These are not mortar attacks. They are rockets. They are unguided arcing projectiles like a mortar’s, which is what the post you completely failed to understand was saying.
These are also not isolated incidents. One guy firing one mortar once is not the same thing as the “government” of Gaza firing thousands of rockets and continuing such behaviour for decades.
Right, so it’s a “unguided arcing projectiles like a mortar”, but not to be confused or compared with a mortar. Glad this important distinction has been made.
You may be dismayed to hear that the IRA launched quite a few such attacks (killing far more people than Hamas managed), in a multi decade campaign, and were also linked to the dominant political party in Ireland at the time. As such, should Britain have gone the airstrike route?
Apparently they can hit Jerusalem from Gaza (or at least, some varieties can).
How would an observer report back? Presumably, by cellphone. Or the rocket-shooters could simply read the news. Rockets landing and exploding, by their nature, are difficult to disguise.
The “accuracy” involved is by no means pin-point. The idea is to hit towns and cities, rather than have the rockets fall harmlessly on farmland etc. “You missed Tel Aviv by five miles to the north”. If the rocket-shooters were allowed to fire, repeatedly, from a fixed location, eventually all of their rockets would land more or less on-target - that is, hit major cities and towns - greatly increasing their effectiveness: randomly peppering the countryside results in few casualties.
The idea was not to “stop the attacks” - counter-battery fire alone cannot do that - but to render the attacks harmlessly ineffective. Which, allegedly, they have done, as very few Israeli civilians were in fact killed by them.
The Syrian made M-302 have, IIRC, a 100 mile range. Most of the home grown rockets (which presumably make up the bulk of what they are using) are much less…50 miles? 60? None of them are what you’d call accurate. And between what they used and what the Israelis destroyed they are down to either a third or less of their pre-conflict stocks at this point (at least, that’s what I read yesterday…sorry, don’t remember the article).
The bigger blow was the destruction of all those tunnels that Hamas had built at great expense and effort (diverting resources from building things like, oh, say schools or hospitals). THAT really hurt them.
The difference in situations is shown in your article - the cops arrested the guy responsible.
Sending the cops to arrest Hamas would clearly be the preferred solution in Gaza. Good luck with that, though.
Nice circular argument.
The airstrikes on Gaza were essential to protect Israeli civilians from significant threat.
The lack of any evidence of such threat is proof that the airstrikes were effective.
Besides, it wasn’t a mortar attack.
It was a bomb made from a mortar round, set-off by a semtex charge.
So more like an IED.
I’d say, rather, that the fact that Hamas seems to (this time) actually be honoring the cease fire is a good indication that both the strikes and the boots on the ground/destruction of the tunnel system were effective enough to stop further conflict…for now, until Hamas gets another bug up their ass (or, more realistically, are able to rebuild their rocket stock piles, rebuild their tunnels and are ready to go for another round).
I’m glad we’re agreed. The preferred solution would indeed be some form of military back policing action in the area.
My word, never did I think I’d be able to point to British tactics during the Troubles as an exercise in restraint.
Fortunate then that Israel’s tactics here won’t have led to massive amounts of hatred and anger from the people of Gaza, bolstering Hamas support and gaining them hundreds of new recruits…
…oh.
The distinction is indeed important.
A mortar can be pretty accurate, if you get your maths right, and quite effective.
The number one cause of deaths during WW2 was from mortar rounds, IIRC.
The Hamas rockets can be off by miles and are, though scary, 90% harmless.
it’s big news if a rocket actually strikes a settlement.
Yes.
Thank you.
There’s 40 years worth of other examples if that would help, e.g.
5 December 1972: The IRA fired 15 rockets and mortars at security posts throughout Northern Ireland
6 December 1972: Eleven British soldiers were hurt when their APC was hit by a rocket in the Lower Falls district of Belfast
1 January 1973: A rocket hit Springfield Road RUC base in Belfast, injuring two people.
6 February 1973: A British soldier was killed in an IRA rocket attack on a British Army Armoured Personnel carrier in the Lower Falls area of Belfast.
and that’s from a 2 month period. You get the idea.
The more fallacious argument, it appears to me, is the notion that the airstrikes were not necessary, because the threat was insignificant - the proof being that few civilians were killed by them.
The only way to test that would be to remove the threat of airstrikes and see what would happen. If large numbers of Israeli civilians are then killed, then, hey presto! The airstrikes were necessay after all.
These attacks sound like they were made by anti-tank rockets. That is a very different type of attack - anti-tank rockets are ‘line of sight’ weapons.
The Gaza attacks more closely resemble the WW2 German “vengence weapons” (although considerably smaller and less sophisticated) - they are shooting at cities, not APCs.
Not unnaturally, the two situations - Belfast and Gaza - are not the same, and the same tactics (regardless of morality) would not work there.
That would involve a massive Israeli ground operation - much larger than the one they actually engaged in - with quite possibly tens of thousands of civilian casualties. I severely doubt that if the Israelis did that, you would be first in line to congratulate them.
The point you seem to miss is that this is more like an actual war than the “troubles”. A “police action” is out of the question without a “successful war” and an “occupation”.
I’d like a cite that there were riots and pogroms against jews before Zionism.
Of were you only prepared to provide a cite disproving things you wish I had said? Or perhaps you just need to read what I write through a less impassioned lens.
Clearly you’re wrong.
I know pretty much anything that is on the wiki page for Israel, arab israeli conflict, palestine, and many of the links therefrom.
Just to recap, a device that you originally described as:
“a variety of rocket artillery…essentially “aimed” by positioning them - they are not sophisticated and lack internal guidance systems”
is actually now comparable to one of the German V weapons?
I’m going to guess you don’t mean the V2, seeing as it was the first true long range ballistic weapon and could reach the fringes of space, and assume you’re talking about the V1.
Would that say this close resemblance is due to the aiming mechanism (gyrocompass based autopilot compared to none), the range (250km compared to 16) or the payload (850kg compared to 20)?