Why Don’t Rocket Attacks Against Israel Get Headlines?

July 20, 2012 By 30 Comments

Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba….All major southern Israel cities are again under a heavy rocket offensive from Hamas-controlled Gaza. There are Jewish dead, babies wounded, schools and synagogues destroyed, cities and towns terrorized. The latest wave of rockets took place only last week. But Israel as the most heavily bombed nation in the world never makes the headlines. Why?

Sderot represents the siege on the Jewish people and the resistance of Israel, but it also reveals the rest of the world’s indifference to the genocidal hatred that is jihadism.

12,000 Palestinian rockets have fallen on Sderot and Ashkelon in the last ten years. The sense of death has pervaded the streets, the schools, the houses and the local clinic, where a wonderful and brave Romanian-born psychiatrist, Adriana Katz, takes care of these victims.

“There are people who take the taxi to reach our clinic, in case the alarm will sound,”  Dr. Katz told me. “Many people lost hearing ability because they live close to the alarm. There are even those people who hear the alarm even when it’s silent. The heart is crying.” But the world is deaf. And the Western media is mute.

There is only one historical precedent of a modern democracy besieged under rocket attacks.

During the afternoon of Sept. 7, 1940, 348 Nazi bombers appeared over London. For the next 57 days, the city was bombed day and night. Fires consumed portions of the city. Residents sought shelter wherever they could find it — many fleeing to the underground that sheltered as many as 177,000 people during the night.

However, there is a big difference between the two situations: while the West backed the British resistance against the Nazi monster, Israel is alone in fighting a battle for all of us. And Sderot’s fate has become the fate of the whole of Israel.

Israeli reports indicate that warning time for a rocket attack on the greater Tel Aviv area has declined from two minutes to 90 seconds. From Gaza, a couple of years ago, the Islamic terrorists were able to strike at most of Sderot, which is just 3 kilometres from the Gaza Strip. Then they reached Ashkelon (20 km), Beersheba (40 km) and Ashdod (31 km), also hitting the outskirts of Rehovot (42) and Rishon Lezion (58 km). The Greater Tel Aviv area, where a quarter of the entire Israeli population lives, is the target of the next war. Nobody knows if and when it will begin.

There are estimated to be 200,000 missiles pointed at the country today. Tel Aviv could soon face Iran’s “judgment day.”

Many security drills are termed “NBC,” meaning nuclear, biological and chemical threats. In 1993, a Russian report indicated that Iran’s military industries were manufacturing two types of chemical weapons: mustard gas and the nerve agent Sarin. In addition to the chemical weapons industry, the report said “it is possible to speak confidently of the presence of a military-applied biological program.”

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About

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book, "A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism."

  • Chezwick

    "Why Don’t Rocket Attacks Against Israel Get Headlines?"

    Why don't church burnings in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia get headlines?

    Why don't Muslim riots and rapes in Europe get headlines?

    The simple answer is, reporting these tragedies would not advance the liberal/left narrative, so they are ignored. It is lying by omission….and the nomenklatura that comprise the MSM have not a pang of conscience in doing so deliberately and consistently.

  • kafir4life

    Dog bites man. It's expected of islam to behave this way. Would it be media worthy to report a Jew lighting Sabbeth candles? A Catholic praying the Rosary? It's like that with islam. It just taint no thang. It's just islam.

    allahu snackbar.

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      kafir4life AKBAR!

  • David R

    Why? Because Israel is a cancer in the eyes of Islamists…so the Jewish people must be cancerous and cancer must be irradicated so that fresh healthy Muslim tissue will grow unobstructed. What the tinpot terrorist leaders scrambling to gain more bomb power against God's people don't seem to realize or care about is that a large part of Israel's population constitutes their own Arab Muslim kin…and they sure don't get much media coverage as victims either.
    The media agenda is pushed to portray the Arabs as victims, not the Jews. The cancerous Jews are the culprits to be dealt with. It's irrelevant that Jews better mankind, receive the most Nobel prizes in just about everything, treat Arabs as their own citizens, and yes, even dole out the best medical treatment to the worst filthy Jew-hating terrorist who happens to land in a Jewish hospital after having blown up an Israeli school bus loaded with children.
    The hidden reality behind all this blind hatred against Israel is the fact that the true God and Creator of the universe chose the Jews as His blessed people, and because of that there will never be peace between Isaac's and Esau's descendants. Blind jealousy is the real hate-motivator here that keeps the Jew-haters up at night, devising ways to remove the Jewish cancer from their God-given homeland and set up their own blood-stained, blind culture instead.
    God is at the controls…permitting all this in order to soon herald in Jesus, Israel's Messiah, who will as planned and announced way beforehand, utterly destroy all the Jew-hating nations in an instant.
    I wonder if the Jew-hating media will report on this event???

