CHANUKAH DAY 7 TODAY
LEARN ABOUT CHANUKAH
http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday7.htm
CHANUKAH DAY 1-8 SCRIPTURES
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2007/12/hannuka-day-1-8-scriptures.html
MACCABEES STORY
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2007/12/7s-and-maccabees.html
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2007/12/maccabees-story.html
The Insiders: Architects of the New World Order (Part 1 of 9)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1grmqT_kOHQ&eurl=http://www.gcnlive.com/&feature=player_embedded
The Insiders: How and Why America is Being Betrayed Part 2
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=BG_acaZHOEo
The Insiders: How and Why America is Being Betrayed Part 3
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GrO5objpI6c
The Insiders: How and Why America is Being Betrayed Part 4
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=dNuA4dT0Z8I
The Insiders: How and Why America is Being Betrayed Part 5
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn8wqnq2Mdk
The Insiders: How and Why America is Being Betrayed Part 6
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GQx7RQPbz6g
The Insiders: How and Why America is Being Betrayed Part 7
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LlF9Z-Yk5D0
The Insiders: How and Why America is Being Betrayed Part 8
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=unx39gfdWI4
The Insiders: How and Why America is Being Betrayed Part 9
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FYNbkgl7rns
THAT 3RD TEMPLE MIGHT BE REBUILT SHORTLY IF RUSSIA WOULD TEAM UP WITH THE MUSLIMS AND MARCH TO ISRAEL FROM EZEKIEL 38+39,GOD WOULD DESTROY 5/6TH OF THEIR ARMIES AND THERE WOULD BE NO WAY TO STOP ISRAEL FROM REBUILDING THE THIRD TEMPLE BECAUSE THE MUSLIMS,RUSSIA COUNTRIES WOULD ALMOST BE ALL DESTROYED. ISRAEL IS FINALLY FIGHTING BACK AGAINST HAMAS KILLING AT LEAST 200. ALL THE MEDIA IS BLAMING ISRAEL JUST LIKE I FIGURED,MEANWHILE OVER THE LAST 8 YEARS THE ARABS SHOT 10,110 ROCKETS AND MORTARS INTO ISRAEL,THIS IS ISRAEL PROTECTING ITSELF.
Israel demolishes Hamas compounds, over 200 dead DEC 27,08
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israeli warplanes retaliating for rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded dozens of security compounds across the Hamas-ruled territory in unprecedented waves of airstrikes Saturday, killing more than 200 people and wounding nearly 400 in the single bloodiest day of fighting in years.Most of those killed were security men, but an unknown number of civilians were also among the dead. Hamas said all of its security installations were hit, threatened to resume suicide attacks, and sent at least 70 rockets and mortar shells crashing into Israeli border communities, according to the Israeli military. One Israeli was killed and at least six people were hurt.With so many wounded, the Palestinian death toll was likely to rise.The strikes caused widespread panic and confusion in Gaza, as black clouds of smoke rose above the territory, ruled by Hamas for the past 18 months. Some of the Israeli missiles struck in densely populated areas as children were leaving school, and women rushed into the streets frantically looking for their children.My son is gone, my son is gone, wailed Said Masri, a 57-year-old shopkeeper, as he sat in the middle of a Gaza City street, slapping his face and covering his head with dust from a bombed-out security compound nearby.He said he had sent his 9-year-old son out to purchase cigarettes minutes before the airstrikes began and now could not find him. May I burn like the cigarettes, may Israel burn, Masri moaned.
