23-Apr-18: Bret Stephens on Israel's robust willingness to defend itself

Familiar scenes - from seven years ago [Image Source]

In a punchy New York Times column published this past Friday ["Jewish Power at 70 Years"], Bret Stephens starts out talking about a hate crime - with an intriguing twist - in today's Germany. But then he heads off in the direction of the Middle East and the challenges posed to Israelis by the people on the far side of our borders.

Here's a first extract:

On Friday, Palestinians in Gaza returned for the fourth time to the border fence with Israel, in protests promoted by Hamas. The explicit purpose of Hamas leaders is to breach the fence and march on Jerusalem. Israel cannot possibly allow this — doing so would create a precedent that would encourage similar protests, and more death, along all of Israel’s borders — and has repeatedly used deadly force to counter it. The armchair corporals of Western punditry think this is excessive. It would be helpful if they could suggest alternative military tactics to an Israeli government dealing with an urgent crisis against an adversary sworn to its destruction. They don’t. It would also be helpful if they could explain how they can insist on Israel’s retreat to the 1967 borders and then scold Israel when it defends those borders. They can’t.

He's right. We're old enough to remember the coordinated Arab assaults on multiple Israeli bordersseven years ago in conjunction with Naqba Day - May 14 and 15, 2011 and around the same time as the ill-fated and unfortunately-named Arab Spring.

A BBC report at the time ["Palestinian protests: Arab spring or foreign manipulation?", BBC, May 15, 2011] said the not-so-peaceful "protestors"

undoubtedly embodied the same kind of risk-taking, confrontational people-power ethos that has fired the revolts in many parts of the Arab world.

How did that risk-taking confrontation play out?

Lebanon

In Lebanon, some 30,000 people were pulled together by the organizers near Lebanon's Israel border and walked towards it just opposite the northern Israeli town of Avivim. Soldiers of the Lebanese army first fired into the air to deter them. But then, as they headed recklessly into and across a border minefield throwing stones towards the Israeli and shouting into the hills for a "right of return", the Lebanese forces shot at them with assault rifles and tear gas. Before the retreat was completed, 11 participants were dead and about 100 injured.

Egypt

On the Egyptian border, thousands were reported to about to make their way from Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other points of origin toward the Rafah crossing with Gaza. But the military regime then in power intervened, warning bus companies not to answer the convoy organizers' requests. The few buses that did set off were stopped by the military and in the end, according to Ma'an, only some 80 individuals equipped with flags and an arsenal of angry demands and slogans got to the border. 

Fatahland

According to Wikipedia, around 300 West Bank "protesters" assembled at the Qalandiya Crossing - a busy crossing point - to demonstrate, forming human chains, staging sit-downs, hurling rocks. About 120 were said to be affected by tear gas, stink-spray and other crowd-dispersal means. BBC: "Clashes at the Qalandiya checkpoint in Ramallah continued for hours, with dozens of Palestinians injured. Palestinian protesters threw stones at Israeli security forces, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets."

Jordan

In Jordan, about 500 Palestinian Arab Jordanians were prevented by Jordanian army and police forces from doing harm at the Allenby Bridge, the major crossing point into the West Bank and Israel. They used tear gas and other similar tools and some 25 people were reported injured, including 11 Jordanian police. A Ma'an report said the Hamas-aligned Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and what Ma'an called "the powerful Islamic Action Front" termed this "shocking" and turning reality on its end demanded "an end to such policies that have harmed Jordan's image". 

Syria

On Israel's Syria border, 20 buses of "protestors" arrived from Damascus on Naqba Day, May 15, 2011. According to the BBC, the IDF said it "had only fired warning shots as a large number of protesters tried to breach a border fence near the village of Majdal Shams. But reports said at least two people had been killed and dozens injured. Israel's army says this is a "serious" incursion. Brig Gen Yoav Mordechai said soldiers were still trying to control the crowds and that dozens of protesters had crossed. The army has reportedly sealed off Majdal Shams and is carrying out house-to-house searches for "infiltrators"... "We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations," Gen Mordechai said... Syria denounced Israeli actions in the Golan Heights and Lebanon as "criminal", Agence France-Presse news agency reported. "Israel will have to bear full responsibility for its actions," the foreign ministry said." The NY Times said "some 13 Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded from thrown rocks." And Ynet, quoting an IDF enquiry, said "nearly 1,000 Syrians approached the fence, with Syrian border forces unable – or unwilling – to stop them. About 300 protesters, including children, rushed the fences and crossed over onto Israeli soil..."

Some weeks later, those May 2011 events in Syria were revealed to have actually been planned ahead of time by the Assad regime. This is all documented in an expose ["Report: Document Reveals Nakba Day Clashes Planned by Syria Government", Haaretz, June 14, 2011]. The bused-in attackers had attempted to breach Israel's border which was the plan. The Haaretz report quotes a Syrian government memo: "Permission is hereby granted allowing approaching crowds to cross the cease fire line (with Israel) towards the occupied Majdal-Shamms, and to further allow them to engage physically with each other in front of United Nations agents and offices. Furthermore, there is no objection if a few shots are fired in the air." There are clear parallels with what's happening now on Israel's Gaza frontier.

Then in June 2011, again on the Syria side of its border with Israel, large numbers of assailants purporting to "protest" were again bused in from Damascus. A Jerusalem Postreport quoted Syrian officials saying 23 were killed and 350 injured "as they attempted over the course of several hours to breach the barbed-wire border".

...

The Bret Stephens essay dwells as well on the intriguing case of Adam Armoush. Thought, when the story initially emerged, to be a young German Jew, he is in reality a 21-year-old Israeli Arab living in Germany 

who, on a recent outing in Berlin, donned a yarmulke to test a friend’s contention that it was unsafe to do so in Germany. On Tuesday he was assaulted in broad daylight by a Syrian asylum-seeker who whipped him with a belt for being “yahudi” — Arabic for Jew. The episode was caught on video and has caused a national uproar... There were nearly 1,000 reported anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin alone last year...

