Missiles from Lebanon strike northern Israel
Four missiles were
fired from southern Lebanon at northern Israel on Thursday afternoon.
One of the missiles was intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile
system.Residents of towns along Israel's northern coast reported hearing air
raid sirens and loud explosions. Most living in the area are aware of
what to do in such a situation, and immediately took cover in the
nearest bomb shelter.The missiles are believed to have originated from a Palestinian
refugee camp in the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre. Israeli helicopters
reportedly circled over southern Lebanon as a warning following the
attack.Two weeks ago, four Israeli soldiers on a routine patrol of the Lebanon border were seriously wounded by a roadside bomb.As the situation appears to be escalating, Israeli concerns that
Syria's ongoing civil war could reach Israel via Lebanon's Hezbollah
terrorist militia seem more valid than ever.
UN will probe Gaza war, but not Syria chemical attack?
The United Nations
on Wednesday again revealed its true colors when it stopped short of
ordering an official probe into charges that the Syrian government had
killed hundreds of its own citizens in a chemical weapons attack.That decision was especially interesting to Israelis, who are still
irked by the UN's massive and widely-publicized probe into the Gaza War
that began in late 2009 after Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorists
escalated missile attacks against southern Israel. The commission ended
up accusing Israel of war crimes.The UN Security Council insisted it was necessary to "clarify"
allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria before taking any action.
Opposition groups in the country said as many as 1,300 had been killed
in a chemical weapons attack by government forces this week. Turkey's
foreign minister, after reviewing video footage from the scene, said it
was clear that non-conventional weapons had been used, and urged an
immediate UN investigation. But the Security Council failed to act.By contrast, the UN did not independently verify the Palestinian claims that led to the post-Gaza War probe.So, if the results of the December 2009-January 2010 Gaza War were
worthy of a major UN investigation without prior fact-checking, how is a
possible chemical weapons massacre in the midst of a Syrian civil war
that has claimed over 100,000 lives not?That question has left many Israelis more convinced than ever that
the international community, and in particular the United Nations,
operate under the influence of an unfair and exaggerated bias against
the Jewish state.
