Hundreds of Rockets Fired at Israel After Assassinations of Terrorist Leaders

jerusalem
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Israel struck the home of Palestinian Islamic Jihad top commander Baha Abu al-Ata. Abu al-Ata was the leader of the Iran-backed terrorist group in the northern area of the Gaza Strip and was responsible for numerous rocket barrages into Israel over the past year.

In the surgical attack, Abu al-Ata was killed along his wife.

From Tuesday afternoon to Thursday, Islamic Jihad fired over 450 rockets into Israel in retaliation, most of which were destroyed by Israel’s Iron Dome defensive missile shield. Israeli injuries from the attack were minimal. A shaky ceasefire was in effect by Thursday, but may be broken.

This latest bout of fighting is interesting for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, at the same time that Israel targeted Abu al-Ata in Gaza, another Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader living in Damascus was killed. While Israel has not claimed credit for the attack, the government in Damascus confirmed the death of the terrorist. Both strikes are likely a warning sign for other Iran-backed terrorist groups that its leaders are vulnerable anywhere and anytime against Israeli attack.

Secondly, the fact that 450 rockets can be fired into Israel, with only minimal response, shows that Israel is continuing to pursue a dangerous policy of “proportional response.” It shows how Israel’s defense technology has developed to the point that these rockets are mostly ineffective at taking out Israeli civilians. But then the question arises: How many rockets would it take for Israel to deal with the problem?

Dr. Seth Frantzman wrote about this in the Jerusalem Post this week:

How many rockets is too many for Israel to accept: 200 in a day? 500 in two days? 1,000? The threshold has not been reached. In the past, there were up to 460 fired in several days. In 2009, Israel would have been at a war already.

But in 2019, 460 rockets is not enough to send Israel to war. Instead, the Iran-backed terrorist group will take a few steps back before it regroups and fights again. Granted, there are few easy solutions to the Gaza problem. But is Israel’s policy of delaying the inventible sustainable?

If you would like to read more about why Israel finds itself in this predicament on the border with Gaza, you really need to read Gerald Flurry’s free booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy.

EU Institutionalizes Anti-Semitism With ‘Settlement’ Label Ruling

The same day rockets started raining down on the Jewish state, the European Union issued a ruling demanding that products produced in settlements inside the territories be labeled as such, rather than a sticker that says “Made in Israel” or even “Made in the West Bank.”

The ruling declared:

Food stuffs originating in the territories occupied by the State of Israel must bear the indication of their territory of origin, accompanied, where those foodstuffs come from an Israeli settlement within that territory, by the indication of that provenance.

Obviously there are a couple of major problems with this ruling.

Firstly, it is a ruling directly against Israel and does not include other such apparent “illegal occupations.” What about goods from Turkish-occupied Cyprus, are they going to be labeled accordingly? Or Russian goods in occupied Ukraine? What about the goods from the disputed land in Western Sahara, are they going to have a different label? No; according to the EU Court of Justice just goods from settlements in the West Bank need a separate label.

Former Israeli ambassador Alan Baker wrote about the decision:

This [ruling] is indicative of an acute double standard in EU policies, raising pertinent questions regarding the real motivation behind such policies.

But it gets worse. It isn’t just that items would have to be labeled with “Made in the West Bank” or “Made in the Golan Heights” or even “Made in East Jerusalem.” This directive takes it one step further in that the label must not just say that it came from the West Bank, but from a settlement in the West Bank. Anywhere a Jew lives in the West Bank is classified as a settlement, and so it is actually not just about where it’s from, but it’s about the race of who made the product.

Brook Goldstein who heads the Lawfare Project, a New York-based pro-Israel advocacy, said that the court’s decision would, “codify religious discrimination into law.” She then said:

There is no reason for products by Muslims and Jews in the same geographic place to be labeled differently. In fact, treating people differently because of their religion is the definition of bigotry and we know what happens when Europe goes down that track.

Basically, the label will say, made in a settlement in the West Bank. But what it will represent in accordance with the EU rules is that the product was “Made by a Jew in land that was illegally taken from the Palestinians.”

This why Jewish advocacy groups are understandably maddened by the decision.

It harkens back to five years before the Second World War when the Nazi regime in Germany initiated its own boycott of Jewish-made goods. On April 1, 1933, the Nazis started to promote a boycott of Jewish businesses invoking the slogan “Germans defend yourselves. Do not buy from Jews!”

This ruling is certainly not that blatant, but it will attach a very negative stigma to any Jewish good that enters Europe, discouraging its purchase. In effect, it will significantly enhance a boycott against Jewish goods.

While we have noted the recent dangerous trend in Europe toward anti-Semitism, most of that has been related to attacks by fringe groups or individuals, not by governmental bodies.

With this decision, Europe looks to have taken its first step toward institutionalizing anti-Semitism.

This type of institutionalized anti-Semitism is something we have been watching for some time. The Bible indicates that a German-led Europe will once again rise with similar anti-Semitic fervor as in World War ii. But it also indicates that it will likely hide behind international bodies and international law to justify such anti-Semitism. So much so that Israel will largely turn a blind eye toward European anti-Semitism.

If you would like to study into some of these prophecies of Europe’s future, I suggest reading our free book The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy.