Israel must launch a military operation to rout terrorist organizations from the Gaza Strip immediately, Israel Security Agency head Yoram Cohen warned on Wednesday.
“The IDF’s inaction against terrorist organizations will lead to a situation in which Hamas has far greater abilities in the next round of fighting,” Cohen told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. It was his first appearance before the committee.
Cohen said Israel’s dilemma was not whether to launch such an offensive, but rather how Hamas would respond.
“Such action might force a significant number of people [in Israel] into bomb shelters,” Cohen said.
“Since the IDF withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the territory has become a huge weapons depot,” Cohen told the committee. “Hamas currently has 8,000 rockets that can reach a range of 4 to 40 km (2.5 to 25 miles).”
He added that Hamas is rumored to have acquired a handful of rockets capable of striking even greater distances, and that some of Hamas’ operational abilities have surpassed those of the Shiite terrorist militia Hezbollah.
Cohen said that terrorist groups in Gaza have developed “an Israel Military Industries-like apparatus to produce and develop rockets that might one day reach the Gush Dan region [in central Israel].”
He also warned that Gaza-based terrorists have been getting assistance from other regional players, particularly from “experts, including Iranians and other operatives who were sent overseas for training.”
He said the popular uprising in Libya that toppled Moammar Gadhafi’s regime has transformed that country into a “new gate to hell” through which shoulder missiles and rockets have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip.
Cohen said his agency had its eye on hundreds of targets in the Gaza Strip. “When the order is given, they can be hit,” he said.
Death to terrorists
Bomb Hamas and bomb terroristleaders
Arnold, you continue to be my mouthpiece. If the liberal left wing idiots don’t agree, they deserve everything they get.
Why don’t you all either retake and keep strict military control over the Gaza Strip, or just shut your mouths and stop whining about suffering the endless unintended consequences of not having done so? One grows impatient with fools who seem permanently unable to learn the hard lessons of dealing with armed, hostile, Jew-hating and permanently-dangerous goyim.
“Taking military control” means exactly what it says. Except this time, don’t jail any Arabs who oppose you. If they come at you with weapons in hand, just kill them with your superior firepower. For lesser offenses that threaten Israeli control over that territory, there should be just one universal punishment: Expulsion across the border into any of the neighboring or nearby Arab states that neither maintain nor keep any peace agreement with Israel.
Then, just annex the Gaza territory, offering only local autonomy under Israeli security controls to the Arab inhabitants. Any that refuse to keep the peace under such an arrangement, just ship out of the country by way of one of the borders.
But do not ship them into the Sinai. The Jewish nation wants that peninsula returned as soon as Egypt re-declares itself in a state of war against Israel. May ha-Shem make that time come soon, because my sole interest in Egypt, the Egyptians or anything remotely Egyptian is for the Jewish state to find sufficient justification to retake the Sinai peninsula and this time annex it outright.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
If a pre-emptive strike is called then it should be done in the middle of the night and very very quickly with no media allowed until all actions ended and Gaza secured and then IDF attention turned toward Lebanon with a warning to Hezbollah to stay out of it, which they will not because of Iran. Then Israel takes care of Hezbollah again in quick fashion and not worrying about collateral damage. Then let Iran try to ‘shoot its mouth off’ and wait for Israel’s attack to come with no surrogates to depend on. Blitzkrieg and surprise and kill to win with all deliberate speed is only way out for Israel. Divide and chew them up piecemeal before world opinion can ‘put its pants on’. Nothing is feared more than total victory, even Arabs and the aryan Persians understand that. Think ‘6 Day War’ only with a lot less time allowed.
What a load of BS. Been there done that already.
We’ve been doing that for years. destroy any target they just with the help of Uncle Laban and others rebuild more and better. They lose a few of their boys they are no loss to them , become Shaheeds and are replaced by double and triple recruits.
He means they can now hit ay part of Israel including Tel Aviv and southward including our nuke complexs in Dimona.Israel sits quietly by while they build their deterrent to the great IDF(sarc/). How about hitting our Toxic chemicle storage clompleses in Asdod and Ashklelon? Our Power plant in Ashkelon or the port? Military bases in the Negev including our major military air bases? We have targets they have targets.
Civilians in Shelters? That’s an excuse? If he said that he should be fired on the spot.
Passive Defense
by David Raziel
Commander in Chief of the Irgun from 1937-1941
“If the objective of the war is to break the will of the enemy; we clearly cannot be content with defensive action. Such a method of defense, which enables the enemy to attack as he sees fit and to retreat at will, to reorganize and to attack again – such defense is known as passive defense‚ and ends in defeat and ruin; he who does not wish to be defeated must attack.”