  • Willy Rho

    The Commie President and his DemoCommieMooSlim Media Hate Israel and the Jewish people, that is why this happens. I still can't understand why a Brilliant and Righteous People insist on Marxist governments which are Totalitarian in nature. They always wind up with their neck under some thugs boot. All totalitarian government turn into Thugs. Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. How Obama got such strong Jewish support floors me. According to his self written Literary Bio, "Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. Not said, "Raised as a Moo Slim and Communist by my mentor Frank Marshall Davis, his Political Father".

    I Love the Jewish People, My Savior and Lord Jesus Christ is one. Without the Jews I would not know the One True G-D.

  • Jose_Can_U_Si?

    While Obama and much of the press fixates on its usual obsession… setting up Jews for a second Holocaust, Islam is also hard at work laying waste to major portions of the world and preparing to impose Islamic rule over everybody and extinguishing their respective non-Islamic civilizations.

    Today It's the Gun and the Qur'an (Koran)…
    Tomorrow It Will Be Nukes and the Qur'an.

    Islam has destroyed every civilization it touched and brought misery, poverty, ignorance and war in every country that it invaded!

    Look at GAZA.

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      Look at the former Europe.

      Destroyed by Socialism. Overrun by Islamofascism.

  • JaffaRoadBystander

    I well understand why Israel doesn't want to start an existential war with Iran; but they have been taking it on the chin for years with these d–n rocket attacks; and the Iron Dome system can't shoot all of these d–n missiles down.
    There is an old saying in the Talmud: "If someone vows to kill you, strike him first." Israel may be alone; but India, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand will stand with them.

    • CapeLady

      I wish I could add America to that list, but until we vote Obama out of office in November, I tragically cannot say that with any certainty. This president befriends our enemies and betrays our allies. He is a disgrace to our country!

  • Looking4Sanity

    Maybe the answer is as simple as the rockets never hit their intended targets? "Rocket lands harmlessly in desert" is hardly a copy selling headline.

  • Moishe Pupick

    Friday, July 20, 2012 common era

    Much of the Gentile world loves to memorialize dead Jews; and sad to say, some Jews' entire connection to Judaism is the Holocaust. However, when Jews have a powerful military and a world-class intelligence network, then many of these same people urge restraint, turning the other cheek, loving one's enemy, engaging in yet more useless and harmful negotiations in which Israel gives up land for yet more worthless paper promises. The tide seems to be turning, thank G-d. Israel must stop worrying about world Gentile opinion and do what is right: slay the enemy before he can slay us. 'Nuff said. . .

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      MP AKBAR!

  • Drakken

    No other country in the world would tolerate a rocket,missle or mortar fired into it's territory period, yet the the world will scream bloody murder if Israel retaliates, well I say effem! For every rocket fired the Israelis should return the favor with a MOAB, sooner or later these muslim savages will get the message it is not in their best interest to fire rockets into another mans territory, it is the only language the muslims understand and it should be given in spades.

    • http://www.facebook.com/mensch.keymelon Mensch Keymelon

      Occupation forces don't count as "countries" in fact Israel doesn't even have a border…so, an army in the field should expect a little flak now and then. Maybe they should GTFO?

      • Drakken

        Since you are so hot an bothered by your muzzy friends and your all for jihad, time to push you savages completely into the sea in Gaza and push you savages out of the West Bank and call it a day.

      • Kufar Dawg

        Yes, I agree, maybe the muzzies should GTFO…of Israel.

  • artcohn

    There are a number of reasons for the silence by the Media. An important reason, not mentioned in the article, is the absense of high indignation by Tel Avivi's for the attacks on their fellow citizens off cities in southern Israel. If HaAretz emphasized the rocket attacks, the correspondents of the world media, who follow HaAretz, would be much more likely to report on these attacks

  • http://www.facebook.com/mensch.keymelon Mensch Keymelon

    "Why Don’t Rocket Attacks Against Israel Get Headlines?"

    I'll take "Shame on the bee for the first sting, but more shame on me for those that follow for $500.

    "What is a dumbass who sticks his hand into the bee hive for a second time, third time, fourth time?" GTFO and no one will have a reason to lob unguided ordinance in a general direction.

    • rulieg

      excuse me, GTFO of where? Israel got out of Gaza in 2005. that was when the rockets started.

      do you know what you're talking about at all?

