary General to wake up and assign the blame for the fighting where it belongs -
Hamas:
“By breaking the cease-fire this morning, Hamas has proven once again that it has no regard for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. Hamas must be held responsible – for preventing humanitarian relief from reaching the people of Gaza and for using its own people as pawns and human shields.
Israel is committed to ending the current round of violence, but will not negotiate while its citizens are subject to ongoing attacks from the land, air, and sea. It is time for the United Nations and its agencies to finally place the blame where it belongs – on Hamas.”
[WARNING: Link contains some VERY disturbing pictures; please do not open if such photos would be upsetting]
Another warning from the site itself:
*** Warning: This post contains graphic pictures and video. Due to the barbaric and brutal nature of the material, please be advised this content is not for those with a weak stomach.
I am going to take you into hell today… not because I revel in the horror of it all (like you, I would rather turn away), but because I believe you cannot fight true evil unless you know what you are up against. I am going to show you what very few other sites will and it will rock your world — it will make you sick and will bring tears to your eyes. It will anger you beyond belief as well. Welcome to Christian genocide via the brutal Caliphate and ISIS.
It is said there are over 200,000 Christians in Iraq and most of them are missing. Either they have fled, converted or more likely they have been beheaded or crucified. Crosses are being torn down from churches and homes are being marked for death to those who live there or come back, simply because they are Christian. And in retaliation for Obama calling for strikes last night, ISIS has called for attacks on US interests worldwide. They have also vowed that their evil black flag will fly above the White House:
VICE Media reporter Medyan Dairieh recently spent three weeks in the ISIS-controlled Syrian city of Raqqa. ISIS has declared that the capital of its newly declared Islamic Caliphate is Ragga. ISIS now controls territory extending from Syria to Iraq. They have imposed brutal Islamic Sharia law and they are killing anyone who does not convert or flee. Genghis Khan would have been impressed.
A prominent Christian leader of the Chaldean community unveiled the “systematic beheading of children” and other horrendous crimes committed by ISIS. He said that the Sunni extremists are committing genocide against Christians in Iraq and with the aim to instill the Sharia Law as the law of the land.
In the interview with CNN’s Jonathan Mann, Chaldean-American businessman Mark Arabo said that the “world hasn’t seen an evil like this for generations.”
“There is a park in Mosul, where [ISIS] they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick and have them in the park,” he explained. “More children are getting beheaded, mothers are getting raped and killed, and fathers are being hung.”
Speaking from San Diego over Skype, Arabo called for the international community to offer asylum to the more than 300,000 Christians fleeing and living in neighboring cities.
“The world hasn’t seen this kind of atrocity in generations,” he said. “This is a crime against humanity. This is much broader than a community or a state. This is crime against humanity. They are doing the most horrendous, the most heart-breaking crimes that you can think of.”
When asked about Sunni extremists’ targeting of Christians, Arabo said that around 95 percent of Christians have fled, five percent have converted. Also, the ISIS have marked the death stamps on Christian homes, so whoever returns will get killed.
So much for the religion of peace… Christianity is dead in the Middle East and we turned a blind eye and a deaf ear on it while it was happening. Shame on all of us.
(CNS) –”Christianity in Mosul is dead, and a Christian holocaust is in our midst,” said Mark Arabo, a Californian businessman and Chaldean-American leader. In an interview with CNN’s Jonathan Mann, he called what’s happening in Iraq a “Christian genocide” and said “children are being beheaded, mothers are being raped and killed, and fathers are being hung.”
“Right now, three thousand Christians are in Iraq fleeing to neighboring cities,” he told Mann. Arabo is calling on the international community to follow France’s lead and offer the Christians of Iraq asylum.
……
There’s actually a park in Mosul where they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick… this is crimes against humanity. They are doing the most horrendous, the most heart-breaking crimes that you can think of.”
……
There’s actually a park in Mosul where they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick… this is crimes against humanity. They are doing the most horrendous, the most heart-breaking crimes that you can think of.”
Mann asked about the ISIS letter sent to Christians in Mosul, demanding that they either convert to Islam, pay a fine or be put to “death by the sword.”
“It’s very clear they are killing people, but are Christians managing to escape by paying a fine?” he asked.
Arabo reports that after Christians pay the fine, the fighters take the Christian wives and children “and make them their wives – so it’s really convert, or die.”
So, while we fight to save our country from evil over the Southern border and from our own White House, Christians in the Middle East are being wiped out. A weak America with a Marxist Muslim for a leader has resulted in the world slipping into violent chaos. Well done, Progressives. You won’t be spared either as the dark descends across the globe – you will truly reap what you have sown.
A massive Canadian transport plane has arrived in Kharkov carrying US$4.5 million worth of non-lethal military equipment to help Ukraine “protect its eastern border against Russian aggression.”