The offensive began eight days after a six-month truce between Israel and the militants expired. The Israeli army says Palestinian militants have fired some 300 rockets and mortars at Israeli targets over the past week, and in recent days, Israeli leaders had threatened to launch a major offensive.There is a time for calm and there is a time for fighting, and now is the time for fighting, said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, vowing to expand the operation if necessary.Asked whether Hamas political leaders might be targeted, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni declared at a news conference: Hamas is a terrorist organization and nobody is immune.The first round of airstrikes on Gaza came just before noon. More than 100 attacks took place, continuing well into the evening.Hospitals crowded with people, civilians rushing in wounded people in cars, vans and ambulances. There are heads without bodies .... There's blood in the corridors. People are weeping, women are crying, doctors are shouting, said nurse Ahmed Abdel Salaam from Shifa Hospital, Gaza's main treatment center.The offensive sparked angry protests throughout the Arab world, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the Vatican, the U.N. secretary-general and special Mideast envoy Tony Blair all called for an immediate restoration of calm. The Arab League scheduled an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss the situation.In Washington, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, Hamas' continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop. The United States urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza.
In Gaza City's main security compound, bodies of more than a dozen uniformed Hamas police lay on the ground. One survivor raised his index finger in a show of Muslim faith, uttering a prayer. The Gaza police chief was among those killed. One man, his face bloodied, sat dazed on the ground as a fire raged nearby.By early evening, 205 Gazans were known to be dead and 388 wounded, Gaza health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said. He did not provide figures on civilian deaths. But earlier in the day, police said about 140 Hamas security forces were killed. Some of the dead, rolled in blankets, were laid out on the floor of Gaza's main hospital for identification.Israeli military officials said more than 100 tons of bombs were dropped on Gaza by mid-afternoon. They spoke on condition of anonymity under military guidelines.Defiant Hamas leaders threatened revenge. Hamas will continue the resistance until the last drop of blood, vowed spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.Israel told its civilians near Gaza to take cover, and in the West Bank, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a bitter rivalry with Hamas, condemned Israel. Egypt summoned the Israeli ambassador to express condemnation and opened its border with Gaza to allow ambulances to drive out some of the wounded. Despite the overwhelming show of force, it was not clear whether it would halt the rocket fire. Past operations have failed to stop the attacks. One rocket struck the Israeli town of Netivot, killing an Israeli man and wounding four people, rescue services said.
Dozens of stunned residents, some of them weeping, gathered around the house that took the deadly rocket hit. A hole gaped in one of the walls, which was pocked with shrapnel marks. The crowd broke up after an alert siren went off and everyone went running. Streets were nearly empty in Sderot, the Israeli border town that has been pummeled hardest by rockets. A few cars carried panicked residents leaving town. Dozens of people congregated on a hilltop to watch the Israeli aerial attacks. Protests against the campaign erupted in Arab Israeli villages, the Abbas-ruled West Bank and across the Arab world. The most violent West Bank response came in the city of Hebron, where dozens of youths, many of them masked, hurled rocks for hours at Israeli forces, who lobbed tear gas and stun grenades in response. Officials in Bethlehem, Jesus' traditional birthplace, turned off Christmas lights and traders shuttered shops to protest the Israeli attack. Anti-Israel protests also erupted in Amman, Jordan, and in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria. Israel has targeted Gaza in the past, but the number of simultaneous attacks was unprecedented.
Israel left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation, but the withdrawal did not lead to better relations with Palestinians in the territory as Israeli officials had hoped. Instead, the evacuation was followed by a sharp rise in militant attacks on Israeli border communities that on several occasions provoked harsh Israeli military reprisals.
Israel kills 205 in air assault on Gaza Strip
By Nidal al-Mughrabi DEC 27,08
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes and helicopters pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 205 people in the bloodiest one-day death toll in 60 years of conflict with the Palestinians.Militants in the Gaza Strip, who have launched dozens of rocket attacks against Israel since a truce expired just over a week ago, fired more salvoes that killed one Israeli man and wounded several others.
