Day 17 of Operation Protective Edge

sTARS OF dAVID aT KOTEL pLAZA
Speaking ahead of special cabinet meeting, prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] says IDF has made substantial gains against Hamas terror infrastructure in Gaza and will continue the operation in full strength. (from the Jerusalem Post)
It’s been twelve days since the last Hamas rocket attack on Jerusalem. According to the Jerusalem Post the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has lost thirty-two soldiers since beginning a ground incursion into Gaza. Less than an hour before I began this entry sirens sounded in the south as another barrage of Hamas rockets were launched at Ashdod, Israel’s fifth largest city 32 kilometers south of Tel Aviv. Although the Israeli Iron Dome antimissile system has performed spectacularly well against Hamas rockets, Hamas gained a temporary victory yesterday when the US FAA and several European airlines halted all flights into Tel Aviv after a rocket landed to no effect within a mile of Ben Gurion Airport .
Hamas continues to eagerly report Palestinian civilian casualties to the waiting world press, as it seems that the human shield business is a hazardous one. There was a time, not too long ago, when international opinion would have sized up Hamas’s behavior as murderous and insane but this is a brave new world.