What's the story on the rockets fired into Israel?

[Evil_Captor]

One of the issues that Israel has been having with its neighbors is that Hezbollah fighters are sitting on the far side of the border – in both Lebanon and Gaza – and firing rockets into Israel. Yet there are never any casualty or damages cited in conjunction with the rocket attacks, at least, in the US media. I’ve heard numerous reports of such attacks, but no reports of carnage, and I have to believe there would be reports if carnage was being done, since in the US media, if it bleeds, it leads.

So what’s going on? Is Hezbollah firing rockets randomly into the desert to punish Israeli sand for harboring Jews? If the rockets are harmless, why does anyone give a fuck? Or are reports of the carnage being suppressed? And if so, why (in a region where waving the bloody shirt is a basic form of argument)?

Neither option makes a hell of a lot of sense. It’s very Middle Eastern in that respect.

[cerberus]

Well, they’re Jews. You’re supposed to shoot rockets at them. That’s what Israel is for, to shoot rockets at.

See, first you get a ceasefire going, and wait for Israel to cede “land” for “peace.” Next, move your people into the ceded land. But don’t attack yet! Get your friends from Iran to give you thousands and thousands of rockets. And build some of your own. And dig tunnels.

Next, kidnap some Isreali soldiers, you know, next to that shiny new border that was supposed to lead to “peace.” And then state that you want to “negotiate”. That’s when you start to fire those rockets. But don’t target anything military, just launch’em at the Jews, randomly.

Next, have a second group kidnap some more soldiers, and launch some more rockets.

Better yet, do all of your launching from areas full of Arab civilians. Yup, and park your rockety stuff in civilian areas. That way, when the Israelis target your military assets, they inevitably kill civilians. What’s more, they’ll actually warn you beforehand!

You see, these parties (Hamas, Hizbollah) want those pesky Jews gone. Israel is expected to accomodate these groups that want Israel dead, gone, destroyed.

So, it wasn’t enough for Israel to give back land that it won during a war. It apparently must continue to negotiate. For what? The right to give legitimacy to groups like Hamas and Hizbollah? And the Palestinians and Lebanese must be free of the consequences of integrating terrorist groups into their governments?

Memo to Gaza/Palestine and Lebanon: when you effectively make yourselves allies with stateless concerns like Hamas and Hizbollah, and when H&H start waging war, from your borders, against Israel, guess what? You are now cobelligerants in a war against Israel. Expect losses.

And if you have a problem with that, in the future? Try selecting allies who do not pick fights with your neightbor, using your civilian infrastructure and population centers as cover and staging areas.

[John_Mace]

You haven’t been paying attention if you think there are no Israeli casualties. There have been at leat 50 deaths caused by the rockets launched by Hezbollah. They are firing rockets into Israel indescriminately with the express purpose of killing civilians. Here is a brief summary of one round of attacks.

The only reason more Israelis haven’t been killed is that the rockets aren’t sophisticated enough. Basically, Hezbollah just points and shoots, hoping they will land in populated areas. How on earth could you consider katyusha rockets to be “harmless”?

[Askance]

I’m not sure what the debate is here. Seems more like a GQ post.

The rockets have certainly hit and killed people in Israel, although far fewer than the Israelias have killed in Lebanon. The main reason is that most of the rockets fired are unguided Katyusha-style ones and like most artillery, almost all of them miss their intended target.

I find it very hard to believe the US media, for all their sins, have failed to report that some Israelis are dying and being injured. For instance this CNN story says in part:

Israel has reported 54 deaths, including 19 civilians killed by Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Which media are you getting your news from? I couldn’t find any mention of Israeli casualties in a quick scan of Foxnews.com

[Larry_Borgia]

Were any of the Hezbollah missiles fired into Israel before the incursion?

[RedFury]

@cerberus

Well, they’re Jews. You’re supposed to shoot rockets at them. That’s what Israel is for, to shoot rockets at.

See, first you get a ceasefire going, and wait for Israel to cede “land” for “peace.” Next, move your people into the ceded land. But don’t attack yet! Get your friends from Iran to give you thousands and thousands of rockets. And build some of your own. And dig tunnels.

Next, kidnap some Isreali soldiers, you know, next to that shiny new border that was supposed to lead to “peace.” And then state that you want to “negotiate”. That’s when you start to fire those rockets. But don’t target anything military, just launch’em at the Jews, randomly.

