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Sirens sounded throughout the Upper Galilee close to 10:15 pm Monday night, just before a series of explosions were heard near Kiryat Shmona. The IDF confirmed at 10:35 pm that one rocket, fired from Lebanon, struck the Upper Galilee area. No injuries or damage were reported. […] The Lebanese Army arrested several terrorists involved in at least one salvo on the Galilee, but also complained to mediating body UNIFIL after the IAF responded to the attacks. …

Former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis was appointed on Monday to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) commission investigating Israel’s Operation Protective Edge and that actions of the Hamas terrorist group. The move comes after Lebanese-born British lawyer Amal Alamuddin—Hollywood star George Clooney’s fiancée—turned down her nomination citing existing professional commitments. The selection of McGowan Davis is par for the course for UNHRC’s probe, given that the judge was part of the 2009 Goldstone committee which accused Israel of “war crimes” in Operation Cast Lead. Israel rejected the findings of the report which many assessed as blatantly biased, and...

When you listen to reports from international media outlets, you'll hear a whole lot about how the Israelis "kill civilians" in Gaza, including children. What you don't hear about is the fact that Hamas uses women and children as human shields. When women and children are killed as a result, Hamas parades their bodies around as propaganda for the media to attack Israel. Further, journalists tend to only report about Gaza and the West Bank but fail to include the hell Israeli civilians go through. They also never mention this fact: the entire point of Hamas launching rockets into Israel...

IAF renews sorties over Gaza hitting dozens of targets; Palestinians report first deaths since cease-fire collapse; IDF says 50 rockets fired at Israel since 4 p.m.; Iron Dome intercepts six. Hours after rockets shattered the cease-fire and hit Gaza frontier communities, three loud explosions were heard over Tel Aviv, shortly before 11 p.m., for the first time in over a week. In total, the IDF said that 50 rockets were fired at Israel since 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday until around midnight. Six rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome rocket defense system. A spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on...

Hamas spokesperson Isra Al-Mudallal, said in a TV interview on Friday that journalists who filmed “places from where missiles were launched” were forced by security personnel to stop or leave the Gaza Strip. According to a new report by MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute, Mudallal, told the Lebanese TV station Mayadeen TV by Skype that some journalists “would focus on filming the places from where missiles were launched.” “Thus, they were collaborating with the occupation,” said Mudallal, the head of foreign relations in the Hamas Information Ministry. “These journalists were deported from the Gaza Strip. The security agencies...

If Hamas attacks Israel with rocket fire and Israel retaliates, the British government has threatened to suspend some arms exports to Israel. This is, as Yuval Steinitz points out here, tantamount to inviting Hamas to launch new jihad attacks against Israel, knowing that the response from the West will be more excoriation of Israel, not resistance to jihad terror. “UK Govt ‘Encouraging Hamas To Fire At Israel,’” by Tom Rayner, Sky News, August 12, 2014 (thanks to Hiro): An Israeli cabinet minister has accused the UK government of ‘encouraging’ Hamas to re-start rocket fire from Gaza, following a decision to...

Gaza terrorists fired a barrage of rockets towards southern Israel on Wednesday night, just moments before one ceasefire was set to end and a new one to begin. The Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted one rocket over the city of Netivot. Two other rockets exploded in the Sdot Negev region. […] The latest rocket fire came just before midnight, when a 72-hour ceasefire was set to end. Moments before midnight, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs agreed to extend the 72-hour ceasefire. …

The attack was meant to generate as many as ten thousand casualties, men, women and particularly children and hundreds of captives. Explosives were particularly placed underneath kindergartens to make certain that these “institutions” would be the first struck, even before any thing else. The known cost of the infrastructure – each tunnel costs upward of some $1 million – clearly shows that Hamas was planning a coordinated mega-attack. It must be understood that use of even one tunnel would inevitably trigger Israeli retaliation against the entire network

Your first mistake is that you didn’t bring a MAN with you. The second is that you didn’t come in the dark and bring your masks to hide behind.-- Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn Jimmy Carter made me do it. I couldn’t help myself, and neither could you. The peacenik Democrat, (1st) Nobel Prize winner, Nuclear Know-Nothing and general Know-it-All reminded me today why I became a conservative in the first place. “Former president Jimmy Carter called on the West to recognize the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas as a legitimate ‘political actor’, that represents the bulk of the Palestinian population,” said...

FRANCE 24 has exclusive footage of a Hamas rocket launching pad that appears to prove the militant group has been firing from areas heavily populated with civilians. Correspondent Gallagher Fenwick says the site, in Gaza City, is some 50 metres from a hotel where the majority of international media is staying, and just 100 metres from a UN building.