Both sides said they were ready to stage wider assaults, threatening to plunge the region into a crisis that could leave stalled talks over Palestinian statehood in tatters.Black smoke billowed over Gaza City, where the dead and wounded lay scattered on the ground after Israel bombed more than 40 security compounds, including two where Hamas was hosting graduation ceremonies for new recruits.At the main Gaza City graduation ceremony, uniformed bodies lay in a pile and the wounded writhed in pain. Some rescue workers beat their heads and shouted God is greatest. One badly wounded man quietly recited verses from the Koran.More than 700 Palestinians were wounded in all, medics said.Israel said the operation, dubbed Solid Lead, targeted terrorist infrastructure following days of rocket attacks on southern Israel that caused damage but few injuries. An army spokeswoman said Hamas leaders could be targeted.There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and now the time has come to fight, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.The rocket attacks increased pressure on Israeli political leaders to act as a February 10 election approaches.The army did not set a timeframe but the mayor of Ashkelon, an Israeli city in range of Hamas's rockets, said military planners saw the operation lasting more than a week.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a leading candidate to become Israel's next prime minister, called for international support against an extremist Islamist organization ... that is being supported by Iran, Israel's arch-foe.In line with the Jewish state, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, in its final weeks in office, appeared to put the onus on Hamas to prevent a further escalation.
REACTION
Hamas' continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement that urged Israel to avoid civilian casualties but stopped short of calling for an end to the Israeli air strikes.The United Nations and the European Union, in contrast, called for an immediate halt to all violence.Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Israeli air campaign was criminal and urged world powers to intervene.Egypt said it would keep trying to restore the truce between Israel and Gaza.Hamas threatened to unleash hell to avenge the dead, including possible suicide bombings inside Israel.Hamas estimated that at least 100 members of its security forces had been killed, including police chief Tawfiq Jabber and the head of Hamas's security and protection unit, along with at least 15 women and some children.Morgues across the Gaza Strip ran out of space for bodies.The Islamist group, which won a 2006 parliamentary election but was shunned by Western powers over its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel, said all of its security compounds in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or seriously damaged.Aid groups said they feared the Israeli operation could fuel a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished coastal enclave, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, half of them dependent on food aid.Gaza hospitals said they were running out of medical supplies because of the Israeli-led blockade, increasing the chances that the death toll will rise.Palestinians staged protest rallies in Arab East Jerusalem, and in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Hebron, leading to scuffles with Israeli forces.Israeli analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the strike was shock treatment ... aimed at securing a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on terms that are favorable to Israel.Among the buildings destroyed in the Israeli bombardment was Gaza's presidential compound, which Hamas seized in June 2007 from Abbas's secular Fatah forces after a brief civil war.Witnesses also reported heavy Israeli bombing along Gaza's border with Egypt. Palestinians use hundreds of tunnels under the border to bring in everything from goods to weapons.
The campaign followed a decision by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet to widen reprisals for cross-border Palestinian rocket attacks following the collapse of a six-month-old, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire a week ago.A five-day Israeli offensive in March killed more than 120 people, but Saturday's death toll was the highest for a single day since 1948, when the Jewish state was established.
Olmert, who will leave office after the February election, has repeatedly said Israel does not want to retake control of the Gaza Strip. Israel pulled its ground forces and settlers out of the coastal territory in 2005.After a 2006 war in Lebanon that many Israelis viewed as a failure, military action in Gaza has become a political hot potato that could affect the outcome of the election.(Additional reporting by Dan Williams, Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Douglas Hamilton and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Peter Millership in London, Tabassum Zakaria in Washington; Writing by Adam Entous; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Brown deeply concerned' by Gaza violence DEC 27,08
LONDON (AFP) – Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Saturday said he was deeply concerned by rocket attacks into Israel and retaliatory air strikes by the Jewish state, and called for restraint from both sides.I am deeply concerned by continuing missile strikes from Gaza on Israel and by Israel's response today, Brown said, reiterating statements made by the Middle East Quartet -- the European Union, the United Nations, the United States and Russia -- that only peaceful means would provide a lasting solution.A spokeswoman for the British premier's Downing Street office said Brown had spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and urged him to show restraint.I call on Gazan militants to cease all rocket attacks on Israel immediately. These attacks are designed to cause random destruction and to undermine the prospects of peace talks led by (Palestinian) president (Mahmud) Abbas.I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population.Israel needs to meet its humanitarian obligations, act in a way to further the long-term vision of a two-state solution, and do everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties.There is a pre-eminent need for renewal of a comprehensive settlement for the Israel-Palestine dispute in 2009.Israel blitzed Hamas targets in Gaza on Saturday with a wave of air strikes in the besieged enclave in retaliation for ongoing rocket fire, killing more than 200 Palestinians, while Hamas swiftly responded by firing rockets into the Jewish state.
