Here’s a video of Qassam missiles collected by the Sderot police department.

This is a very interesting and informative interview with the Wall Street Journal and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, specifically the the bit about Iran.

Dealing With Iran
Israel’s former–and future?–prime minister talks about the threats to peace.

BY JAMES TARANTO
Saturday, May 26, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

NEW YORK–Benjamin Netanyahu runs a few minutes late for our Monday afternoon meeting. When he arrives in his midtown Manhattan hotel suite, he explains that he has just received word from home of the latest Palestinian war crime. “Hamas fired 15 rockets into Israel today. One of them hit a car, killed a woman,” says Mr. Netanyahu, the former Israeli prime minister and now leader of the opposition. The victim, 32-year-old Shirel Friedman, was on her way to see her mother.

For the 57-year-old Mr. Netanyahu, there is a sort of grim vindication in such attacks. He quit the government of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in August 2005, objecting to Mr. Sharon’s plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. “I had a very big argument with him on this,” Mr. Netanyahu recalls. “He thought that we would have the right of free action–that we would garner international support for any reaction. I thought that is a very thin sheet of ice–the international community can turn against you as quickly as it turns for you–but the overwhelming fact is that the Muslim militants and Iran will find a new base, a few miles from Tel Aviv, with the ability to cover the south of the country and the center of the country with rockets.”

Israel has sometimes been accused of being too democratic, and it seems that once again recent events have reinforced that charge. The recent vote for the Labor party chairmanship was too close to call and will have to be decided in a run-off on June 12th. What does this mean? Why is it important?

Israel has a parliamentary democracy consisting of three branches of government and lots of political parties (currently 12) and operates on the basis of coalition forming. Often times, these coalitions are tenuous and short lived resulting in elections being held on average every two years, hence the accusation.

Labor is one of the larger coalition partners in the current government so a change at the top will certainly have ramifications for the entire government. For more analysis we defer to the Jerusalem Post:

Barak defeats Ayalon but will have to face him in 2nd round
By GIL HOFFMAN

Former prime minister Ehud Barak and MK Ami Ayalon will face off in a June 12 runoff race to determine who will become Labor Party leader, according to the final count of votes announced Tuesday morning.

As counting the last votes finished, Barak led with 35.6 percent of the vote, followed by Ayalon with 30.6%, Defense Minister Amir Peretz with 22.4%, MK Ophir Paz-Pines 8% and MK Danny Yatom 2.7%.

For an analysis go here

Although our critics like to think that the problems besetting the Middle East are simple– it’s simply Israel’s fault– even a slightly more thorough examination of the situation reveals the complexity of the region. Case in point, Zvi Barel dissects the recent crisis in Lebanon for Haaretz:

Meshal learns that life is no picnic

By Zvi Barel

Khaled Meshal didn’t expect that his most significant cooperation with Fatah would have to occur in Lebanon and not in Gaza. Nor did he believe that from his secure location in Damascus, where he resides under Assad’s patronage, he would have to argue with the Lebanese prime minister. But on Tuesday he realized that Lebanon was his key diplomatic front and that he’d better send his representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, to sit like a scolded child next to the Fatah representative in Lebanon, Abbas Zaki, and the representatives of the other Palestinian factions, in order to take a drubbing from Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

And not just like a scolded child, but like one even Hezbollah was furious at, because the Palestinian leadership in Lebanon was unable to calm the situation. It thereby made Syria and Hezbollah appear responsible for the deterioration in the country - all this just when Hezbollah was seeking to exert its control over the course of events and look good in the eyes of the Lebanese public, ahead of the possible establishment of an international court to judge those responsible for the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

As per our post yesterday about the role of the media when covering asymmetric conflicts between democracies and terror organizations we’d like to highlight some recent research and reporting on these issues, namely, the recent report, The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media As A Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict by Marvin Kalb, Senior Fellow, Shorenstein Center, and Carol Saivetz, at Harvard University. Here’s the abstract:

“Based on content analysis of global media and interviews with many diplomats and journalists, this paper describes the trajectory of the media from objective observer to fiery advocate, becoming in fact a weapon of modern warfare. The paper also shows how an open society, Israel, is victimized by its own openness and how a closed sect, Hezbollah, can retain almost total control of the daily message of journalism and propaganda.” Full Report here.

This is not only an Israeli/Arab conflict issue. As the US led global War on Terror has illustrated over the last 6 years, many democratic countries are confronted by these same issues. Terror groups are able to set the media agenda by perpetrating spectacular acts of terrorism which play well for TV, as well as post their gruesome exploits on the internet for all to see, and the media unwittingly provides them a global platform. Meanwhile, these same groups restrict all access to their inner dysfunctions and coercive ideological controls, as illustrated in Kalb’s report.

In our case, the media is able to scrutinize Israel because we value and uphold freedom of the press. They deconstruct our every failing and debate because they can, and at the same time treat our autocratic neighbors and terror utilizing enemies with a different standard because they must. This is not an accusation, to be fair the media tries to get the story right, but it is foolish to believe that the media can remain objective when covering asymmetric conflicts and conflicts between open and closed societies. The media either provides an invaluable platform for terror groups without any of the uncomfortable scrutiny, as they work under the threat of violence or even worse for journalists, denial of access, or they create a perception of the open society as being weak and confused because it speaks with multiple voices and cannot hide its warts.

This says it all.

**The video above is of an earlier Qassam missile attack on Israel**

Palestinian terror groups, namely Hamas and Islamic Jihad, continue with their campaign of missile fire on Israeli civilians, and have murdered a 35 year old woman today while she sat in her car. Over 100 missiles have been launched into Israeli cities and towns in the past week alone.