Next, have a second group kidnap some more soldiers, and launch some more rockets.

Better yet, do all of your launching from areas full of Arab civilians. Yup, and park your rockety stuff in civilian areas. That way, when the Israelis target your military assets, they inevitably kill civilians. What’s more, they’ll actually warn you beforehand!

You see, these parties (Hamas, Hizbollah) want those pesky Jews gone. Israel is expected to accomodate these groups that want Israel dead, gone, destroyed.

So, it wasn’t enough for Israel to give back land that it won during a war. It apparently must continue to negotiate. For what? The right to give legitimacy to groups like Hamas and Hizbollah? And the Palestinians and Lebanese must be free of the consequences of integrating terrorist groups into their governments?

Memo to Gaza/Palestine and Lebanon: when you effectively make yourselves allies with stateless concerns like Hamas and Hizbollah, and when H&H start waging war, from your borders, against Israel, guess what? You are now cobelligerants in a war against Israel. Expect losses.

And if you have a problem with that, in the future? Try selecting allies who do not pick fights with your neightbor, using your civilian infrastructure and population centers as cover and staging areas.

Damn, but you’re good at playing the victims’ card!

‘Oops, Sorry’ Doesn’t Let Israel Off the Hook

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a speech Monday announcing that Israel would not adhere to the 48-hour cease-fire to which it had agreed under American pressure, said, “I am sorry from the bottom of my heart for all deaths of children or women in Qana…. We did not search them out … they were not our enemies, and we did not look for them.”

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Israel did, in fact, make the same mistake twice in Qana — or, to take another recent example, in Gaza, where a family of eight spending an afternoon on the beach was killed by an errant Israeli shell in June. If Israeli assertions are true that these killings of scores of civilians were unintentional, does that mean that Israel can claim the high ground in its battle with Hezbollah and Hamas? Is Israel’s “accidental” violence against civilians somehow better, or more morally acceptable, than that of a Hamas suicide bomber who steps into a pizzeria seeking to kill civilians? Or a Hezbollah guerrilla firing a Katyusha in the direction of a Haifa residential neighborhood? In short, do Israel’s declared intentions make a difference?

To the victims in Qana and Gaza, the answer to these questions is obviously no. Nor will Olmert’s “condolences” be greeted with anything gentler than sarcasm in the Arab and Muslim world, particularly because Israel barely paused after Qana before resuming airstrikes against Lebanon.

Of course, Israel is not really addressing its “apologies” to the Arab world but to the West, the club of “civilized” democracies in which it proudly claims membership. The argument Israel and its supporters make to this audience is that Hezbollah and Hamas deliberately target civilians, whereas Israel only accidentally kills them in the noble cause of antiterrorism. Israel may be guilty of manslaughter, but not of murder.

But this distinction is meaningful only up to a point, and Israel, consistent with its history of violent raids in refugee camps and crowded cities, passed this point almost as soon as the offensive began.

Rather than limiting its strikes to key Hezbollah positions and pursuing all available diplomatic channels, as might be expected of a mature regional power with nuclear weapons, Israel launched a vengeful war on Lebanon, which, it has since been reported, was planned over a year in advance. It has displayed a callous disregard for human life, for Lebanon’s infrastructure (which only in recent years had begun to recover from Israel’s 1982 invasion), for the stability of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s fragile government and for the country’s natural environment, now facing an ecological catastrophe from an oil spill caused by the bombing. An estimated 750 Lebanese, overwhelmingly civilians and many of them children, have died, a dozen times more than the 50-plus Israelis (more than half of them soldiers) killed by Hezbollah.)

bolding mine.

Much more common sense at source…if at all interested.

---

Larry. Not that I am aware.

[FRDE]

@Larry Borgia

Were any of the Hezbollah missiles fired into Israel before the incursion?

The Ghaza rockets are home made, just glorified pipe bombs, they have been using them for ages.

The S. Lebanon rockets are a lot closer to the real thing, they are definitely not home made and they have a considerable range.

First the Hamas in Ghaza dug a tunnel, emerged and killed some IDF soldiers, kidnapping one.

Then the Hezbollah ambushed an Israeli patrol, and took two prisoners.

I heard that they used Katyusha rockets as a diversion during that raid.

And since then they have kept up a steady stream.