Egypt slams Israeli murder in Gaza, summons ambassador DEC 27,08
by Mona Salem Mona Salem
CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt condemned as murder Israel's Saturday air raids on Gaza that killed at least 205 Palestinians, opening its Rafah border crossing with the territory to allow the wounded through for treatment.We call for an immediate end to Israeli military operations. We cannot allow these attacks to continue. We cannot permit the murder of Palestinians, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said on state television.Egypt, the only Arab state along with Jordan to have signed a peace deal with Israel, summoned Ambassador Shalom Cohen to demand an end to the bombardment that has also left hundreds wounded.We summoned the Israeli ambassador and we said we refuse this aggression and we demanded an immediate end to it, foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki told AFP.Abul Gheit telephoned his US, Russian and French counterparts -- Condoleezza Rice, Sergei Lavrov and Bernard Kouchner -- and urged them to call for an end to Israeli operations that should be reciprocal with Hamas, a statement said.Earlier, President Hosni Mubarak condemned the Israeli military aggression on the Gaza Strip and blames Israel, as an occupying force, for the victims and the wounded.He ordered the Rafah crossing -- the only one bypassing Israel -- to be opened so that the wounded could be treated in Egyptian hospitals.
Dozens of wounded have already passed through, with hundreds more expected, state media reported.A security official said helicopters were being sent to Rafah to fly some of the wounded to hospitals in Cairo.Abdel Fadil Shusha, governor of North Sinai province, which adjoins Gaza, said he has sent six ambulances to the Rafah crossing.Amr Mussa, secretary general of the Cairo-based Arab League, called an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers to discuss the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.League ambassadors will meet on Saturday, and Arab foreign ministers on Sunday, the league said.Mussa also asked Libya, as a member of the United National Security Council, to organise an emergency meeting on the subject of the Israeli raids.Qatar, meanwhile, called for a summit of Arab League leaders in the coming days to discuss the Israeli aggressions and savage raids on the Gaza Strip and to adopt an Arab position on the matter, a foreign ministry spokesman said.Egypt has reinforced security on its frontier with Gaza by deploying 500 anti-riot police, a security official told AFP.On Friday, Egypt had already stepped up border security in case Gazans broke through the boundary fence and entered Egypt in their thousands, as happened in January when activists opened breaches with explosives.
Egypt mediated a six-months truce between Israel and the Islamic Hamas movement which controls the Gaza strip.Since the truce expired on December 19, Egypt has been trying to broker its renewal and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visited Cairo for talks on Thursday. While in Egypt, Livni vowed to strike back at Hamas as a sharp escalation of violence in Gaza dashed hopes of a new truce. The spiritual guide of Egypt's Islamist opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, condemned Saturday's raids as a crime without comparison in history, adding that the world looks on and does nothing.Countering criticism that Egypt might have told Hamas Israel was not about to launch an attack, Abul Gheit said Israel told the international community and its officials told the whole world of their intentions.Abul Gheit accused Hamas of having aborted Egyptian efforts to avoid an Israeli attack on Gaza. On Thursday, he had said the government was preparing to invite Hamas and its secular rival Fatah, which rules the occupied West Bank, to Cairo to resume dialogue. Hamas boycotted reconciliation talks that were due to take place in Cairo in November, to protest the political detentions of some of its members in the West Bank by Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
UN's Ban calls for halt to Gaza violence DEC 27,08
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Saturday called for an immediate halt to violence in Gaza following Israeli air strikes that killed more than 200 Palestinians in retaliation for ongoing rocket attacks against the Jewish state.Ban is deeply alarmed by today's heavy violence and bloodshed in Gaza, and the continuation of violence in southern Israel, a spokesman for the UN secretary general said in a statement.The UN leader appeals for an immediate halt to all violence.While recognizing Israel's security concerns regarding the continued firing of rockets from Gaza, read the statement, Ban firmly reiterates Israel's obligation to uphold international humanitarian and human rights law and condemns excessive use of force leading to the killing and injuring of civilians.The UN leader also condemns the ongoing rocket attacks by Palestinian militants and is deeply distressed that repeated calls on Hamas for these attacks to end have gone unheeded.