Stephens then connects Israel and Europe:

To be Jewish — at least visibly Jewish — in Europe is to live on borrowed time... There’s a limit to how many armed guards can be deployed indefinitely to protect synagogues or stop Holocaust memorials from being vandalized... There are many reasons to celebrate the date [of Israel's 70th anniversary a few days ago], many of them lofty: a renaissance for Jewish civilization; the creation of a feisty liberal democracy in a despotic neighborhood; the ecological rescue of a once-barren land; the end of 1,878 years of exile. But there’s a more basic reason. Jews cannot rely for their safety on the kindness of strangers... Hence Israel: its army, bomb, and robust willingness to use force to defend itself. Israel did not come into existence to serve as another showcase of the victimization of Jews. It exists to end the victimization of Jews... Though not Jewish, Adam Armoush was once one of the nonchalant when it came to what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. Presumably no longer. For Jews, it’s a painful, useful reminder that Israel is not their vanity. It’s their safeguard. 

Well said.

03-Apr-18: On Israel's Gaza border, more clashes today and a death

Today's Gazan attackers approach the border fence
[Video grab from the IDF surveillance video clip mentioned in the post]

There's no reason to expect the provocative efforts undertaken by Hamas and the consequent seriously raised tensions on the Gaza Strip's border with Israel to abate in the foreseeable future. The widespread criticism of Israel that erupted after 16 Palestinian Arabs were killed while rioting there this past weekend amount to the fulfillment of a dream for the Islamist terrorist organization. Their plan, by and large, is working. It's being marketed as “Return Marches” and set to continue, says Hamas, weekly into May.

No major surprise then that violent riots occurred throughout today (Tuesday) in four locations along the Gaza Strip barrier.

IDF forces used crowd dispersal measures and fired at suspects who attempted to breach the perimeter fence.The IDF says its soldiers today (Tuesday) used live fire against a group of Palestinian Arabs who succeeded in getting through the security fence. According to Times of Israel, one of the men in the group was shot dead:

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry identified the dead man as 25-year-old Ahmed Arafa, saying he was shot in the chest during clashes east of Bureij in central Gaza. The military wing of the DFLP terrorist group identified him as a member.

From Wikipedia:

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) (Arabic: 'الجبهة الديموقراطية لتحرير فلسطين', transliterated Al-Jabha al-Dimuqratiya Li-Tahrir Filastin) is a Palestinian Marxist–Leninist, secular political and militant organization. It is also frequently referred to as the Democratic Front, or al-Jabha al-Dimuqratiyah (الجبهة الديموقراطية). It is a member organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The group maintains a para-military wing called the National Resistance Brigades. Although the National Resistance Brigades have fighters based in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, these fighters have been engaged in relatively few military operations since the Second Intifada. The National Resistance Brigades continue to take part in training exercises at paramilitary camps near Rafah and Khan Yunis. One of the attacks for which the DFLP is best known is the 1974 Ma'alot massacre in which 25 schoolchildren and teachers were killed... The DFLP is believed to receive limited financial and military aid from Syria, where it is active in the Palestinian refugee camps. The DFLP's leader, Nayif Hawatmeh lives in Syria.

A brief surveillance video clip of about 25 seconds [click here to view], provided by the army to selected news media today, shows, according to Times of Israel

a person smashing the fence with what appears to be a metal pipe. He is joined by four others, two of which go through a hole in the fence. Then it appears warning shots were fired. The two men run back into Gaza, and once they are through the fence the video cuts out. It was unclear when Arafa was shot. According to the Israel Defense Forces, dozens of Palestinians took part [today] in “violent riots in four locations along the Gaza Strip.” The army said it used mostly less-lethal riot dispersal measures against the demonstrators — tear gas and rubber bullets — but used live rounds against the people who sabotaged the fence. “The IDF will not allow security infrastructure and the fence, which protects Israeli citizens to be damaged, and we will take action against terrorists who are involved,” the army said in a statement. “We again warn against approaching the fence,” the IDF added.

Media channels traditionally hostile to Israel, like Agence France Press (AFP) are blandly reporting tonight that

A Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces on the Gaza border Tuesday, the health ministry in the strip said, as tensions remained days after 17 people were killed when a mass demonstration led to clashes. The ministry identified the dead man as 25-year-old Ahmad Arafa, saying he was shot in the chest during clashes east of Bureij in central Gaza. The Israeli army said it was looking into the incident and could not immediately comment. It was the first death since at least 17 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops Friday when a protest by tens of thousands of people resulted in clashes... Israel has defended its soldiers' actions on Friday, saying they opened fire only when necessary against those throwing stones and firebombs or rolling tires at soldiers. It said there were attempts to damage the fence and infiltrate Israel, while alleging there was also an attempted gun attack against soldiers along the border. Palestinians say protesters were fired on while posing no threat to soldiers.

Our guess is the surveillance video clip showing today's penetration of the fence and infiltration from Gaza into Israel will not influence the outlook of the AFP editors.

As far as we know, AFP has no reporters stationed in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. In choosing to quote the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry as its source, it keeps its news consumers in the dark about its highly-compromised nature as a source of objective reporting.

We also noticed the Turkish Anadolu Agency described today's dead attacker this way:

“Ahmed Omar Arafa, 25, was martyred after being shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers near the eastern border of the Al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip,” Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said in a statement.

Israel's friends had better get used to the new normal. For the next few weeks, the incompetent Hamas regime, unable to otherwise address the mounting fury of its subjects over a failed economy and a collapsed infrastructure, will be feeding news agencies with a steady stream of news fodder based on harmless, peaceful, unarmed protestors being mercilessly gunned-down without any good reason by mean Zionists. Hold tight.

21-Oct-17: Early-morning rocket fire deep into northern Israel today and IDF believes the Syrians meant it this time

Damascus today: Iranians on the left, Syrians on the right, Iran's Maj. Gen.
Mohammad Bagheri in the middle shaking hands with Syria's top military
officer Gen. Ali Ayoub. The military agreement they signed is described
below [Image Source]

Israel's Syria border has been relatively quiet for decades. But the recent and ongoing geo-strategic changes in the Middle East (think: Iran) mean the likelihood of substantial changes there - for the worse - is on the minds of everyone in the Israeli security establishment.

Here's what we know about the events of today (Saturday).

