In the fire, the gas pipeline that supplies Gaza with fuel also went up. You can see a video of this, taken by IDF drones (which later crashed), here:
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/hamas/in-weekend-gaza-border-violence-gazans-burn-their-own-gas-pipeline/2018/05/05/
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Last night, for the first time, Israel struck a Hamas base in the north of Gaza in retaliation for the incendiary kite violence. The IDF said this was a base from which kites have been launched.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-israeli-planes-bomb-hamas-post-in-response-to-gazan-attack-kites/
This single action cannot be effective in discouraging the kiters or getting Hamas to stop them. Hopefully, it is the start of a new campaign of persistently strong action regarding the kites.
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As to that "Triumphant Take":
I am alluding to the coup by the Mossad that I wrote about in my last posting. I thought it was fantastic, as did many others. But there were, naturally, nay-sayers who found all sorts of things to criticize. Some of the major points that have been made:
— The Mossad should have just have scanned the documents and left the originals in the Iranian storehouse so that Iran would not even have known that we had the information.
— The prime minister should never have announced what the Mossad did, as this exposed intelligence work.
— Netanyahu should have made his announcement only in Hebrew, for the Israeli populace.
— Netanyahu didn't reveal anything that was not known previously, and what is more, what he spoke about was worthless because it did not expose any material breach of the deal by Iran.
— Netanyahu should have attacked Iran way back when (as certain self-important persons advised him to do), so that all of this would have been unnecessary. In that way, Israel would have been defending herself. As it is now, by seeking to get the Western world to renegotiate or reject the Iran deal, Netanyahu has turned Israel's security over to others.
Undoubtedly, a fair number of you have been exposed to this fault-finding.
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On Friday, a column by Caroline Glick was published that described Netanyahu's plan in a way that addresses and rebuts these criticisms. As I have indicated, I thought it was an incredible operation from the time I heard Netanyahu speak. But after reading Glick, I was truly blown away.
Glick said that the public announcement of the operation by our prime minister was not aimed at the Americans — the Americans had been privy to this information since last March, when the Mossad gave the CIA the full archive. Netanyahu coordinated his presentation with Trump and Pompeo in the two days before he went public with it.
It was not for the Europeans, as they are not key players.
The presentation was for the Iranians. As Glick explains (emphasis added):
"At its base, Jew-hatred is a neurotic condition. Anti-Semites fear Jews. They perceive them as all-powerful…anti-Semites see Jewish fingers in everything bad that happens to them.
"Netanyahu's presentation pushed all of Iran's leaders' neurotic anti-Semitic buttons.
"Netanyahu opened by revealing the existence of Iran's secret archive of its military nuclear program:
"'Few Iranians knew where it was, very few,' he began.
"And without missing a beat, as if stating the obvious, he added nonchalantly, 'And also a few Israelis.'
"In other words, Netanyahu told the Iranians that just as they fear, the Jews know everything about them. The Jews know their deepest secrets. It doesn't matter how closely guarded a secret is. The Jews know it.
"That would have been enough to send the likes of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Gen Kassem Suleimani into a fetal position. But Netanyahu was just getting warmed up.
"Netanyahu then showed photographs of the nuclear archive – first from the outside, and then from the inside. It was as if he just wrote, 'Kilroy was here,' on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's bedroom door.
"And then came the coup de grace. Netanyahu pulled down two black curtains and revealed the files themselves. Two hundred or so binders filled three bookcases. Two panels contained row after row of CDs – all taken from Iran."