Ban also reiterated his previous calls for humanitarian supplies to be allowed into Gaza to aid the distressed civilian population.The UN leader is making immediate contact with regional and international leaders, including Quartet principals, in an effort to bring a swift end to the violence, the statement added.The Middle East Quartet, a group aimed at helping mediate the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, is made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.Israel hammered Hamas targets in Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 205 people and wounding 300 in retaliation for ongoing rocket fire in one of the bloodiest days of the decades-long Middle East conflict.
Abbas in diplomatic offensive after Israel pounds Gaza DEC 27,08
RIYADH (AFP) – Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Saudi King Abdullah on Saturday called for an immediate halt to Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip that killed nearly 200 people, a Palestinian diplomatic source said.President Abbas and the Saudi sovereign discussed developments in the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and agreed to denounce it forcefully and urge an immediate halt to it, the source told AFP by telephone from Rawdat Kharim south of Riyadh after the two leaders met.
Abbas also urged the king to intercede urgently with active international parties, especially the United States, to exert pressure on Israel to end its aggression against Gaza, the source added.The Palestinian leader also briefed the king on recent efforts to relaunch the inter-Palestinian dialogue and efforts by Egypt to bring about a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation.Abbas's secular Fatah organisation holds sway only in the Israeli-occupied West Bank after his forces were ousted from Gaza in June 2007 by the Islamist Hamas.The head of emergency services in Gaza, Moawiya Hassanein, said at least 195 Palestinians were killed across the territory in Saturday's massive Israeli air strikes.Earlier Abbas said he was in urgent contact with several states over Saturday's deadly Israeli aerial blitz that also wounded more than 300 people.We have carried out urgent contacts with numerous Arab countries and other nations to stop the cowardly aggressions and massacres in the Gaza Strip, he told AFP by telephone from Saudi Arabia.We will also contact Egypt, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations with the aim of stopping the aggression and restoring the truce, he said.A six-month Egyptian-mediated truce between Israel and Hamas expired on December 19 amid continued violations.King Abdullah of Jordan also contacted Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to launch an Arab and international initiative aimed at ending the Israeli aggression, the palace in Amman said.
The king urged a return to negotiations which are the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it said in a statement.Abdullah called in the international community to accept its legal and moral responsibility towards the Palestinian people by demanding that Israel stops its aggression against the Gaza strip.Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad in a statement also vigorously condemned the Israeli aggression in Gaza and called for its immediate end.
Blair calls for end to rocket attacks, Gaza air strikes DEC 27,08
LONDON (AFP) – Middle East envoy Tony Blair on Saturday called for an end to both rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel and Israeli air strikes on the Hamas-controlled strip, saying a new strategy was needed for Gaza.The terrible events and tragic loss of life in Gaza require, in the immediate term, the introduction of a genuine calm in which the rocket attacks aimed at killing Israeli civilians and the Israeli attacks on Gaza cease so that the suffering of the people, which is severe, can be lifted, he said.Then, as I have said many times before, we need to devise a new strategy for Gaza, which brings that territory back under the legitimate rule of the Palestinian Authority in a manner which ends their suffering and fully protects the security of Israel.Blair's comments came after Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip, which killed 195 Palestinians, while Hamas swiftly responded by firing rockets into the Jewish state.The former British prime minister has served as Middle East envoy for the quartet of the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia for more than a year.The quartet has endorsed a roadmap that calls for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure Israel. It has refused to deal with Hamas, which it sees as a terrorist group bent on Israel's destruction.