Times of Israel, in a report entitled "Israel believes rocket fire from Syria may have been deliberate" says five rockets were fired across its border from Syria early this morning (Saturday). While earlier incoming rockets (there have been many this year already - most recently this past Thursday) have been called incidental to the ferocious blood-letting in Syria, today's

"may have been deliberately launched at Israel, rather than constituting errant spillover from clashes in Syria, military sources said late Saturday. Israel fired back into Syria, hitting three rocket launchers, in response to the rocket fire, and warned that further fire would prompt a more intensive response... Channel 2 news reported that although the IDF officially referred to “spillover” fire in its statements Saturday, there was “a growing sense” in the army that the Syrian fire was deliberate..." [Times of Israel, today]

Today's rockets were all fired into Israel around 5 am. Four fell relatively deeply inside Israeli territory and according to Times of Israel set off Code Red (Tzeva Adom) alarms in several locations. It's still believed at this stage that all crashed onto open ground without causing injury or damage, though one "landed close to an Israeli residential area."

Israeli suspicions start with the assessment that  no fighting was going on in any relevant part of Syria at the time of the fire. The Syrian army fully controls the specific area from which they were fired. And they landed far from the Syrian frontier.  And this:

Concluding a visit to Syria on Saturday, the commander of Iran’s armed forces signed a memorandum of understanding with Syrian officials in which the two allies announced plans for tighter military cooperation and coordination — notably against Israel. [Times of Israel, today]

More about that below.

All sides - Syria, Israel, Iran - have been making statements.

The Syrian defense ministry says Israel arranged for the rocket attack on its territory:

"The terrorists, acting at the behest of Israel, shelled empty ground to provide a pretext for this aggression..." [Turkish news site Daily Sabah, today]

The IDF doesn't think it attacked itself and issued this blunt warning:

“The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm the sovereignty of the State of Israel and the security of its residents, and considers the Syrian regime responsible for what is happening in its territory... Even if this is just spillover, this is an exceptional incident and the continuance of such events will be met with a more fierce Israeli response... ” [IDF statement quoted by Times of Israel, today]

And Bagheri, the Iranian, said just three days ago from Damascus [source] where he arrived a day earlier that he was there to coordinate

“in order to fight our common enemies — whether they are the Zionists or the terrorists. We discussed ways to strengthen relations in the future and outlined the basic principles of this cooperation... We cannot accept a situation where the Zionist entity attacks Syria from the ground and the air”.

Associated Press today added to what we know about the unusual Syrian junket by Iran's most senior military officer:

The Chief of Staff of Iran's armed forces, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, is on an official visit to Syria. He toured the front lines in the northern province of Aleppo and discussed military cooperation with President Bashar Assad... Syria and its strong backer Iran signed a joint memorandum of understanding for developing cooperation and coordination between the two countries' armies... [The] memo was signed between the two countries' chiefs of staffs [and] provides for exchanging military expertise and intelligence and technology information in a way that can boost the two countries' capability for fight terrorism, according to [Syria's] state news agency SANA. Iran has been one of Syrian President Bashar Assad's strongest supporters since the country's crisis began in 2011 and has sent thousands of Iranian-backed militiamen to boost his troops against opponents.

Meanwhile, Israel National News says the IDF fire in the hours after the Syrian rocketry "destroyed three Syrian artillery cannons".

19-Sep-17: An Iranian drone dispatched in Israel's direction from Syria is intercepted en route

An IDF Patriot battery ready for action [Image Source]

All the ominous recent talk about Iran's massively increased financial capacity - thanks to its JCPOA deal with the Obama administration
- to feed its voracious appetite for military adventurism in our part of the world just became significantly more worrisome this afternoon.

The Israeli Air Force intercepted what it believes to be an Iranian-built drone, sent by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, with a Patriot missile after it attempted to cross into Israeli airspace on Tuesday, the army said. The military also scrambled fighter jets to the area, but ultimately did not need to use them as the interceptor missile was able to destroy the target. [According to an IDF spokesperson] the air force monitored the unmanned aerial vehicle from its take-off from Damascus airport to the demilitarized zone that separates the Israeli and Syrian Golan Heights. [When it crossed] the Syrian border and entered the demilitarized zone — but not Israeli airspace — the IDF “decided to intercept it,” [the spokesperson] said. ["IDF Patriot intercepts apparent Hezbollah drone from Syria", Times of Israel, September 19, 2017]

The report says the Patriot interceptor missile was fired from a military site near the city of Safed.

Seyyed Abdolrahim Mousavi under watchful gaze of his
ideological masters [Image Source]

Iran has not been shy for decades about its genocidal (understand the word literally) intentions when it comes to the Jewish state:

Iran’s newly appointed army chief warned Monday that the Islamic Republic would raze the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa if the “Zionist regime” makes “any wrong move.” In remarks delivered at an event in the city of Qom, General Abdolrahim Mousavi also echoed previous warnings that Israel will not exist in 25 years. Mousavi, who issued a nearly identical threat last month, was appointed in August as the commander of the Iranian army, an entity separate from the country’s Revolutionary Guards Corps... [Source]

The sabre-rattling of Iran's entire power structure is generally taken seriously around here. An Associated Press report reminds us that Israeli leaders across the military and political spectrum are

worried that as the Syrian civil war appears to be winding down, Iranian and Hezbollah forces will maintain a permanent presence in the neighboring country. Netanyahu was to address the U.N. General Assembly later on Tuesday, with Iran at the top of his agenda... [Netanyahu] has repeatedly warned that Israel will not accept a military presence by Iran or any of its Shiite allies in the Syrian border area near Israel. Israel has largely stayed out of the fighting in Syria. But it has carried out dozens of airstrikes on alleged arms shipments bound for Hezbollah. It fears the group will gain sophisticated weapons and smuggle them from Syria into Lebanon.

From a 2014 report on the IDF's blog:

The Patriot surface-to-air missile system, officially known as the MIM-104, is an important part of Israel’s aerial defense. Designed by the American company Raytheon, this ground-to-air, long-range missile is able to intercept and shoot down all types of aircraft. Drones, helicopters and fighter jets can all be targeted from a distance of 160 km.

21-Nov-16: German experts "discover" that Islamist terrorists are "being trained" to come into Europe as asylum seekers

Asylumn seekers arrived in Germany [Image Source]

Whether or not there are genuinely new disclosures here, the article published  a week ago on the website of Deutsche Welle ("Germany’s international broadcaster [where] 3,000 employees and freelancers from 60 countries work") is sober and plain-spoken even if its conclusions are emerging a little late.