Gaza: In the minutes before the ceasefire kicked in at Gaza this morning, Hamas fired a flurry of rockets towards Israel - 30 according to some counts. Israel has argued that that these rockets are fired from civilian areas, and this is why its retaliatory strikes can result in civilian casualties. But this morning, NDTV witnessed one such rocket silo being created under a tent right next to the hotel where our team was staying. Minutes later, we saw the rocket being fired, just before the 72-hour ceasefire came into effect. It began with a mysterious tent with a blue...

Could rocket scientists be an endangered species? You're probably betting "no," given the contemporary efforts to hurl hardware to the moon, to Mars, and to a passel of other unearthly locales. The rocket biz is busy, and it's diversifying. An enthusiastic troupe of private companies is also getting into the act, hoping to cash in by lifting off. It seems that "rocket scientist" is a job category that's here for the long haul, like "mortician." But all this activity masks an important point: rockets are not a terribly efficient way to lift things into space. For every pound of payload,...

The U.S. government told airlines flying over Iraq to remain at higher altitudes, amid growing concerns about carriers operating around conflict zones. U.S. airlines are now prohibited from flying over Iraq below 30,000 feet, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The agency, which had previously restricted airlines from flying below 20,000, issued the new requirement because of “the potentially hazardous situation created by the armed conflict in Iraq.” The guidance, which is mandatory for all U.S. airlines but not others, comes amid increased disquiet about airlines flying near conflict zones after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over war-torn eastern...

Hamas is claiming that, when its terrorists fire rockets towards Israel, they try to avoid hurting Israeli civilians. In a statement on Sunday, the group’s “military wing”, the Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, threatened to fire rockets at all the cities in Israel that are within the ranges of its rockets. At the same time, the statement claimed, Hamas is not trying to harm Israelis with its rocket attacks, only military personnel and installations. …

In yet one more attempt to present a revisionist history of events as part of its propaganda campaign, Hamas has declared that it never has fired rockets at Israeli civilians. The Al-Qassam Brigade, Hamas's military wing, has again cautioned Israel against continuing its attempts to harm the population in Gaza, threatening to fire long-range rockets at all Israeli cities, as "there is nothing so precious to us as the lives of our people." Hamas also iterated that it had done all in its power to avoid causing harm to Israeli civilians. "During our campaign, we have taken great pains to...

More than a third of the 140 rockets fired by Hamas at Israel yesterday fell short and exploded inside the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli Army spokesman’s office. Rocket shortfalls have increased, according to Israeli military sources. They attribute these misfires to the intense pressure Hamas rocket squads face from Israeli air and artillery attacks, as well as poorly assembled rockets. ... Hamas fighters in Israeli army uniforms have succeeded in killing close to 10 Israeli soldiers during incursions utilizing the tunnel network. Residents of kibbutzim along the border have demanded that the army eliminate the tunnel threat before...

Something stinks here. And it’s more than just wastewater from the marshy ground in and around Washington, DC. When a commercial airline is shot out of the sky it immediately triggers a number of questions. What kind of projectile? Where did it come from? Who fired it? All of these questions are answered by spy satellites. But getting one of these expensive satellites into orbit requires we launch a rocket. At present, the United States is buying rocket engines from Russia for these critical national security launches . That is right. Even while a domestic supply of launch vehicles is...

An Italian journalist who until Tuesday was embedded in Gaza has backed the IDF’s account of a rocket strike on a school playground in central Gaza’s Shati refugee camp on Monday. At least 10 people were killed in the attack—most of them children—and some sources claimed the death toll was as high as 30. Palestinian sources were quick to blame Israel, claiming that an Israeli fighter jet fired missiles directly at the playground and nearby hospital. Israel denied the accusations, saying that Hamas rockets aimed at Israel from the area misfired, and struck both the school and the hospital. Verifying...

David Harsanyi and Philip Klein are right. No one talks like this. This might be a fair summary of what they said but it’s obviously not a transcript. Barack Obama: I demand that Israel agrees to an immediate, unilateral ceasefire and halt all offensive activities, in particular airstrikes.Benjamin Netanyahu: And what will Israel receive in exchange for a ceasefire?BO: I believe that Hamas will cease its rocket fire — silence will be met with silence.BN: Hamas broke all five previous ceasefires. It’s a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.BO: I repeat and expect Israel to stop all...

Photos have appears on Iraqi social media depicting Russian-made rocket artillery arriving in Baghdad. The snapshots, published on July 25, show TOS-1A systems unloading from giant An-124 cargo planes. The rockets could help Baghdad battle Islamic militants. TOS-1 was the Soviet army’s secret hammer during the last decade of the Cold War. It fires powerful rockets to smash enemy trenches, fortifications and buildings, cracking defensive lines to allow tanks and infantry to punch through.