Gaza Missiles Kill 75-Year-Old Woman

Jerusalem – Last night, Palestinian missiles killed a 75-year-old Israeli woman who lived on the collective farming community known as Yesha in the western Negev.

Although The Bulletin knows the name of the woman who was killed, the name was not released at the time of deadline, since not all of her immediate family who live outside of Israel have been notified of her murder.

Regional Council Mayor Chaim Yellin told reporters who arrived on the scene, “Why are you interested in what’s going on here only now? We are at war! Period. We have been at war for years. And the government does nothing!

“Yesterday, there also could have been tragic results when the rocket landed next to a school bus,” Mr. Yellin said, referring to a near miss when Arabs in Gaza fired missiles that missed a school bus by less than two feet on Sunday afternoon.

Gaza terrorists have continued to fire missiles at Jewish communities in the Negev throughout the day yesterday.

On Friday night, Jimmy Kedoshim was murdered by a 120-millimeter mortar shell that landed in his yard as he stood in his garden. Other shells hit a local youth clubhouse that was empty at the time.

Mr. Kedoshim was buried at 3:45 p.m. Sunday in his kibbutz, Kfar Aza, a kibbutz not far from the Gaza border.

Mr. Kedoshim, a 30-year-veteran of the kibbutz, was a parachutist who ran an aerial photography company. His services were used by this reporter to take aerial shots of the region.

He left behind a wife, Anna, and three children, Shaked, Stav and Eyal.

Parents Flee School In Range Of Rockets

On Saturday, with Israeli schools not in session because of the Jewish Sabbath, a salvo of missiles fired into the western Negev scored a direct hit on the Shaar Hanegev regional high school.

Data given by the school show that about 200 students, or 10 percent of the total, have left the school in the current year. Most of the students who have left are from the Lachish regional council, an area that the missiles cannot yet reach. The school is only partly protected against the rockets and, therefore, this year classes have been held not at the school but on Kibbutz Ruhama, which is out of the rockets’ range.

David Turgeman, 13, from the community of Nehora, this year completed his studies at his local elementary school and wanted to move on to Shaar Hanegev with his friends. But his parents preferred him to go to school in Kiryat Gat.

“We received reports from parents whose children attended Shaar Hanegev in previous years, and they said that the children don’t learn there, because all day there are telephone calls between the child and his parents, they are frightened, and we decided to prevent this from the outset,” David’s father Ilan said.

“I really insisted that my children should attend Shaar Hanegev, because it’s an excellent school, but the parents voted with their feet. The Kassam rockets put them to flight,” said Danny Morbiya, head of the Lachish regional council, on Sunday. “People can’t be forced to leave their children in a place where Kassam rockets are falling. The state hasn’t solved the problem, and today I understand the parents,” added Mr. Morbiya, whose daughter attends the Shaar Hanegev junior high school.

Officials of the Shaar Hanegev regional council and the high school are disappointed with the attitude of the education ministry to their distress. The drop in the number of students under 16 reduces the allocation the school is entitled to receive from the education ministry, but because the departure of the students took place after the number of teachers in the school had been determined, it was impossible to fire superfluous staff, and therefore the cost of the school did not drop accordingly. Now the Shaar Hanegev school has a budget deficit of $300,000.

“The education ministry has not kept promises of funds totaling a million shekels,” the council chairman, Alon Shuster, said. “Education Minister Yuli Tamir promised when the school year opened that even for students who dropped out, the school would receive money. It is [the ministry’s] failure.”

Reports: Bush Will Offer New Radar For Israel

Virtually all the Israeli print and electronic media carried the story, in advance of President Bush’s visit this week, that the Bush administration has signaled that it would consider providing Israel with a new radar system to detect Iranian missile launches.

Bush administration sources told the Middle East Newsline that the Defense Department has agreed to consider an Israeli request for a forward-based X-band radar, manufactured by Raytheon. The X-band radar was said to be capable of tracking an object the size of a baseball from a distance of 3,500 miles.

“There’s been no promise, just that the administration would consider this as part of a security package to Israel,” the administration source said.

The source said the X-band radar would comprise a key element of a missile defense and security package for an Israeli surrender of Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights, areas acquired by Israel as a result of the 1967 war.

President George Bush was scheduled to arrive in Israel on May 14 to seek an Israeli agreement to withdraw from at least 95 percent of Judea and Samaria over the next year.

“While the U.S. and Israel cooperate closely on defense matters, there will not be any announcements during next week’s visit,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

In 2001, Israel was provided access to the Defense Support Program military satellite network. The network was designed to detect missile launches throughout the world.

Congressional supporters said the X-band radar would be a huge improvement over Israel’s current “Green Pine” early-warning radar. They said the X-band would enable Israel to fire an interceptor toward an Iranian Shihab-3 intermediate-range ballistic missile within six minutes of launch. The flight of the Shihab to Israel was estimated to take 11 minutes.

Israel Intelligence: ‘Iran Pushed Hezbollah Into Acting’

“The Lebanese government was shown in the latest crisis to be a puppet government with no teeth,” said Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin during the course of the Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday.

In an intelligence review, he said that Hezbollah did not want to take over Lebanon militarily because it knew that this would not be met well in Lebanon and in the world.

“Hezbollah did this its own way. It pressed down on the pedal and then let go – and the government immediately folded,” he said. Maj. Gen. Yadlin also said that Hezbollah was Iran’s long arm in Lebanon, and it was obvious to all now that there is an Iranian branch on Israel’s northern border.

Maj. Gen. Yadlin added that Syria and Iran were mixed up in this clash and had pushed Hezbollah into acting. Maj. Gen. Yadlin said that Hezbollah had no interest at this time in escalating the situation on the border with Israel, but when it wanted to – or when the Iranians wanted – Hezbollah would have no problem in causing an escalation. Maj. Gen. Yadlin went on to say that the Lebanese government’s real strength was not military but the political and moral and diplomatic support it enjoys in the world.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel was following events in Lebanon closely. He asked the ministers to say little on the subject because of its great sensitivity. But Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon averred:

“Lebanon should be related to as the state of Hezbollah. Everything that happens there is under its responsibility. The country is controlled by Hezbollah and there is no significance to its government. The idea that there is also a government in addition to Hezbollah is a fiction.”

David Bedein can be reached at Media@actcom.co.il. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

©The Bulletin 2008