Israelis near Gaza call for more strikes on Hamas-run enclave by Mehdi Lebouachera DEC 27,08
NETIVOT, Israel (AFP) – In the impoverished Israeli town of Netivot where a Palestinian rocket killed a man on Saturday, residents want the military to keep hitting the nearby Hamas-run Gaza Strip, and hit it hard.The government does not do enough, but it has to do the job. They must keep bombing Gaza until the Qassams stop, said Motti Turdjman in reference to the home-made rockets fired at southern Israel by militants in the Palestinian enclave fire on an almost daily basis.If they want calm, the people of Gaza must also give us calm, he said, shortly after a rocket killed a man in this town of 25,000 on the edge of the Negev desert.More than 200 people were killed on Saturday as Israel blitzed Hamas targets in Gaza with a wave of air strikes it said were launched in response to rocket attacks.A charred hole gaped in the side of a four-storey cement building where a rocket fired by Hamas killed a man in his 50s and wounded two women.I saw my neighbours covered in blood, wounded by glass that shattered, said Gerard Koskas, one of the building's residents. People were very stressed. Despite that we're not going to be scared. We're going to stay here because we know the army is taking care of the situation, he said.The threat of more rockets hits from Gaza, just a few minutes drive away, has not deterred Netivot residents from their conviction that more strikes against the Palestinian territory are necessary.The best protection for us is to go inside Gaza and go after them without any feelings, said Motti Assuline. We must not give them the opportunity to attack us.
Another resident of the small town, Over Almalia, wants Israel to take drastic measures. The army should send an atomic bomb and get rid of the situation there, he said angrily. If we are scared, the people in Gaza should also be scared.The town of 25,000, 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Gaza, was spared for a long while by the rocket fire that regularly hits Sderot, a city located much closer to the Palestinian territory.But Hamas has in recent years acquired military-grade Grad rockets that have a longer-range than the Qassams mostly used by the Palestinian militants.
US urges Israel avoid civilian casualties in Gaza Sat Dec 27, 8:46 am ET
WACO, Texas (AFP) – The United States urged Israel Saturday to avoid civilian casualties as it pounded Hamas targets in Gaza, but warned the Islamist movement must halt its rocket attacks if the violence is to stop.The United States urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza, US National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in Waco, as US President George W. Bush closed out 2008 on his Texas ranch.Hamas' continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop. Hamas must end its terrorist activities if it wishes to play a role in the future of the Palestinian people, Johndroe said in a brief statement.Israel blitzed Hamas targets in Gaza on Saturday with a wave of air strikes that killed at least 155 people in the besieged enclave in retaliation for ongoing rocket fire, officials said.An Israeli man died as Hamas swiftly responded to the air raids by firing rockets into the Jewish state.As Israel warned that the bombardment was just the beginning, Hamas told Israelis living near their Gaza stronghold to prepare the funeral shrouds.In Gaza, thick clouds of smoke billowed into the sky and mangled, bloody, charred corpses littered the pavement around Hamas security structures in the coastal strip where the bombardment sowed panic in the streets, television images showed.The deadly attacks came after days of escalating violence around the besieged coastal strip that the Islamist Hamas movement has run since June 2007, with militants firing rockets and Israel vowing a fiery response.
Hamas calls on fighters to hit back at Israel Sat Dec 27, 7:20 am ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) – Hamas on Saturday called on its fighters to hit back at Israel after massive military air strikes killed at least 140 Palestinians in its Gaza Strip stronghold.We call on all units to avenge with force against the enemy, a Hamas spokesman said in a message broadcast on the Islamists' radio, even as militants launched a series of rockets against the Jewish state from the north of the coastal strip.