If by ‘incursion’ you mean before the Israelis attacked S. Lebanon, yes, Hezbollah started it but I suspect that they rather underestimated the response.

The disproportionate casualties are because every Israeli dwelling has to have an air raid shelter by law (well certainly any new build), and because the Katyushas are not accurate.

From memory Hezbollah claimed that they had 17,000 Katyusha and Israel reckoned it was closer to 12,000

Either figure is pretty alarming.

[canadian]

@FRDE

The Ghaza rockets are home made, just glorified pipe bombs, they have been using them for ages.

The S. Lebanon rockets are a lot closer to the real thing, they are definitely not home made and they have a considerable range.

First the Hamas in Ghaza dug a tunnel, emerged and killed some IDF soldiers, kidnapping one.

Then the Hezbollah ambushed an Israeli patrol, and took two prisoners.

I heard that they used Katyusha rockets as a diversion during that raid.

And since then they have kept up a steady stream.

If by ‘incursion’ you mean before the Israelis attacked S. Lebanon, yes, Hezbollah started it but I suspect that they rather underestimated the response.

The disproportionate casualties are because every Israeli dwelling has to have an air raid shelter by law (well certainly any new build), and because the Katyushas are not accurate.

From memory Hezbollah claimed that they had 17,000 Katyusha and Israel reckoned it was closer to 12,000

Either figure is pretty alarming.

The question was kind of specific enough to answer with simple yes or no. But dont let that faze you… :rolleyes:

[Fear_Itself]

@canadian

The question was kind of specific enough to answer with simple yes or no. But dont let that faze you… :rolleyes:

If you stick around, you will learn there are no simple answers, and anyone who settles for them is asking to be deceived.

[FRDE]

@canadian

The question was kind of specific enough to answer with simple yes or no. But dont let that faze you… :rolleyes:

Watch it ‘Canadian’

The keyword here is ‘cite’

• I did not understand that at first, which gave me problems

Actually I have skated on thin ice in this thread, by describing events, but not citing reputable sources.

The one answer I could /not/ have given was ‘yes’ or ‘no’

It is a bit confusing at first, but the general idea seems to be to dilute opinion with ‘factoids’.

I think that here, ‘in my view’ needs to be followed by because …

[Steve_MB]

An estimated 750 Lebanese, overwhelmingly civilians and many of them children, have died, a dozen times more than the 50-plus Israelis (more than half of them soldiers) killed by Hezbollah.

That is a result of the fact that Hezbollah is more effective at positioning itself behind human shields than it is at aiming its terrorist attacks.

[Evil_Captor]

Well, thanks for the information. The reason I asked the question was, I was wondering how the US would respond if Canadian or Mexican terrorists started lobbing rockets into the US across the border. I figured that if the rockets just blew up in the Pacific northwest or the Southwestern deserts, we wouldn’t be all that aggravated, but if people started getting killed and property got destroyed, we’d have tanks massed at the border unless we were very sure that the Canadians and the Mexicans were cooperating fully with us in going after the terrorists. And if the terrorists had elected representatives in the Canadian/Mexican government, we wouldn’t be disposed to accept their assurances that that they were cooperating, so we’d probably cross the border and kill us some fellow North Americans.

We’d feel fully justified in doing so, too.

In all the news reports I’ve heard, mostly on the radio and TV, they just say Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel, they never said to what effect, so I couldn’t decide is Israel was making a proper response. Now I know. I think Israel has every right to defend its borders against rocket attacks based in neighboring countries by moving into those countries and destroying any bases they might find.

I’m somewhat perplexed, under the circumstances, that anyone has the gall to assume a contrary position. There was a cease fire, Israel gave up land, Hezbollah broke it. They are completely at fault. The situation isn’t nuanced in any respect.

[Fear_Itself]

@Evil Captor

I’m somewhat perplexed, under the circumstances, that anyone has the gall to assume a contrary position. There was a cease fire, Israel gave up land, Hezbollah broke it. They are completely at fault. The situation isn’t nuanced in any respect.

Artillery and aerial bombings have little effect of katyusha launchers; since they are mounted on trucks, they can shoot and scoot 30 seconds after the launch. The minimum response by Israel is 2-3 minutes; by the time the ordnance impacts the target, the only thing left is civilians. It is a tactically useless gesture that only turns the world against them. The only way to root out Hezbollah and their rockets is boots on the ground, something Israel wanted to avoid, but is now learning is inevitable.