    • Kufar Dawg

      So you don't mind "unguided ordinance" eh? How about you stand 100 yards downrange while I fire some "unguided" .357 magnum hollow points your way?

    • Hank Rearden

      Good advice for the Hamas.

  • Ghostwriter

    You're a disgusting creep,Mensch Keymelon. You have no sympathy for what's going on in Israel. You just like to see dead Jews,that's all.

  • rulieg

    according to the Muslim apologists in the West (and I include our current president in this group) nothing Israel does will ever be right. my advice to Bibi is "ignore us until President Romney takes over."

    in the meantime: remember how Israel traded the one righteous life of Gilat Schalit for 1,000 Palestinian murderers? I suggest that is just about the right proportion: for every 1 rocket Hamas sends into Israel, let the IDF reply with 1,000 rockets back.

    • Kufar Dawg

      Even one round of Israeli 155mm howitzer prox-fused HE fired into Gaza for every 3 palesimian rockets would probably teach the psychopathic muzzies a lesson they've earned thousands of times over. If Israel set up a battery of 155mm howitzers that were radar ranged it could probably find the azimuth and range for every rocket fired and lob a few 155mm rounds to within a couple of hundred yards of where the rockets were fired from within a couple of minutes. That would also make things more exciting for the palesimian rocket boys.

  • WilliamJamesWard

    Giving Gaza to the PLO, acts of insanity decry the seriousness of the situation and deflect
    meaningful thought by supportive peoples around the world. That the UN has so many
    corrupt politicians and the citizens of those nations are suffering under one form of oppression
    or another makes Israel and it's freedoms and eyesore to the despots and especially Islam.
    America is in a cloud of leftist making and Israel is weakened by the same malaise but there
    is a point of cognizance that calls for action that is direct and unequivocal. Rocket attacks are
    for the purpose of wearing Israel down before the final assault, time is of the esence and to
    precious to waste thinking of what failed friends and murderous enemies think. I believe the
    phrase that is aprapo is "do or die" Israel must act for it's survival and change the course of
    the future, it must be towards secured freedoms and faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and
    Jacob…………………………………………..William

  • george in ashdod

    The real question is how 684 missiles (see israelstreet.org for the only updated list) could have struck southern Israel since January 20th of this year and our fellow Israelis in central and northern Israel haven't said anything– for that matter, why aren't southern Israelis marching on the PM's house in Jerusalem? why aren't southern Israelis demanding Ehud Barak's ouster? All Israelis should be appalled at the IDF General Staff led by Benny Gantz. The thought that Israel will attack Iran is a joke–Israel cannot even defend itself against lowly Hamas.

  • Hank

    USA does not want to scare the general public, they want to keep everyone in the dark till it's too late, it's the American way. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil…

  • Tistrue

    Remember the foaming at the mouth by the liberals when they thought Zimmerman was a Jew who "hunted down and killed" poor little innocent "Trayvon" lurking about the neighborhood? Remember the bounty put on his head that the attorney general ignored? Remember when the president spoke near tears of how Trayvon looked like what he imagine his son would look like? Why did the media choose this one event out of dozens of children killed every week? They thought Zimmerman was Jewish, and it was just another political ploy to get the blacks riled up, because Obama sees them as gullible fools willing to do his bidding. When it was realized Zimmerman was not Jewish, the media frenzy died down substantially. Now he is just a man condemned to the depth of hell for daring to be a racist, even though, he's not a racist. Israel is the focus of the deep racism against Jews, but that apparently is an okay kind of racism. Mentally ill culture.

  • http://www.facebook.com/mike.villano.71 Mike Villano

    Scott Shane, Eric Lichtblau, James Rise, Thomas Friedman and the rest of the sordid cast of unsavory dirt bags dump egregious amounts of information pollution into the information wellspring every day.
    They are way too busy confusing and misleading masses of readers about the "Cycle of Violence" in the ME to let the truth out about the ongoing war against the Jews and the continuation of the Holocaust.
    Some people still refer to this professional class of liars, frauds and sell outs as "journalists" and "reporters."
    Imagine.

  • Hank Rearden

    Israel needs a much better strategy. it should"

    1. Put out a press release every time it is shelled. At the end of each press release there should be the statement that "Israel will retaliate for all shelling of its territory. Therefore people living in the area where the rockets are launched are advised to vacate it."

    2. Israel ahould film attacks and their aftermath and post the videos on YouTube.

    3. It should shell immediately – the same day, if possible the same hour – the area from which rockets are launched.

    4. Israel should state that any shelling of its territory is regarded as an act of war and will be treated accordingly.