Israel left Gaza two years ago in the hope of creating a space to build peace. Since then Hamas has come to power, and cynically they continue spending their energies and money on weapons to terrorize innocent civilians both in Israel and amongst their Palestinian co-nationals in Gaza. Instead of investing in the institutions of statehood like education, health services, infrastructure, jobs, etc, Hamas chooses to smuggle tons of munitions, guns, missiles and bombs into Gaza.

As Hezbollah proved in Lebanon, and Hamas is proving now in the Palestinian territories, when terror groups bent on the destruction of their neighbors are elected into office, they do not moderate their positions. In fact, their incorporation emboldens their apocalyptic goals and they wind up dragging the region into conflict.

From YNET:
Woman killed in Sderot rocket attack

Qassam hits car near southern town’s commercial center, critically injuring a woman and moderately wounding another man. More than 10 rockets fired from Gaza Strip since Monday morning

Roi Mandel

A woman was killed and another man was moderately injured Monday evening as a Qassam rocket hit a car at a commercial center in the southern town of Sderot, near a bakery.

Five rockets were fired at the southern town at around 8 pm.Two landed south of Ashkelon, one landed in Sderot and two in the western Negev.

The recent conflicts unfolding in Southern Israel/Gaza and in Northern Lebanon/Nahr el-Bared camp are eerily similar in that in both cases you have terror groups cynically hiding behind civilians while provoking a fight with another power. As long as extremists are allowed to sow their violent ideologies and practices, whether it is launching missiles into Israel or spreading unrest in Lebanon, these conflicts will continue without resolution.

To create the conditions for peace these extremists must be confronted one way or another.
Here is some background on the conflicts raging in Lebanon and Southern Israel/Gaza.

From YNET:
Lebanese troops tighten siege of camp

Soldiers pound Palestinian refugee camp with artillery day after worst eruption of violence since end of1975-90 civil war

Lebanese troops tightened a siege of a Palestinian refugee camp Monday where a shadowy group suspected of ties to al-Qaeda was holed up, pounding it with artillery a day after the worst eruption of violence since the end of the 1975-90 civil war.

The death toll from Sunday’s violence climbed to near 50, but it was not known how many civilians have been killed inside the Nahr el-Bared camp on the outskirts of the northern port city of Tripoli, the scene of the heaviest fighting. No new deaths on Monday have been reported.

Lebanese officials said one of the men killed Sunday was a suspect in a failed German train bombing — another indication the camp had become a refuge for Fatah Islam militants planning attacks outside of Lebanon. In the past, others affiliated with the group in the camp have said they were aiming to send trained fighters into Iraq and the group’s leader has been linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The rest is here.

From HAARETZ:
Hamas, Fatah officials: Internal fighting in Gaza is far from over

By Avi Issacharoff

Members of both Hamas and Fatah said Monday that internal infighting was far from over, just one day after Egyptian mediators announced a new cease-fire aimed at ending nine days of fighting that has left roughly 50 people dead.

The fighting between Fatah and Hamas has abated in recent days, as Israel has responded to a heavy Qassam rocket fire with a bombing campaign against Hamas targets, but tensions remain high.

“The Israeli attacks will only postpone the internal fighting but will not end it,” said senior Fatah official Ziad Abu Ein. “As long as there are many guns out on the streets it is very easy to renew Palestinian-Palestinian fighting.”

The rest is here.

This issue has been a topic of constant debate. How do journalists cover the Israeli/Arab conflict, or for that matter any conflict, in a fair and balanced way when journalists are threatened with kidnapping and death? Alan Johnston is still missing, and as the report below highlights, others have been killed and many are now avoiding the Gaza Strip altogether. There are also persistent reports of journalists being threatened by terror groups if their reports reflect those groups’ actions in a negative way.

Ultimately, this raises the point that open societies struggling against terror groups sometimes become media victims of their own openness. When a journalist is free to cover every aspect, political debate and flaw of one society, but is unable to move and report freely about the other society engaged in the conflict the news will surely be skewed.

How can this be addressed?

From Haaretz:
For Gaza journalists, kidnap is no longer the biggest fear

By Avi Issacharoff

What happened last Friday to Abd a-Salem Abu Askar, the head of Abu Dhabi television in the territories, is the nightmare of every journalist in the Gaza Strip.

At about 7:30 P.M. that day, Abu Askar left his house in Gaza City. Some 200 meters away, he ran into a roadblock manned by masked gunmen, who demanded his identification card. Then one radioed: “We’ve detained Abu Askar.” Abu Askar managed to call his office and say that he had been kidnapped; a few minutes later, a van carrying 10 gunmen arrived, removed him from his car, beat him up and took him to an unknown location.

Recently, the Israeli city Sderot has been attacked with dozens of deadly missiles, launched with impunity by the terrorist group Hamas. It’s a shame that the international media has yet to cover these attacks with any seriousness. If Lisbon, London, or Lyon were attacked day-in and day-out with 80 pound projectiles packed with explosives designed to kill, maim, and destroy innocent civilians the story would be plastered across every front page and every TV screen in the world. Unfortunately, this story has only received coverage when Israel decides to take appropriate defensive actions and target the people launching these missiles. The world ignores the bombing of Sderot homes, schools, nurseries, kindergartens, synagogues, and parks at its own peril. If we allow terrorists to launch missiles with impunity at an Israeli city today, it will only be a matter of time that terrorists will begin launching missiles at other, more ‘tele-visible’ cities, tomorrow.

With this in mind we took a few minutes this morning to sit down with our Ambassador here in NY to get his take on the current situation in Sderot, and what Israel’s position is regarding the ongoing attacks.