Mick Hartley

A visit to a Gaza rocket factory (via Solomonia):

The car is traveling north in the direction of the Israeli border. The men make jokes about the virgins that according to Islamic belief are awaiting them in paradise: gallows humor. One holds a pistol in the face of the stranger: “I just wanted to see if you would be frightened.” It’s now pouring outside, the taxi’s windows are so fogged that the promised blindfold is no longer necessary. It is impossible to tell where the car is; it’s just clear that the houses outside are looking increasingly poor. Next to dark windows there are posters honoring the “martyrs,” the Palestinians killed in the struggle with Israel. Smoldering campfires that appear between the massive puddles light the way.

The Islamic Jihad rocket factory is housed in a kind of garden shed. The hut measures five meters by five meters, metal pipes with small wings lean against the wall in the corner: Half finished Qassams. There are several tightly packed garbage bags on a shelf. “TNT,” says Abdul and produces a chunk. The explosive looks like lumpy sugar. A large cauldron is sitting ready on a gas cooker while bags with Hebrew writing are piled up high up against the wall. “Fertilizer for the rocket fuel,” Abdul says and grins. “We get it in Israel.”

Nice.

No matter what Israel does, the rockets from the Gaza Strip just keep coming. Young men like Abdul are the reason why. He studies by day, but at night he builds bombs for the Islamic Jihad. He and his fellow militants can produce up to 100 per night. […]

The team can make up to 100 rockets per night shift, but today it won’t be more than 10. Instead of the usual 12, only three of Abdul’s men have turned up tonight. “The other guys are over in Egypt, shopping,” he says, adding that the militants are just ordinary people who want to experience the open border with the neighboring country. Will they be looking for ingredients for building the Qassams? “Hardly,” the oldest of the group laughs. “They are buying potato chips. We have enough raw materials to last for a few years.”

The presence of smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border have ensured that there is never a lack of supplies. “The TNT comes to us from Sudan via Egypt.” Other elements arrive by boat across the sea to Gaza. “We get some from Eastern Europe.” The raw materials for one large rocket cost up to €500. The money to finance the operation comes the same route as the materials. “The Israeli blockade doesn’t affect us; it’s just intended to plunge the people into misery.”

An interesting juxtaposition there: on the one hand they’re “just ordinary people who want to experience the open border with the neighboring country”, yet they happily continue with the very activity that keeps the border closed, all the while denying the real reason for the blockade – “it’s just intended to plunge the people into misery”.

In the Times, Robin Shepherd has some thoughts on this “barrage against Israel”:

Apologists for extremism had long argued that occupation rather than ideology was the “root cause” of terrorism. Terrorism would therefore cease once occupation ended. That argument has now been conclusively defeated. Since Israel withdrew, Palestinian militants have fired more than 4,000 rockets from Gaza at Israeli civilian targets.

Now, there is not a state in the world that could ignore this kind of barrage. So what were the options? One was reoccupation. Another was to carpet-bomb the areas from which the rockets are being fired. Many states would have done both. Israel has done neither.

What has Israel actually done? First, it has built a barrier around Gaza to limit the ability of suicide bombers to kill civilians. Secondly, it makes incursions to target the terrorist infrastructure. Thirdly, it has restricted imports into Gaza to stop bomb-making equipment from getting to the terrorists in aid and food packages. Fourthly, it has applied economic sanctions against the Hamas regime. Israel, in other words, has chosen the strategy least likely to cause heavy loss of life while still exercising its right to self-defence.

The condition of the residents of Gaza is dire. But ultimate blame for this surely rests with Hamas, other militants and the culture of violence in Palestinian society that sustains them. In the absence of all this there would, of course, be no security barrier, no military incursions, no trade restrictions and no sanctions.

In the topsy-turvy world of British and European commentary, however, reasoned argument is cast aside. The frenzied, rhetorical onslaught against the Jewish state is at best intellectually lazy. At worst it forms part of a hateful agenda that shames those who indulge in it.