'Islamic State' reportedly training terrorists to enter Europe as asylum seekers | Deutsche Welle, November 14, 2016 | Germany's spy agency has warned that the "Islamic State" (IS) is infiltrating refugee groups to get into Europe. Officials and analysts are now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early. | On November 13 last year, three teams of militants from the so-called "Islamic State" (IS), armed with Kalashnikovs, stormed the Stade de France stadium, the Bataclan concert hall and several pubs in Paris. The rampage left 130 people dead, 85 of them in Bataclan, where the band, the Eagles of Death Metal, was playing.
Meanwhile, investigations have revealed that all nine men involved in the attacks had traveled to Europe together with the stream of refugees that entered the continent in 2015. According to German weekly "Welt am Sonntag," the country's spy agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) has warned that IS is specifically training terrorists to merge with asylum seekers looking for safer havens in Europe. The report's authors say that the BND suggests that terrorists train potential attackers on how to answer questions during border interrogations so they can prove their credibility as refugees. The spy agency has refused to comment on this matter. Responding to an email query by DW, an agency press spokesman said: "Basically, the BND communicates its information only to the German government or to responsible bodies of the German parliament in confidential sessions." Many refugees have fled from IS terror in regions like Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq...

A million immigrants arrived in Germany last year, and Muslim organizations assert [here] that "at least" 800,000 of them are Muslim. They keep coming in large numbers that have no precedent even as news stories about the massive influx of 'asylum seekers' disappear from news sites and television screens.

Germany's total population was about 80 million five years ago. It's currently about 82 million. An estimate quoted here suggests that Germany was home, as of the end of 2015, to 5,945,000 Muslims. Pew Research says [here] France has 4.7 million Muslims, and that Germany has slightly more,

The European Commission, aware of how much misinformation and disinformation accompanies this issue, publishes a valuable though laconic document entitled "Asylum quarterly report". Using notably dry language, its most recent issue published [here] in September offers some startling data:

• The number of first-time asylum seekers arriving in the European Union's 28 countries during the month of September 2015 alone was 170,825. (We're selecting September to enable a comparison to be made. Otherwise, September has no special significance.) Of those, 47,185 sought asylum in Germany, representing about 28% of the entire human 'asylum seeking' tidal wave now arriving at Europe's shores.
• The same numbers for the month of September 2016, a year later show a total of 101,765 arrived in all the 28 countries taken together. That's notably down on a year earlier, But of those, no fewer than 76,320 came to Germany. That's 75% of the entire EU number. 
• If that tidal wave of 'asylum seekers' is subsiding, as the greatly diminished amount of news coverage might imply, there's simply no sign of it in Germany. 
• (The numbers for all 28 European countries are on display in this dynamic online table. If these stats interest you, this is an excellent and authoritative source,)

Asylum seekers in Berlin [Image Source: Uriel Heilman/JTA]

When Islamists carried out shocking terrorist attacks in Paris almost exactly a year ago ["14-Nov-15: The Friday 13th terror assault on Paris"], European and German public officials were anxious to downplay - even to deny - any connection between such outrages and the flood of Muslim "asylum seekers".

Thus, for instance, an un-named "source in Germany's federal police" quoted in an Israeli report a few days after the coordinated massacres that took the lives of 130 people and injured an astounding 400 more at the Stade de France, numerous Parisian cafés and restaurants and the Bataclan theatre in the centre of the French capital.

"That is what I fear, people on the right side of political spectrum confusing the refugee problem with the Islamic terrorism problem, even though there is no connection," admitted a source in Germany's federal police... [i24news.tv, November 15, 2015]

No connection, he said? Did he have any actual idea at the time? Does he now? When Germany's government officials say a year later that they are "now looking into methods by which potential terrorists can be spotted early", the realists among us can only offer them the best of luck.

And for a European reaction, consider this brief extract from a news report published in a respected news source in the wake of the Paris savagery:

The European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has warned Europe against confusing refugees and terrorists, asking the public not to “give in to such basic reactions”. And speaking to the AFP News Agency, a Syrian refugee named Ghaled said he wished the empathy for the scores killed Paris could be translated to empathy for the hundreds of thousands dead in his home country... ["Paris attacks: Syrian refugees put shootings in French capital in perspective", The Independent (UK), November 16, 2015]

A year on and "confusing refugees and terrorists" turns out not to have been such a "basic" reaction.

That DW report we mentioned above goes on to provide a platform for some German voices that don't seem the least bit surprised by what's just been conceded:

Regardless, the fact that IS terrorists have slipped into the continent with hundreds of thousands fleeing from war in the Middle East is nothing new, says Susanne Schröter, expert on Islamic terrorism at Frankfurt University. "This was known since the beginning. I warned about such a possibility even before there were any examples of terrorists slipping in," she told DW. "This is because IS announced that it would send attackers to the continent through the route which refugees were taking. At the time, politicians denied this," she added, referring to over 1 million refugees from Syria and Iraq, who landed in Europe last year. The situation in European countries like Germany, which took in over 840,000 refugees in 2015, was difficult. Border controls had to be given up and many of those coming in could not be registered by authorities properly, compounding the problem, Schröter said... [Deutsche Welle, November 14, 2016]

The DW article goes on to provide plenty of exposure to the more conventional sort of European and German viewpoint. For instance (and these bullet points are all direct quotes):