[canadian]

Well… here’s a reputable source CTV.ca – http://www.ctv.ca/generic/WebSpecials/mideast_crisis/interactive2/index.html –

How about this sequence…

25 Jun – Fighters linked to Hamas tunnel into Israel from Gaza. They attack an Israeli army observation post, killing two Israeli soldiers and kidnapping one, Cpl. Galid Shalit.

26 Jun – The militants call for the release of Palestinian women and persons under 18 being held in Israeli prison. Israel says it will not negotiate.

27 Jun – The Hamas and Fatah parties agree to a document which calls for a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem. Israel masses troops along the Gaza border.

So here’s where it itches… one would think that getting Hamas to agree to a two-state solution means destruction of Israel is no longer on the table (comments like yeah for now, but later… keep to yourself). Also, one would think that for all the hoopla related to Hamas being bent on destruction of Israel, this agreement would call for more attention outside of Gaza. Other than massing the troops on the border (what border?!), of course. One would think that someone would step in and calm things down because of the break through in the long standing policy of Hamas. But that someone should be also interested in peace in the ME.

So the question is… what’s really going on? How do you know if papers and citable sites only publish what they are given including lies. Do we need another 40 years to pass before documents are released to find out (e.g. Suez crisis papers that show complicity between Israel, UK and France and premeditated attack by Israel on Egypt on the similar premise of border related squabbling).

How can anyone be sure of what’s going on?

[AFAIKnow]

@Fear Itself

Artillery and aerial bombings have little effect of katyusha launchers; since they are mounted on trucks, they can shoot and scoot 30 seconds after the launch. The minimum response by Israel is 2-3 minutes; by the time the ordnance impacts the target, the only thing left is civilians. It is a tactically useless gesture that only turns the world against them. The only way to root out Hezbollah and their rockets is boots on the ground, something Israel wanted to avoid, but is now learning is inevitable.

The new rockets everyone is touting are not mobile. The other day Hezbollah released a video of a launch saying that it can reach much further. The reporters say they didn’t show the fact that 2 minutes later the launch site was rubble. “Useless gesture” from your comfortable position maybe.

[Gangster_Octopus]

@Evil Captor

Well, thanks for the information. The reason I asked the question was, I was wondering how the US would respond if Canadian or Mexican terrorists started lobbing rockets into the US across the border. I figured that if the rockets just blew up in the Pacific northwest or the Southwestern deserts, we wouldn’t be all that aggravated, but if people started getting killed and property got destroyed, we’d have tanks massed at the border unless we were very sure that the Canadians and the Mexicans were cooperating fully with us in going after the terrorists. And if the terrorists had elected representatives in the Canadian/Mexican government, we wouldn’t be disposed to accept their assurances that that they were cooperating, so we’d probably cross the border and kill us some fellow North Americans.

I’d be extremely aggravated.

[cmkeller]

Fear Itself:

Artillery and aerial bombings have little effect of katyusha launchers; since they are mounted on trucks, they can shoot and scoot 30 seconds after the launch.

Israel knows this; there are several videos available on the net where Israeli spy-planes have followed rocket-launcher trucks after launching. The Israelis are (at least trying to) bomb where the launchers are, not merely where they had been at launch time.

[Ethilrist]

@Gangster Octopus

I’d be extremely aggravated.

I’d like to think that Dubya would have a stronger response to live fire onto American soil than “Hey, quit it…”

[FinnAgain]

@Larry Borgia

Were any of the Hezbollah missiles fired into Israel before the incursion?

The short answer is yes.
It appears that they used mortars and rockets as something of a ‘cover’ for their operation to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

[XT]

If anyone is interested, here is the Wiki cite for it. They are basically mass fire weapons, like artillary (as others have already pointed out), and pretty inaccurate when launched only a few at a time. The idea is to mass a BUNCH of these launchers together and THEN fire volley after volley of rockets at the enemy. You could ask the Germans how effective these things were.

Used as HB is using them, its shear luck when they hit something.

@Steve MB

That is a result of the fact that Hezbollah is more effective at positioning itself behind human shields than it is at aiming its terrorist attacks.

Pretty much. Good luck getting that through to Red though. He has been told this before and generally just ignores the logic, only to pop up again later in another thread saying the same exact thing.

-XT