The flight marks the first in a series, and all of the items will be delivered by the CC-130J Hercules plane. Canadian military personnel accompanied the equipment to Ukraine.
The technology provided will “allow Ukrainian security and border authorities to better detect and track the movement of illicit goods and people,” according to Harper.
On Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen pledged that NATO will work with Ukraine on defense planning, as well as on how to reform its armed forces and institutions.
He also announced that NATO is planning joint exercises with Ukraine.The comments were made during a press conference in Kiev.
Rasmussen also mentioned that Russia has amassed 20,000 troops near the border and could be planning a ground invasion of its neighbor, mentioning that Russia "should not use peace-keeping as an excuse for war-making."
In response, Moscow slammed NATO’s claims, calling them unsubstantiated.
"In Russia’s Ministry of Defense such statements only raise sympathy for the speakers of the Pentagon, the US State Department and NATO. It seems the people are serious, but they have to constantly improvise during their speeches to somehow add seriousness to their statements," Ministry of Defense spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said.
The Hamas Charter is, in effect, the book that many are now reading and quoting. It’s all there in the book. They’ve told us who they are. The destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews is one of their main objectives. They write about the worldwide caliphate and the conversion or elimination of the infidels. It is the explanation of what is happening and what will happen in the future, unless they are stopped by a greater force.
More than 15,000 Muslim Brotherhood supporters gathered at a pro-Hamas rally in Jordan's capital on Friday, with many chanting "death to Israel" and urging the militant Palestinian group to step up rocket salvos against Israeli towns and cities.
The evening rally, the largest such protest in Amman in years, saw scores of masked youths dressed in the uniform of Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, stage a mock military parade to the cheers of a flag-waving crowd.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological counterpart to Hamas and Jordan's largest political group, is seeking to take advantage of a rise in anti-Israeli sentiment arising from the Jewish state's month-long offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Politicians and analysts say Hamas's popularity also has soared among non-Palestinian Jordanians as a result of the group's determined fight against the much-superior Israeli army.
On Friday, Muslim Brotherhood speakers prodded Hamas to step up its attacks against Israel to avenge Palestinian deaths.
"In the coming phase, after negotiations failed, the only thing left is the flag of resistance which was behind the victory in Gaza," said Zaki Bani Rusheid, deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan.
In contrast to other Arab states, where the Muslim Brotherhood has been banned and its followers persecuted, Jordan has tolerated the group's presence.
It enjoys a large following in major Jordanian cities that are Islamist strongholds, while Hamas has large grassroots support in Palestinian refugee camps in the country. Jordan is home to the largest number of Palestinian refugees.
The Nigerian president has declared a state of emergency in the country over the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus.
On Friday, President Goodluck Jonathan “declared the control and containment of the Ebola virus in Nigeria a national emergency,” the president’s office said in a statement.
Jonathan urged people to avoid large gatherings to prevent the spread of the disease that has claimed two lives in the African country.
“Religious and political groups, spiritual healing centers, families, associations and other bodies should… discourage gatherings and activities that may unwittingly promote close contact with infected persons or place others at risk.”
The president has also ordered a number of measures, including the establishment of new isolation wards, screening at borders and contact tracing.
I saw the photos. What I cannot believe is that the world does nothing...incredible! Girls get kidnapped in Africa and it's all over the news. Children are being beheaded and...silence...
ReplyDeleteI am mourning myself for the brothers and sisters in Christ involved. Remember God is still in control and we can pray for those persecuted. If it be his will may he miraculously protect our brothers and sisters over there and greater his kingdom. That would be our will father. We can pray and tell others to also. Remember our God knows our every hair. Controls the tiniest particles we breathe. Created all things. He is still in control and those beautiful kids (and parents) are home now. May Christ be glorified somehow through this.
ReplyDeleteAgree Gary.
ReplyDeleteI went to the link also....
sickening is too pleasant of a word. What type of animal can do that, sawing their heads off while they're still alive. Even little girls and boys.
Lord Jesus, Your bride is so ready! Perhaps today or tomorrow.
Its pure evil...The kind of evil that will be unleashed at the time of Jacob's Trouble. We're just seeing glimpses of what is to come. We know the ultimate source of this evil. We need to keep these Saints in our prayers, in our churches, bible studies, private time, etc...My prayers are that God will deliver them before the torture/pain and give them strength and courage. But more importantly peace in the fact that they will be home soon and all of this pain will quickly be forgotten.
ReplyDeleteThis is too much, really, I
ReplyDeleteknow I have been thinking the
end would be delayed but the news
about ISIS is crazy.....insane...
I really find it hard to believe that Jesus has NOT come back yet.
I never dreamed it would get this
bad prior to the Rapture.
Stephen >>>>>>>>>>>>