• "The steady flow of refugees at the time also unleashed a sequence of violent attacks against asylum seekers, especially in the states of former East Germany. "Our leaders thought, if we now admit that there could be terrorists among refugees, then it would serve as fodder for right-wing populists and lead to more anti-migrant feelings. So they played it down, but ultimately that was not the right thing to do," the analyst said.
• "Bataclan was not the last target on the list of attacks in Europe. A major attack on Brussels' main airport and an underground station on March 22 this year killed 32 people and wounded many others. 
• "Smaller knife attacks and a suicide explosion in the southern German town of Ansbach shook the country and Europe. 
• "Most of these attackers were refugees themselves or had contacts with asylum seekers, highlighting the fact that the newcomers were especially vulnerable to terrorist recruiters. "There are different kinds of people who come in as refugees. They have different political backgrounds and there are some who are close to IS, and some who have fled from IS," said Schröter.
• "Most of the asylum seekers who come to Europe are young men, who are disillusioned when they land in Europe, because smugglers have promised them something completely different, like more money, a house and a car, Schröter said. 
• "The long registration and waiting process until they finally know what is going to happen to them, adds to the discontent, she explained. Many people simply leave refugee homes and never return, and terror groups and Islamic fundamentalist organizations, like Salafists, use this to their advantage and recruit young people to stage attacks.
• [Schröter says] "the state will have to monitor people more closely. The possibility of terror attacks and cyber invasions has now prompted the German spy agency BND and the domestic intelligence organization, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, to plan a 73 million euro ($78 million) project for supervising internet and telecom messaging services. The agencies have not revealed exact plans, but according to a combined report by the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" daily, and public broadcasters WDR and NDR, the BND wants to react faster to messages sent on mobile services like "WhatsApp." 
• "The agencies justify the project, called "Panos," by saying that the "security of Germany and its citizens can no longer be taken for granted. [Can anyone's today?]
• "It is likely that the heightened supervision of communication channels will affect normal citizens and refugees not involved in terrorism. But, as Schröter says, "considering the present situation, there could be nothing worse than a big terror strike, not only because of the possible victims, but also because of the effect it will have. And that is why everything needs to be done so that there is no big attack."

Forgive us, but given the scale of the threat and the indications that serious-minded malevolents with Islamist doctrine as their guide have targeted their towns and public places, these German voices strike us as being sadly indecisive.

For their sakes, we hope we're wrong.

07-Mar-16: In the UK, the jihadist threat now has Scotland Yard's full attention

Ms Dare's older son, aged 4 [Image Source]

The child in the image on the right is four years old. Speaking with a British accent and dressed in military fatigues, he is the central figure in a ten-minute-long ISIS propaganda video that got considerable media coverage in January 2016.

Without exaggerating, it's a hideous production. The little boy points off in the distance and says, “We will kill kuffar [infidels] over there.” Before it's over, the clip shows five shackled men dressed in orange boilersuits who are said to have “confessed” to spying for the UK. They are then killed.

The boy is the son of a notorious Islamist zealot, Khadijah (nee Grace) Dare, the daughter of a Christian family from Nigeria who raised her in Lewisham, UK. Despite her good Catholic school education, she transplanted herself to the killing-fields of Syria in 2012 in order to marry a Swede with the adopted nom-de-guerre Abu Bakr and who is now thought to be dead. Mrs Dare-Bakr "used social media to gloat about the beheading of the American journalist James Foley and said she wanted to be the first British woman to kill" a hostage, evidently by removing his head. A serious-minded person, she "missed junk food and Chinese takeaways, but said she would never return home" [Telegraph UK, January 4, 2016].

As well as the little boy in the photo above, she has a second son who is younger still. It's not clear when he will be pressed into serving the Islamist cause, but the path ahead of him seems to be clear.

How serious is the existential threat posed by the unchecked spread of ideological terrorism? We think the answer is "very" and have been saying so for 14 years. The masthead of this blog includes some language intended to express that deep concern.

Not everyone agrees with us. 

Madrid, March 11, 2004 [Image Source]

In the next few days. Spain will mark the anniversary of 11-M, the name they give to the March 11, 2004 jihadist massacre at Madrid's Atocha central train station [see our blog post "8-May-14: Madrid moments"]. 

In the dozen years since it happened, the atrocity has been the subject of a kind of partisan tug-of-war over how it ought to be understood. 

Compare, for instance, an article in The Guardian ["The worst Islamist attack in European history", October 31, 2007], with Wikipedia's survey of the Spanish voices - notably including El Mundo and La Razon newspapers - that claim it was not the Islamists at all but a consortium of other malevolents, among them the police and the Basque separatists of ETA.

For some people, warnings about how badly the battle against the terrorists is going are treated as noise and dismissed as causing more confusion than clarification. Some others pay lip-service (this includes public figures from among the many we have personally encountered) but their actions show they are not convinced and don't regard the dangers as serious or the warnings actionable.

Today, the "UK's national head of counter- terrorism" gave a media briefing from which we have extracted some bullet pointed quotes below. His views are being translated into action, and though we are not close enough to the UK to appreciate how seriously this is being taken by the wider public, his views seem to be mainstream.

Mark Rowley has been the Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations in the Metropolitan Police Service for the past four and a half years. That's the body that, with its tens of thousands of employed officers, police staff, Community Support Officers and volunteer police, provides greater London with policing services. When people speak of Scotland Yard, they mean the MPS. The Guardian calls Rowley the policeman who "leads on counter-terrorism for Scotland Yard".

[Image Source]

Some of what he said today:

• The nature of the threat from ISIS is changing. "Going from [a] narrow focus on police and military as symbols of the state to something much broader. And you see a terrorist group which has big ambitions for enormous and spectacular attacks, not just the types that we've seen foiled to date..." [Telegraph UK, today]
• Where, in the recent past, ISIS was thought to be trying to incite small-scale attacks by individuals, using knives or vehicles, their goals seem much broader now, In the wake of the Friday 13th massacre in Paris during November, Rowley and other counter-terrorism chiefs believe ISIS has "the capability and intent to stage a mass-casualty attack in the west".
• Rowley said ISIS "is trying to get supporters who have received military training in Syria into northern Europe to stage attacks". What sort of alarm bells ought this insight to be ringing in those European countries currently swamped with waves - hundreds of thousands - of newly-arrived and still-arriving "refugees" said to be fleeing the blood-letting in Syria?
• Abdelhamid Abaaoud, regarded as the ringleader of the Paris terrorism attacks [we have some interesting things to say about him here], is now known to have visited Birmingham and London during 2015. "Found on his phone were pictures taken during his visit to fellow jihadis. Rowley declined to comment on this." [The Guardian, today]
• ISIS recruiters are increasingly targeting (a) people with mental illnesses (b) women and (c) teenagers, and they are successfully drawing them in. In terms of 2015 arrests under counter-terrorism laws in the UK, 77% were British nationals, 14% were female and 13% were 20 or younger. The Guardian quotes him saying "Over half of those arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences ended up being charged with a terrorism offence."
• Dozens of children were “safeguarded” (a police expression) during 2015. These interventions arose because their parents tried to take them to Syria or Iraq, or because of suspicions that they were being radicalised.
• The overall view taken by the authorities is that the terrorists still want to kill soldiers or the police but are increasingly focused on "attacking western lifestyle targets".
• About those re-education and community-based efforts to intercept would-be jihadists before they get completely weaponized, this sobering comment from The Guardian: "Privately, counter-terrorism officials see no sign of ISIS’s internet propaganda campaign being thwarted by community and government efforts and believe the group still has the same ability to attract devotees."

