A Bit Too Close for Comfort...

Iron Dome battery deployed near Ashdod

...when the Iron Dome intercepts two rockets over your home town, as just happened this afternoon, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.  I never heard the sirens - apparently they didn't sound - but I did hear the explosions.  The Iron Dome - Israel's defense system against short-range missiles and projectiles - is a wonderful, mysterious creature, largely hidden from view although I occasionally see the soldiers who operate it, who wear distinctive uniforms and ball caps, around town or the nearby train station.  The system was largely funded by US military assistance, and US contractors did some of the development work although most was done within Israel.  The US does, however, benefit greatly from their participation and the lessons learned in deploying, operating, and improving the system.

There have also been retaliatory air strikes on Gaza, with some of the fast-movers flying over my head, for the rocket and mortar firings. (Oops!  There went another aircraft, or perhaps a flight of two!)

As I've mentioned in recent posts, there is a surreal air to the ongoing conflict at the Gaza/Israeli border.  We have to tune in to the local news or news websites to find out what's going on, except when the black smoke from burning tires gets thick in the southern sky, as the Gaza Strip is just about 10 KM south of Ashqelon.  Otherwise, until the Islamic Jihad began firing over the border today, we don't hear much and certainly don't see any hints of the activity.

There has been a lot of hand-wringing lately in the Jewish world about how Israel keeps losing the Propaganda War over Gaza.  Everybody seems to believe that Israel occupies the Gaza Strip.  When one points out that Israel pulled out unilaterally from the Strip almost 13 years ago, they will often retort by saying that, while Israel perhaps has no troops inside the Gaza Strip, they've quarantined it to where its residents are dying in squalor and malnutrition.  For the sake of accuracy, I direct your attention to the below video clip, which is not the product of any organization friendly towards Israel:  it was published a few days ago by (official) Turkish TV - please remember, that Turkey under its President Erdogan is no friend of Israel and constantly calls it a 'terrorist' or 'nazi' state.

So, the conflict over the Gaza border is not because the Gazans are prisoners inside the world's largest concentration camp!  To be sure, with Hamas in charge there is a totalitarian element of life in Gaza; it is no Garden of Eden.  But you can see that the push to cross into Israel is not due to festering privation in Gaza, rather to the desire to destroy Israel and kill its citizens wholesale.

Earlier today, I drove my son, Eyal to his deployment base at Shekef in the Judaean Hills, next to the barrier wall; he had had to travel to his home base at Aleika in the Golan yesterday and got to come home last night.  He went out during the evening on a coffee date with a woman he met in a shop here last weekend.  He's finishing up his service soon and trying to bring some normalcy into his life, although at the same time he has volunteered for keva, an extension of his service in a semi-professional status.  I won't see him for a while as I'm about to go abroad for a few months.  Shekef is not close to Gaza, but of course the whole army is a bit on edge between the action down there, plus the rumblings of the Hizb'ullah and other Iranian-backed militias in Lebanon and Syria.

Never a dull moment in the Holy Land!  Oy!