If the police analysis is even half right, there's good reason for the UK's citizens to be seriously agitated.

20-Dec-15: Sunday evening rocket volley is fired into northern Israel

Following the demise of a notorious terrorist earlier today, there has just now been a rocket volley fired into northern Israel. Israel National News says:

At least three rockets were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel, the army has confirmed. Air raid sirens sounded in communities throughout the western Galilee in northern Israel, at 17:42 local time Sunday, including in Rosh Hanikra and Nahariya. Locals report hearing at least one explosion; three rockets struck within Israel. There are no reports of injury or damage. IDF forces are scanning the area. The strikes follow Hezbollah vowing revenge for the assassination of its notorious commander Samir Kuntar, in what is believed to have been an Israeli airstrike near Damascus.

There were four incoming rockets, according to Times of Israel. It quotes Lebanon’s Naharnet saying that

two rockets were fired at Israel from the al-Hinniyeh area and two others were fired from Tal al-Maaliyeh. Some reports suggest one rocket landed in the sea. There are also initial reports of IDF artillery fire into Lebanon following the attack. There is no official confirmation of a counterattack...[A]t least one rocket landed in an open area near Nahariya. It’s not clear where the other two landed. “Forces are searching the area,” the IDF says in a statement. There are no reports of injuries or damage.

We noticed at least one Western reporter, tweeting here, who said this morning that Syrian state media had blamed "a hostile terrorist missile strike," and not Israel, for the elimination of Kuntar. In any event, no government, and certainly not Israel, has owned up to any involvement at this stage.

UPDATE - Monday, December 21, 2015: Times of Israel says communal bomb shelters are now operating in several northern Israel communities following the Sunday night multiple-rocket attacks. The Israeli assessment is that three rockets were fired into Israel from Lebanon, with all three landing near Shlomi, a small town near the Lebanese border. Inbound-rocket sirens were heard across a broad swathe of the northern border area. UNIFIL radars detected three rockets being launched and one of them landing in the sea, according to the IDF. Credit for the attack has been claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a Syria-based Palestinian terror group. There are so far no reports of injuries or damage from the rocket strikes. A Lebanese source quoted by AFP says the rockets were Katyushas.

08-Oct-15: Blowing smoke: Asylum seekers and the Europeans who process them

Syrian cigarettes [Image Source]

Do any of the arrivers/migrants/asylum seekers in the massive wave described here have terrorism on their minds? Or are taking part in a Trojan Horse strategy? Who knows? Who cares? On the basis of the evidence described here, not the governments of Europe.

Foreign Policy Magazine (October 7, 2015)

The Men Who Pretend to Be Syrian Refugees

People washing ashore on the Greek island of Lesbos are trying to pass themselves off as Syrian to win a new life in Europe — and overworked officials are struggling to determine who’s telling the truth. | Susannah George | October 7, 2015

KARA TEPE, Greece — “Oh, you’re from Syria,” said one of the officials holding up a spiral-bound book with color pictures of 100-pound notes. “Can you point to which of these pictures is your home currency?”

One by one, the head of the vetting team led by Frontex, a European Union agency that works between member states to secure EU borders, quizzes men and families claiming to be from Syria who arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos.

“I’m a Syrian,” the man repeated to the official cautiously, his shoes and clothing still wet from the journey by sea earlier that day. “From Deir Ezzor.”

The man, who had arrived from Turkey that morning, hesitated and pointed to a yellow bill, a fake note that vaguely resembled Lebanese currency but was clearly not from Syria.

“Are you originally from Iraq, maybe?” the officer asked. After some whispered words with his wife and brother, the man explained that, yes, his family is Iraqi, but they had lived in Syria for many years.

At a registration center that processes more than 1,000 people a day, there is at most a single Arabic speaker present.At a registration center that processes more than 1,000 people a day, there is at most a single Arabic speaker present. In the afternoon, after Frontex agents and NGO workers head home at 2 p.m., there are none. The vast majority of the processing is handled by local policemen and civil servants who have been pulled away from their desk jobs at local municipalities and who are ill-equipped to judge whether a new arrival is actually from where they say they are.

Over the summer, between 3,000 and 5,000 people were arriving to Lesbos every day, about half of whom were registered at Kara Tepe. For many of those people — and those still coming to the island now — their declared country of origin could mean the difference between being allowed to stay in Europe and being sent back home. Syrians fleeing war are largely expected to be granted asylum in countries like Germany and Sweden, but individuals from a relatively safe country, such as Morocco or Turkey, who are just seeking better work and education opportunities in Europe, would generally not qualify for the same benefits and would possibly be sent back to their country of origin. Officials familiar with the vetting process at the Kara Tepe registration center estimate about half of all people who arrive initially say that they are Syrian.

“All nationalities receive the same treatment here,” explained the agent to a crowd of men all claiming to be Syrian. The agent declined requests to speak directly to the media or give out his name, “If you’re Libyan, Moroccan, Iraqi, Syrian, everyone receives the same papers. I’m just trying to do my job.”

The man who initially claimed to be from Deir Ezzor but was in fact Iraqi was just one of many who was cycled through this haphazard process. After being questioned by the Frontex official, he was waved through to other agents who helped him fill out a palm-sized slip of paper with his name, the names of his father, mother, and grandfather, and his nationality. At the next kiosk, that slip of paper became a legal document stamped and signed by a Greek civil servant. After being fingerprinted, the man was handed a single sheet of paper — a transit document — which allowed him to travel through Greece to the rest of Europe.

The next man in line approached the official. “I’m just asking for a friend, not for me, but is it OK if you’re Libyan, will you still get the papers?”

In the back of the crowd, one family debated among themselves whether to try to pass for Syrian. When asked where exactly they were from in Syria, one woman paused and smiled: “From Syria, for sure.”

The caption on the source image reads: Migrants: Hundreds of men,
women and children make their way to temporary shelter after arriving
 in Greece [Image Source]. There are women in this photo, but
you have scrutinize it hard to find them

Greece’s system for processing refugees wasn’t fully functional even before the current influx of people, said Migration Policy Institute analyst Susan Fratzke — and has now “basically been overwhelmed.”

Fratzke says as far back as 2008, Greece was being criticized for its sloppy handling of asylum-seekers. Specifically, the country was failing even back then to keep track of who was entering the EU through Greece and process the claims in-country. Everyone who enters the EU through Greece is supposed to declare asylum there, and Greece is supposed to handle the paperwork and vetting process. But Athens knows these people don’t want to stay, so it is not even attempting to handle the claims and is instead just leaving the work for the countries where the new arrivals are heading, like Germany and Sweden.

“Because the rules aren’t being enforced,” Fratzke said, “it’s really had the effect of placing a higher share of responsibility on some of the more desirable destinations like Germany and Sweden.”

At the Kara Tepe registration center, only a fraction of new arrivals receive any sort of vetting at all. Greek officials lack the capacity to carry it out themselves, and Frontex employees are only present at the registration center for a fraction of the day.

At around 4 p.m., after most employees had left, a group of men arrived at the camp asking how to register; they were directed by fellow refugees and migrants to a messy pile of blank slips of paper stacked on an abandoned desk. The men, speaking Iraqi-accented Arabic and slang, said they were from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and lacked documentation because all their belongings had been lost at sea.

The men wrote “Syria” under nationality and proceeded directly to the local police officer, where the information was notarized. Within an hour, they were fingerprinted and had received letters of transit listing them as Syrian nationals.

The caption on the source image reads: Dangerous journey: Syrian refugees
get off an overcrowded inflatable dinghy they used
to travel to Greece [Image Source]

“We are so thankful to the Greek government to give us this chance at a peaceful life,” said one of the men, who asked to be called Ali.

Aid workers say about half the people at this registration center show up without any kind of documentation. Along the island’s beaches, residents have collected identity documents from the rocky shores — Pakistani and Iraqi passports and Turkish national IDs, all presumably abandoned because people from these countries have slimmer chances of being granted asylum and being allowed to stay in Europe.

“We just have to trust what they write down,” said Dimitris Sarras, a civil servant and architect“We just have to trust what they write down,” said Dimitris Sarras, a civil servant and architect who now works part time at the registration center to help fill out paperwork. “There was one man from an NGO who spoke Arabic, but he left last week, so there is no way to know, really.”

Greece’s registration process has not always worked this way. The Greek government quietly changed its registration policies earlier this summer, when a sharp increase in arrivals from Turkey to Lesbos left more than 20,000 refugees and migrants stuck on the island, overcrowding the capital of Mytilene, an idyllic tourist town whose typical population numbers roughly 38,000.

German officials have said that 30 percent of the people claiming to be Syrian asylum-seekers in Germany are not in fact from Syria, but officials in Greece with knowledge of the initial registration process on the Aegean island estimate the number is much higher.

“Honestly, it’s really not that hard. You just need to start by asking the guy about himself,” explained one official involved in EU vetting procedures who asked that his name be withheld as he was not authorized to speak to the media. “One guy, I could tell from his teeth he’s a smoker, so I asked, oh, you smoke cigarettes? Yeah? What is that Syrian brand again? Anyone who is actually from Syria will know, but Iraqis would never know.”

The official says the process is rarely confrontational. “They all respect that I’m just trying to do my job, and no one is being turned away.” 

And therein lies a problem: There are no real repercussions if someone is found to be lying about his or her country of origin. If the official doing the vetting isn’t happy with someone’s answer, he or she can detain the refugee in question at the registration center, but this rarely happens at Kara Tepe.

For all those who will qualify for asylum, many others will not, Fratzke says, and Greece is not doing anyone any favors by waving people through. The EU return process, a bureaucratic mess that only manages to send home fewer than half of all those deemed ineligible for asylum, becomes less effective the longer people remain in the system.

“The longer you leave people in the system, the more difficult it is to sort through the cases,” she said, “and the more resources you’re taking for people who might eventually need to be returned.”

29-Sep-15: In Germany, trying to deal with the "idiosyncrasies" of a million needy arrivals (in 2015 alone)

The caption on this published AFP photo reads: Policemen lead migrants to a temporary shelter as they arrive in Munich from Budapest on September 12, 2015 [AFP Photo/Sven Hoppe]

The Arab Spring, a relic of the distant past that

began on 18 December 2010 in Tunisia with the Tunisian Revolution, and spread throughout the countries of the Arab League and its surroundings [Wikipedia]

created a sense of optimism among ordinary Arabs that (as one source put it)

the people could, if they mobilized, win previously unheard-of freedoms.

As it's turned out, that "mobilization" and those "unheard of freedoms" turn out to be achievable, in the minds of a vast number of Arabs, only in Europe. Germany has become one of the prime destinations for the massive wave of mobilized Arabs and other largely Moslem migrants.

Germany's Deutsche Welle, under the title "Refugees don't leave their conflicts behind" has just published a startling piece about what the anticipated arrival on their doorsteps of a million people (the total expected to get to Germany before the end of 2015) describing themselves as refugees translates into in terms of challenges for the Germans.

Some extracts, all of them direct quotes:

• There are no official statistics, but aid organizations, social workers and volunteers note that ethnic, social, cultural and religious tensions are on the rise in Germany's overcrowded refugee shelters...
• The sudden surge in asylum demands this year has authorities scrambling for housing for refugees from war zones such as Syria, but also migrants from Albania and Kosovo. Often converted hotels, gyms, schools and tents are used as makeshift shelters. 
• Tempers flare easily at close quarters. In Leipzig last week, about 200 refugees wielding table legs and bed frames started a fight after they couldn't agree who got to use one of the few toilets first. It took a large police contingent to calm the situation...
• Other recent incidents include a riot at a refugee shelter in central Germany over a torn Koran and Muslim Chechens beating up Syrian Christians in a Berlin shelter...
• [I]nsults, threats, discrimination and blackmail against Christian asylum-seekers in particular are a regular occurrence, according to the Munich-based Central Council for Oriental [in German: ZOCD]... "I've heard so many reports from Christian refugees who were attacked by conservative Muslims," said Simon Jacob, of the [ZOCD]... But that's only the tip of the iceberg... "The number of unreported cases is much higher."
• Overcrowding isn't the main issue [he says]... it's merely the trigger: "People bring with them the conflicts that exist in their native countries, Christians and Muslims, Kurds and extremists, Shiites and Sunnis - they don't leave them behind at the border." These conflicts erupt when the refugees - often traumatized - are forced to live close together...
• Separating refugees according to religion is now being mentioned as an interim solution to help alleviate the problems.

The optimism expressed by the German politicians quoted in this article is uplifting, even if it sounds (to us) a little out of touch with reality:

• Islam is a part of Germany, but Islamism clearly isn't, said opposition Greens party leader Cem Özdemir, adding that tolerance must not be misinterpreted and exploited as weakness...
• The refugees are afraid and mistrustful of authorities, and worried about possible retribution against their families at home, so they rarely call the police, he explained. They have to learn that they have duties and rights in Germany, Jacob [of ZOCD] said... It's of the utmost importance that the refugees be integrated in the German system of values, otherwise, they will live in parallel societies, he warned.

Robed figure, plus German police at the site of the Berlin mosque raid
a week ago [Image Source]

Eventually, the legal and criminal aspects of this massive influx are likely to become a core issue. Signs of trouble ahead are already there (all verbatim quotes):

• "The police are at their limits," said Jörg Radek, deputy chief of Germany's police union GdP. Officers are tasked with registering newcomers, reconciling differences in the shelters and protecting them from far-right extremist attacks. "We have to do everything in our power to prevent further violence in the shelters," Radek said - and urged housing people of different religions separately. Different groups band together, and that can quickly turn into a major brawl, Radek said. "In that case, it's not enough to send a lone patrol car," Radek said...
• Private security firms already guard some refugee shelters, but according to the refugees, their staff usually stays out of religiously-motivated strife...
• Radek urged hiring even more private security offices to take the pressure off regular police officers. Ideally, the municipalities should hire security personnel experienced in intercultural affairs, he said: "Personnel that understands the various refugee groups' idiosyncrasies."

From the conservative part of the German political spectrum (but not only), they're focused on something that gets little direct analysis in the Western media. Marcus Pretzell, an MEP and regional leader of the Alternative for Germany party ["German economy collapse inevitable, caused by migrant waves", RT, September 18, 2015] says. 

I think that German government doesn’t have any idea for solution of the problem, because, it will be one million, maybe even more, maybe 1.2 million people, but mostly it’s young men who come to Germany and they all get their families to Germany as well. If they live in Germany, it will not be one million - it will be 2-3, maybe even more people from Arab countries living in Germany, and that will change the country. I believe that German government has no answer for this big change in German society... [Source]

Hans-Georg Maassen is the head of Germany’s domestic security service, the BFV. He is quoted in the past week by a British paper saying 

"We are very concerned that Islamists in Germany are trying, under the cover of humanitarian assistance, to exploit the situation of the refugees for their own ends and to proselytise and recruit among asylum-seekers..." [Telegraph UK, September 22, 2015]

Being concerned is of course not a basis for taking people's freedom from them. The head of the BFV concedes there is "no reliable evidence" that "jihadists are infiltrating Germany masquerading as refugees." Still, the interview was published shortly after a series of police raids were carried out in Berlin, targeting suspected recruiters for ISIS. A mosque and several apartments were raided in the early hours, on the heels of warnings that Islamic extremists are recruiting the refugees flooding into Germany.

Meanwhile, back in the home of what used to be the Arab Spring, the absorption of what are commonly (though not so accurately) termed "Syrian refugees" has produced a result that we think speaks for itself,. In CNN's words:

[N]o Syrian refugees have been resettled in Persian Gulf nations like Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, countries with significant financial and political interest in Syria... Gulf citizens have much in common with Syrians. They speak Arabic, like most Syrians. And those states are wealthier than many countries, such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, that have accepted refugees. Some say Saudi Arabia and Qatar have an obligation to help victims of a war in which those nations have been involved through their financial support of rebel groups that have fought Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. ["Refugee crisis: Why aren't Gulf states taking them in?", CNN, September 8, 2015]

Some say, and some ask. But meanwhile the migrants keep pushing into Europe in their hundreds of thousands. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has made a magnanimous offer to address Germany's challenges by building 

200 mosques in the country for the 'spiritual needs' of the Syrian refugees arriving daily in their thousands [Source].

That should help.

20-Aug-15: Rockets from Syria slam into Israel's north

Incoming Syrian fire caught on camera by an Israeli driver somewhere in
Northern Israel early this evening [Image Source]

We learned this afternoon of a heightened state of tension in southern Israel today. The authorities

deployed an Iron Dome missile defense battery to Ashdod in southern Israel. Gaza security coordinators received warnings Wednesday of possible rocket fire from the Gaza Strip... [Ynet]

The rocket fire eventuated, but not in the south. Early this evening (Thursday), four rockets fired from Syrian-controlled territory, landed in northern Israel, causing an outbreak of brush-fire but causing no injuries. According to AP, today was the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur war (when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel on its holiest day of the year) that Syrian rockets have crashed into Israel.

Keep in mind that Israeli hospitals and medical teams have treated streams of wounded and injured Syrians ["12-May-14: Opting for humanity in an ocean of savagery"] caught up in the Arab-on-Arab bloodbath during the past two years. That humanitarian policy remains in effect as of today, with no sign of it changing.

Times of Israel, quoting the IDF, says all four of this evening's rockets landed in Israel's northern Galilee region and in Israel's Golan Heights. No injuries are reported. And no Arab party has sought to claim credit so far, though it's early. Associated Press attributes the rocket fire to "militants" on behalf of "the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad group". Ynet says the rocket-fire originated in the Quneitra area

which is under Syrian President Bashar Assad's control and in which according to reports, Hezbollah operatives Samir Kuntar and Mustafa Mughniyeh have free rein [Ynet, tonight]

Previous in-coming rockets from Syria have been described as accidental by-products of the savagery devastating that country, but that's not the case this time. Commentary on Israel's Channel 2 news this evening said today's rockets were fired at Israeli territory with deliberate intent; they are not a "mere' spillover from Syria's civil war bloodbath.

Nor were they "merely" mortars (which are of course lethal). According to Israel Radio (here) these rockets were artillery shells. Later this evening, there have been reports of Israel responding with artillery fire on the Syrian settlements of Baath and Khan Arnabeh.

Israelis living in communities organized under the Upper Galilee Regional Council have been told to remain near safe places.